Horror Film Review: Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (dir by Kazuki Omori)

Posted on October 8, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“Godzilla has been erased from time …. but now, King Ghidorah is here!”

Whoops! I guess you all shouldn’t have traveled back in time and kept that dinosaur from mutating into Godzilla then!

1991’s Godzilla vs King Ghidorah was the 18th film in the Godzilla franchise and, because the Back To The Future franchise was very popular in Japan at the time that the film was made, it has a plot that revolves around time travel. A group called The Futurians appear in 1990s Japan. They explain that, by the year 2204, Godzilla will have destroyed all life in Japan. However, they have a plan. They’ve built a time machine and they will be going back to 1944 so that they can remove Godzilla from his island home before the nuclear testing begins. For some reason, the Futurians take a few people from the 90s back with them.

After witnessing a dinosaur stepping on a World War II American army platoon, the Futurians arrange for the dinosaur to be transported to the Bering Strait, where it won’t get doused with radiation. Meanwhile, they secretly leave behind three adorable baby dragons that, once nuclear testing begins, will end up being transformed into King Ghidorah.

It turns out that Futurians are liars! I’m shocked too. In 22o4, Japan is actually the most powerful country in the world and it is so economically strong that America, Russian, and Europe are dependent upon it for their survival. The Futurians were just jealous of what a great country Japan was destined to become so they decided to get rid of Godzilla and instead allow King Ghidorah to destroy the country.

Now, if the Futurians were smart, they would have actually destroyed the dinosaur. Instead, they just sent it to the Bering Strait. And if the Futurians were really smart, they wouldn’t have allowed people in 1991 to know what they were doing. To be honest, all of the mistakes made by the Futurians were self-inflicted. By taking people from the 90s back to the past and letting them see where the dinosaur was sent, they basically ensured that those people would immediately go to the Bering Strait in 1991 and give the dinosaur a dose of radiation so that it would become Godzilla and then battle Ghidorah….

WHAT!?

Yeah, I know. It makes no sense. This is one of the least logical Godzilla films that I’ve ever seen and that’s saying something. Godzilla vs Biollante was loved by critics but it was considered to be a disappointment at the box office. For the follow-up, the producers not only brought back a classic Godzilla opponent (and I did smile when the three-headed Ghidorah showed up because he really was the most awesome member of Godzilla’s supporting cast) but they also came up with a plot that was considerably more juvenile than the previous film. The end result is a film that makes no sense from a narrative point of view but it does at least feature a few good fights between Godzilla, Ghidorah, and a robot version of Ghidorah. And it was also a film that did well enough at the Japanese box office to guarantee that Godzilla would return.

Previous Godzilla Reviews:

Horror Film Review: Cult Killer (dir by Jon Keeyes)

Posted on October 8, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

What a stupid movie!

Released earlier this year, Cult Killer stars Alice Eve as Cassie Holt, a former librarian who is now a private investigator in Ireland. Cassie has a tragic backstory, which we hear about from several people along with hearing about it from Cassie and then getting to see most of what we’ve already heard about in a series of flashbacks. Cassie was sexually abused by her grandfather, dropped out of university, learned Brazilian ju-jitsu, became an alcoholic, went to AA, and is now a private investigator.

Her mentor is Mikael Tallini (Antonio Banderas, looking embarrassed). When Mikael is murdered by a woman who pounces on him and then steps him to death, Cassie sets out to solve his murder and get revenge. She discovers that her sleepy Irish village is actually the home of a cult of sex abusers and Jamie Douglas (Shelley Hening) has been killing everyone who either abused or betrayed her, though Mikael apparently was just killed because he had been hired to find out what she was doing. Soon, Jamie is calling Cassie on the phone and telling her about all the details of her crimes, encouraging Cassie to help her while also acknowledging that Cassie will eventually have to arrest her or kill her or do something to avenge the death of her mentor at Jamie’s hands. “We not do different, you and I,” Jamie says without a hint of irony.

Antonio Banderas gets top-billing in Cult Killer and he’s prominently featured on the film’s poster. His character is killed off after the first ten minutes but he then reappears in flashbacks as Cassie remembers him training her and all the times that she told him about her tragic backstory. There’s a lot of flashbacks in Cult Killer and they don’t exactly show up at the most logical of moments. They’re rather randomly sprinkled throughout the film and often, there’s no real indication that we’ve entered flashback territory until Banderas shows up. I know and understand that it’s currently totally melvin to tell a story in chronological order. Everyone wants to be Christopher Nolan. But the thing is, Christopher Nolan is a genius. Most directors are not. The director of Cult Killer is not.

Along with the jumbled timeline, the other big problem with this film is that Shelley Hening’s performance as Jamie is absolutely atrocious. Some of it is the script, which forces all of its worst lines onto Jamie. But, beyond that, Hening plays Jamie as being a somewhat mischevious brat while the film needs her to be a charismatic maniac. Throwing a skull into a room and then calling Cassie to tell her that you just did some “Monster shit,” doesn’t make you into an intriguing anti-hero or a compelling villain. It just makes you into the equivalent of a pre-teen tossing eggs at the house of a hated teacher and then bragging about it the next day. Jamie’s relationship with Cassie never rings true and neither Eve nor Hening really seem to have much idea what’s going on with their characters either. It takes a lot of effort to make two sex abuse survivors come across as being incredibly annoying but this film manages to do it.

The film features Jamie targeting the members of a cult of wealthy sex abusers. That story had potential, especially when you consider that Epstein didn’t kill himself. But the film gets so bogged down in flashbacks that it never creates a proper feeling of paranoia or, for that matter, any narrative momentum. It all just feels rather pointless and confused, as if the film itself isn’t quite sure what it’s trying to say. The best film to be inspired by the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein remains The Scary of Sixty-First.

Horror Film Review: Dark Intruder (dir by Harvey Hart)

Posted on October 8, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1965 film, Dark Intruder, takes place in San Francisco in 1890.

Murders are being committed on the foggy streets of the city that was once known as Yerba Buena. Women are being stalked through allies and attacked by a caped figure who seems to thrive on the darkness. At each murder, a hideous statuette is left behind. The statuette seems to depict a winged demon emerging from the back of a man’s head. With each murder, the demon appears to be growing closer and closer to fully escaping from the man.

The police are baffled and the press is suggesting that London’s infamous Jack the Ripper has come to California. (Well, where else would he go? I kid, California, I kid! I love you, California. Well, I love some parts of California, at least.) As the police often due when they have a case with supernatural overtones, they turn to local socialite and bon vivant, Brett Kingsford (Leslie Nielsen).

Brett lives in a mansion, where he wakes up nearly every morning with a hangover. He enjoys life but he’s also found time to become an expert on the occult. He even has a giant plant in his library that perks up whenever there’s a paranormal presence nearby. Brett is engaged to Evelyn Lang (Judi Meredith), who speaks in an annoyingly high voice. When the police bring the statuettes to Brett, he takes them to a psychic named Chi Zeng for advice. Chi Zeng (played by Peter Brocco, who you may have guessed was not Chinese) reveals that the statuette represent a Sumerian demon that is inhabiting the body of a human. The demon has to commit seven murders so that it can freed from its host and then allowed to commit as many terrible acts as it wants.

Who is the demon possessing? Brett’s friend, Robert Vandenburg (Peter Mark Richman), fears that it could be him. Brett tries to assure Vandenburg that he has nothing to worry about but as Brett continues his investigation, he comes to realize that Vandenburg actually may have a lot to worry about….

Dark Intruder is a short film, clocking in at a little under an hour. It was originally developed as a pilot for a television series that would have featured Leslie Nielsen solving occult crimes on a weekly basis. Unfortunately, the series wasn’t picked up (it sounds like it would have been fun!) and Dark Intruder was given a theatrical release as part of a double feature with William Castle’s I Saw What You Did. It’s an effective little film, full of gothic atmosphere, misty streets, and a frightening (and clawed) villain. The murder that opens the scene seems as if it would have been quite graphic by the standards of 1966 television. Perhaps that’s why the pilot didn’t lead to a series.

Of course, for a lot of people, the main appeal here is Leslie Nielsen, playing one of his “serious” roles. Usually, it’s difficult to watch Nielsen’s dramatic work because it’s impossible not to be amused at his signature deadpan line delivery. But he’s actually very good in Dark Intruder. It helps that Brett Kingsford was written as being someone who had a sense of humor, as opposed to the stiff characters that Nielsen usually played in his dramatic roles. Nielsen appears to be having fun in the role, which is not something you can say about most of Nielsen’s dramatic work. Again, it’s a shame that Dark Intruder was apparently too ahead of its time for 1965.

Horror on the Lens: The Last Man on Earth (dir. by Ubaldo Ragona and Sidney Salkow)

Posted on October 8, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hi there and Happy October 8th! For today’s treat from the ranks of horror films that have fallen into the public domain, I present to you one of the most important films in horror history. Though it wasn’t appreciated when it was first released back in 1964, The Last Man On Earth was not only the 1st Italian horror film but George Romero has also acknowledged it as an influence on his own Night of the Living Dead.

It’s easy to be a little bit dismissive of The Last Man On Earth. After all, the low-budget is obvious in every scene, the dubbing is off even by the standards of Italian horror, and just the name “Vincent Price” in the credits leads one to suspect that this will be another campy, B-movie. Perhaps that’s why I’m always surprised to rediscover that, taking all things into consideration, this is actually a pretty effective film. Price does have a few over-the-top moments but, for the most part, he gives one of his better performances here and the black-and-white images have an isolated, desolate starkness to them that go a long way towards making this film’s apocalypse a convincing one. The mass cremation scene always leaves me feeling rather uneasy.

The film is based on Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend and no, it’s nowhere as good as the book. However, it’s still a worthy adaptation and one that stays true to the tone of the text, including the fact that Price’s main tormenter was also once his neighbor and best friend. This is one of those films that just hits differently in the wake of 2020’s COVID hysteria.

If you have 87 minutes to kill, please enjoy The Last Man On The Earth.

October Positivity: Whitcomb’s War (dir by Russell Doughten, Jr.)

Posted on October 7, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This 1980 film takes place in the town of Hurrah, Iowa. One of the opening scenes features Pastor David Whitcomb driving up to Hurrah and stepping out of his car to take a look at the city limits sign. Hurrah has a population of a little over 3,000. Apparently, almost all of them belong to the same church and everyone works for the same factory.

Unfortunately, the owner of the factor is not a member of the church. In fact, onery old Phil Esteen (say the same quickly) is determined to shut the church down by scheduling everyone to work on Sundays. As a result, hardly anyone is able to attend any of Pastor Whitcomb’s sermons. The pastor finds himself preaching to a church that is full of children whose parents are working at Esteen’s factory. When people complain about Esteen’s tactics, Esteen threatens to move his company to the nearby town of Riverton, which apparently has a river. Phil Esteeen loves to talk about that river.

Whitcomb is upset to discover that people in his church hate Esteen and view him as being unredeemable. Whitcomb says that’s not a good attitude. A huge reason why people have that attitude is because there’s a group of demons living in the church basement. (They may be demons but essentially, they just look like a bunch of community theater actors wearing red shirts.) They’ve been tasked with making the pastor’s life difficult. The demons have a bulky personal computer that they use to type up their evil plans and which they occasionally turn to for advice. The computer itself is treated as being a sort of exotic oddity. One gets the feeling that 1980 audiences were expected to look at the computer and think, “What type of twisted creature would actually travel with one of those things!?”

When the women of the church lead a protest against Esteen’s business practices, it just makes Esteen all the more determined to keep people working on Sundays. Pastor Whitcomb realizes he’s going to have to try something different to reach Esteen and convince him to change his ways. Can he do it?

(Personally, I think the whole problem could have been solved by the employees forming a union or all quitting at the same time or maybe the church holding more than one service during the day. My point is that there seemed to be many potential solutions that no one in this film ever considered….)

This was one of director Russell Doughten’s do-it-yourself regional productions. He directed and self-distributed several of these films in the 70s and 80s. Seen today, this films are grainy time capsules of the distant past. Doughten’s didn’t exactly make films that featured nuanced discussions of theological issues. He was frequently a heavy-handed filmmaker, working in a genre that was specifically designed to be magnify those self-righteous impulses. At the same time, there’s something undeniably charming about just how cheap most of his Iowa-shot films looked and just how enthusiastically they were acted by their largely amateur casts. (And yes, the term to remember is “enthusiastically” as opposed to “convincingly.”) Much as with Ed Wood, Doughten’s appeal is less about his films and more about his refusal to let a lack of funds or a lack of talent stand in the way of bringing his vision to the screen. A film like Whitcomb’s War has a ton of technical flaws but seen today, it’s definitely a time capsule of the era in which it was made. Watching it means taking a trip to the past, to an era when computers were still exotic and even the Devil had to use a landline phone to communicate with people.

Incidentally, I did a google search and apparently, the town of Hurrah, Iowa no longer exists. Maybe everyone moved closer to the river after all.

October Hacks: Party Night (dir by Troy Escamilla)

Posted on October 7, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

It’s prom night!

Except these students aren’t going to prom. Instead, they’re going to have a party all their own. They’re heading out to a house with quite a history, the perfect place to have a night that they’ll never forget. And a night that they’ll be lucky to …. SURVIVE!

There. Was that cheesy enough?

If my introduction was a bit over-the-top, it fits the general mood of 2017’s Party Night. Party Night is a deliberate throwback to the slasher films of the 80s and the early 90s, before the genre started to take itself a bit too seriously. (The worse thing that ever happened to the slasher genre is that a few of the films started to get positive reviews from critics who praised them for being subversive. The end result of all that was David Gordon Green changing Michael Myers from a nightmarish boogeyman to just another buffoon living in a sewer.) As such, Party Night is a film where a bunch of attractive young people go to a place that common sense say they shouldn’t go to. And then they proceed to the dumbest things possible, like wander off by themselves. The joy of the film comes from yelling at the screen, “Don’t do that, you idiot!” and then discovering that you were right to warn them not to do what they did.

I’ve made this point before but it is worth repeating. The common complaint with most old school slasher films is that they feature characters who do stupid things. That’s a valid comment but, to be honest, most people are pretty stupid. And when you’re a teenager and it’s prom night and you’re hanging out with your best friends, you’re going to be even more stupid than usual. In my case, when I sit there and roll my eyes at the girl in a slasher movie who wanders around outside in her underwear in the middle of the night, it’s because I’m trying to forget about all the times that I’ve walked up and down the alley in my sleepshirt, socks, and bathrobe while looking for the cat at two in the morning. The fact of the matter is that we all do stupid things. Some people do stupid things because they’re stupid. Some people do stupid things because it’s just easier and takes less effort. (In my case, it was more convenient to just throw on a bathrobe before I went out to look for the cat as opposed to actually taking the time to put on …. well, clothes.) We recognize our stupidity in the characters who populate the slasher films of the 70s and 80s. And the reason why so many people instinctively make fun of those films is because they know they would not survive an old school slasher film. Myself, I’d probably be dead within the first fifteen minutes.

As for Party Night, it’s a low-budget film with a simple plot and an enthusiastic cast and an obvious love for the genre. Fans of old school slasher films will appreciate the way the story pays homage to the films of the past. It’s a film that understands that, at a certain age, everyone’s too stupid to survive a horror movie.

The TSL Horror Grindhouse: The New Kids (dir by Sean Cunningham)

Posted on October 7, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Oh my God, this movie is awesome!

Within the first five minutes, the film features not only a training montage but also a scene where a family cheering good news immediately gets a phone call delivering bad news. (“SHUT UP!” our hero yells at his friends and family.) By the time the film hits the five minute mark, it has managed to denounce communism, terrorism, laziness, and drunk driving! And that’s even before James Spader shows up as a cocaine-sniffing teenage crime lord!

First released in 1986 and directed by the same guy who did the first Friday the 13th, The New Kids tells the story of Loren (Shannon Presby) and his sister, Abby (Lori Loughlin). Their father (Tom Atkins) was a badass army colonel who fought communists, received commendations from the President (and that President was Ronald Reagan so you know those commendations were for doing something cool and not just for posting memes on twitter), and who taught his children self-defense. Every morning, he exercised with them and drilled into their heads the importance of being disciplined and willing to stand up for themselves. Sadly, their father and mother were both killed in a car accident after meeting with President Reagan at the White House.

Though they’ve been taught how to survive in the world by an expert, Loren and Abby are both teenagers and the law says that they need adult supervision. They move down to Florida and stay with their Uncle Charlie (Eddie Jones), Charlie owns a run-down amusement park that he’s decided to call Santa Land. He figures that tourists who are driving to “Walt Disney World and Epcot” will want to stop off at Santa Land. Personally, I think the tourists will probably want to keep driving to where they actually want to go but who knows? Uncle Charlie does have a petting zoo and there is something oddly charming about the idea of Santa hanging out in the bayous of Florida. I mean, there’s a reason why Santa Claus And The Ice Cream Bunny is beloved by viewers all over the world.

At the high school, everyone notices Loren and Abby. Abby gets a dorky boyfriend named Mark (Eric Stoltz …. no, really!) and Loren starts dating the sheriff’s daughter, Karen (Paige Lynn Price). Unfortunately, the new kids have been noticed by Eddie Dutra (James Spader) and his gang of inbred rednecks. Dutra and his gang deal drugs and have a pit bull who they’re hoping to enter into dog fights. (“Went straight for the jugular,” one gang member says at one point.) Dutra decides that he likes Abby, which leads to Loren getting protective, which leads to Dutra and the boys waging their own war on Abby and Loren and everything eventually comes to a deeply satisfying Straw Dogs-style conclusion at Santa Land.

The New Kids is one of those films that succeeds by being thoroughly absurd and over-the-top. Dutra and his gang aren’t just evil. Instead, they’re downright Satanic in their determination to destroy the new kids. The gang is fearsome enough, especially Gordo (Theron Montgomery), who is the fat future forklift operator from Hell. But what really makes this gang memorable is the fact that their leader is James Spader, with bright blonde hair, a smooth Southern accent, and moves that are so assured that he sometimes seem to be dancing across the screen. Dutra’s evil and the cocaine that he snorts leads to him making some bad decisions but he’s got style. As for the New Kids, Shannon Presby is a bit bland as Loren but that blandness actually provides a nice contrast to Spader’s more flamboyant performance. Lori Loughlin is likable and kicks Gordo in the balls, which is pretty cool. (Gordo more than deserved it.)

Cheerfully sleazy and unapologetically ridiculous, The New Kids is 80s exploitation cinema at its best.

Party Line (1988, directed by William Webb)

Posted on October 7, 2024 by Jedadiah Leland

“Hot singles are waiting to speak to you!”

Remember those party line commercials that used to air late at night in the 90s? For just a few dollars a minute, you could call and talk to someone claiming to be a hot woman in your area of town. (The commercials always featured women because everyone understood that only men would be dumb enough to call the number.) Even when I was a teenager, I knew that there was no way that a young, hot woman was sitting at home alone and waiting for a stranger to call her. But obviously, some people thought they were true because those party lines commercials aired for a long time and really only went away once everything moved online.

In Party Line, Greta Blackburn and Leif Garrett plays homicidal siblings who have money to burn so they spend all of their time on the party line, enticing men to sneak away from their wives and come to their mansion so that they can be murdered. Detectives Richard Hatch and Shawn Weatherly are assigned to find out why so many married men are turning up dead. The chief of police is played by Richard Roundtree, who is so smooth that his main purpose in the movie is to remind us that not everyone has to use a party line to pick up women. It’s a standard 80s thriller that has some moments of unexpected humor, largely due to the contrast between the beautiful and rich killers and the people that they target. Richard Hatch is wooden in the role of the detective but Shawn Weatherly is attractive and likable as his partner, Greta Blackburn makes for an excellent femme fatale while Leif Garrett is twitchy but convincing as a killer who likes to wear a bridal gown.

Party Line was made when the idea of adult phone lines was still a new one. Apparently, when those lines first started to advertise, the part about it costing money wasn’t actually mentioned and could only be discovered by reading the small print at the bottom of a television screen. Since the small print was not only very small but also usually accompanied by a picture of a blonde in lingerie, no one ever bothered to read it. I was not one of them but I do know more than a few 90s kids who came home from school to discover a parent waiting to talk to them about the phone bill. The world was a different place back then. Today, everyone should know that most hot singles have something better to do than to talk to you and if they don’t, they’re probably killers like people in Party Line. It’s not worth a dollar for each additional minute.

October True Crime: The Grim Sleeper (dir by Stanley M. Brooks)

Posted on October 7, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

It’s not known, for sure, how many people Lonnie David Franklin killed.

A residenct of Los Angeles and a former enlistee of the U.S. Army who was given a dishonorable discharge after doing time in prison for taking part in the gang-rape of a 17 year-old girl in Germany, Franklin was convicted of 10 murders but he was suspected of much more. His earliest known murder was committed in 1984 and he was apparently very active up until 1988. Then, much like the BTK Killer, Franklin appears to have taken a break for nearly two decades before returning to his murderous ways in 2002. (It could be just as likely that Franklin was still killing but his victims were either not discovered or he was never linked to the crimes.) Franklin’s murders didn’t get much attention, with the police not acknowledging that they were dealing with a serial killer until 2007. Some of that can be blamed on the fact that many of Franklin’s murders were committed before DNA testing became a commonplace thing. However, it has also been acknowledged that Franklin escaped detection because he targeted black women and tended to prey on sex workers, neither one of whom were a priority for the LAPD in the 80s.

2014’s The Grim Sleeper stars Dreama Walker as Christine Pelisek, the journalist who first reported on the existence of the Grim Sleeper and Ernie Hudson and Michael O’Neill as the detectives who investigated the murders and ultimately arrested Lonnie Franklin. Franklin (played by James R. Baylis) only appears briefly in the film. As The Grim Sleeper was made before Franklin had actually been convicted and sentenced to death for his crimes, the film does not actually state that the police arrested the right man. Indeed, the film discusses very little about the man who was arrested for the crimes.

Instead, the film focuses on Pelisek and her attempts to get someone to take her seriously when she argues that there’s a serial killer on the loose and that the public has a right to know. At first, everyone is skeptical of her claims. Her editor tells her that she doesn’t have enough for a story. The police tell her to mind her own business. Her fellow reporters order her to get coffee. The only people who really support Pelisek’s attempts to uncover the truth are the families of the victims, some of whom have spent over twenty years waiting for someone to tell them what happened to their loved ones.

The film is at its best when it focuses on the pain of the families, all of whom feel that they have been ignored and forgotten by the people who are supposed to be protecting them. It’s at its least interesting when it focuses on Pelisek and her efforts to be taken seriously. (Deama Walker has given good performances in films like Compliance and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood but she’s miscast here.) Though flawed, the film honors the memories of those victimized by the Grim Sleeper and it reminds viewers that no one should be forgotten.

As for the real Grim Sleeper, he died suddenly while on Death Row. The cause of death has never been released but he died in March of 2020, around the same time that COVID was spreading throughout the nation’s prisons and I’ve always assumed that he was an early fatality. Regardless of the cause, the Sleeper met the Reaper and will never awaken again.

Horror Film Review: Godzilla vs Biollante (dir by Kazuki Omori)

Posted on October 7, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1989’s Godzilla vs Biollante, Godzilla returns and gets into a fight with a giant plant named Biollante. Created by mixing plant cells with Godzilla cells and the cells of one human who was killed in a terrorist attack, Biollante has the body of a monster, the head of a giant rose, and the soul of a human. In fact, because her cells were used to help create Biollante, the late Erika Shiragami (Yusko Sawaguchi) can telepathically communicate from inside of Billante.

Now, you might be tempted to laugh at all of that but, silly origin story aside, Biollante is actually a wonderful creation and a fierce competitor to Godzilla. As Biollante was created using DNA that Godzilla left behind during his previous rampage of Tokyo, Godzilla and Biollante have a bit of a mental connection. One could even argue that this film features Godzilla fighting a mutated version of himself. (This was a theme to which many of the future Godzilla films would return.) Biollante is not only capable of wrapping monsters, things, and people in its tendrils but it’s also implied to literally be immortal. Damaging Biollante just causes it to release spores that presumably will lead to the creation of a new Biollante.

How did Biollante come into existence? As usual, it’s all the fault of the government and the corporations. Following Godzilla’s previous rampage in Japan, the government of the Middle Eastern nation of Saradia demanded some of Godzilla’s cells so that they could experiment with creating plant life that could survive in the desert. Meanwhile, an American company called Bio-Major decided that it wanted the cells for itself and they even sent over terrorists to blow up a Saradian lab, leading to the death of Erika and the apparent madness of her father, Dr. Genichiro Shiragami (Koji Takahashi). Dr. Shiragami fused Erika’s cells with the cells of one of the Godzilla plants and Biollatne was created….

Yeah, it doesn’t always make a lot of sense. That’s to be expected of a Godzilla film, though. The important thing is that, no matter how ludicrous the plot, the cast delivers their lines with enough skill and conviction that the viewer is willing to accept what’s being said without worrying too much about the logic behind it. There’s definitely a political subtext here for those who want to find it. Japan once again finds itself saving the world from the mistakes made by America and, this time, the Middle East. For Japan, every Godzilla rampage is a tragedy. For America and the rest of the world, it’s an economic opportunity. Just as the rest of the world reacted to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by saying, “Cool, we’ve got to figure out how to do that!,” the world reacts to over 30 years of Godzilla-led death and destruction by trying to figure out how to create their own Godzilla.

There’s a lot going on in Godzilla vs Biollante. Psychic Miki Saegusa (Megumi Odaka) makes her first appearance in the Godzilla franchise. There’s a fear assassin named SSS9 (Majot Bedi) who pops up throughout the movie so that he can shoot people. There are scenes of corporate espionage and car chases and action sequences featuring a lot of gunfire. This is one of the more violent and fast-paced Godzilla films that I’ve watched. In the end, though, the main attraction is watching Godzilla battle a giant plant and both Godzilla and Biollante acquit themselves well. It makes for an exciting film, one that feels worthy of starring the King of the Monsters.

Previous Godzilla Reviews: