The Kaiju Genre goes to the apes!

A few of the attempt's below indeed slightly damaged the genre but it was luckily saved by a movie known as "Mighty Joe Young" in 1949, even if due to a larger budget. This was VERY similar to King Kong story wise but twisted the concept just enough to make it work and feel slightly original. The movie involves an oversize 10-13 foot gorilla and the woman who has raised him since birth. Max O'Hara lures them into showbiz convincing Jill to bring her extraordinarily large gorilla, Joe, back to America. Joe is exploited to no end and finally is tired of being used, and after being approached by a drunk who gives him alcohol and then burns Joe for laughs the gorilla escapes into the city. This carries on much like King Kong but Jill is able to save the over sized gorilla by the end of the film, after fleeing the army but stopping to rescue children from a burning orphanage. The army after seeing the valiant rescue only then gives permission to Jill to return Joe to his homeland due to Joe's heroics. The most amazing contribution to this film was the puppetry techniques developed for the film which was used to give Joe such a huge array of expressions, this was developed by the film makers but unfortunately was not followed up with in its time since movie goers did not want to feel like the monsters they see have emotions and feel sorry for them.



Below is a trailer from the film!(will be added later due to some errors)

B.C.!!! the dawn of the lizards...and animal cruelty

"One Million B.C." was released in 1940 and was the father of "Two Lost Worlds" you could say since much of that film was simply a clone of "One Million B.C." Mostly via using stock footage from the film for the majority of its dinosaur scenes leaving the audience feeling a sense of Deja Vu and likely some feeling of money wasted. The most drawing thing for this film was its trailers claiming the use of live dinosaurs for the film, this was done in the movie, as stated in my prior topic, by using a technique of enlarging living lizards which they then attached various accessories to in order to make it look more dinosaur like. The fight scenes in this movie were filmed with these living lizards facing each other leaving you with an intense battle....but also one dead lizard in real life. This is since the FX shots simply involved letting the lizards fight to the death and filming it as one slowly died leaving the other victorious.As impressive and powerful as it is to consider in the abstract, watching a giant Iguana have its throat torn-out becomes simply horrifying once you realize that it’s really happening, no trick of the camera or fx just pure cruelty toward the animals in the film. The film was the first to use these techniques and one of the first creators of the a-typical good tribe/bad tribe scenario and the volcano that's always ready to destroy the island by the end of the film. The volcano scene leads to even more lizard deaths via rock crushing and falls off crumbling cliffs (more like throws)... and this is what makes this film so upsetting to talk about. Luckily laws have been put in place to protect these animals now. Regardless of these facts, which likely weren't known when it was released, the catch worked and this film was the #1 Box Office attraction of 1940 ignoring roll overs like the re-release of "Gone With The Wind" the same year

I cannot find a trailer but I found one of the gruesome battle scenes in the film

TWO LOST WORLDS....because two worlds are better lost from time then one

"Two Lost Worlds", released in 1951, actually a few years after "Mighty Joe Young" which I will touch on soon stars James Arness a popular actor in sci-fi in the older days and involves his character going to Australia and falling in love with a girl only to have that girl kidnapped by pirates. He plans to get her back and after a testosterone fueled fight with the pirates and the navy who is called in for aid...they find themselves shipwrecked on an island. Guess what? it's FULL OF DINOSAURS....oooh...ahhh.
How they managed to end up on an island like that is not really explained and its probably better we don't think too hard into it. AMAZINGLY in this film we are then given LIVING dinosaurs to watch!... even if it is via camera tricks showing lizards blown up to huge sizes to represent our dinosaurs. This was a technique used mostly for TV shows with low low budgets and this was only the second time it was used on a bigger budget film here. It's truly a shame however that most lizards don't really look that much like their dinosaur ancestors....so instead we get gators with fins glued to their backs and Gila Monsters. This film in it's time was heavily advertised as a living dinosaur/giant monster movie due to these techniques but most images were reused, simply taken from another movie earlier in time. This film they were all taken from was "One Million B.C." in 1940, which reminds me Joe came out first and I forgot to put "One Million B.C." in my list!!! oh well, guess what the next blog is!? so I will keep going since this one relates to the next blog topic.


Anyway as far as this film is considered I have to say the fight scenes were pretty intense, and likely because I'm sure something died in real life....aah the years before animal protection acts. The acting was one of the better things in this film and make up for some of its terribleness. Unfortunately I could not find a trailer to grace your eyes with so you will have to be sad you missed its glory *cough* yea right *cough* =(

The Unknown Island...now an unknown movie to many

Next in line to talk about, although I have it slightly out of order date wise, was a film known as "Unknown Island" which came out a year before Joe ravaged the screens in 1948. The film attempted to use suits for the first time!....unsuccessfully. The end results were laughable but may have actually added to the entertainment slightly. The most well made suit in the entire movie looked nothing like it was supposed to scientifically look like.....see the giant possum looking creature on the lower left of the poster above? this is what was given to represent that.(see below)

ahh a face only a mother could love. Anyway they attempted to put together suit acting for the first time in order to save budget and unfortunately it did NOT work well. The story involves a couple wanting to go to an island where her husband has her convinced their were live dinosaurs still walking. The story progresses as they come across a man, while looking for someone to charter a ship, who agrees to help them since he wanted to return there for "photographs" and only "photographs" since he had seen a dinosaur as he flew over the island one year. Well as per usual this is a total lie which could easily be predicted. The cast is "menaced" on the island by poorly made carnivorous dinosaurs that make terribly made vocal roars, and by a sloth creature which....as we can see above....did not work. This accompanied by Secret of the Loch was just one of the reasons Mighty Joe Young may have just happened to "save" the genre.

I have a clip of our dinosaur friends from the movie below....no trailer can be found as of yet

A misguided film that doesn't take itself serious

The next Kaiju film to see the light of day unfortunately was a mess. "The Secret of the Loch" was released in 1934. This film was released only a year after the very first Nessy sightings were reported and in a hurry which unfortunately is seen in the final film. No new techniques were developed for the film and the creature was laughable since it was simply....well I wont ruin it for the people who DO want to see the film...let's just say it wasn't a prime-mate. The film was mostly played for comedy and it mocks at not only drunkards and buffoons but scientists as well. The film understandably had almost no budget so it should be given a little leeway, and with King Kong's success the year before little hope was left for the directors since they knew they could not match the budget so they hoped the comedy would make it sell. The movie is so rare I cannot even find good pictures of it for you! only die-hard Kaiju fans have a copy in their collection. This film almost scared movie producers away from the genre since it received such negative reviews from those who went to see it. (a trailer cannot be found)

But their was hope revitalized for the genre after a New ape-tastic Kaiju climbed on stage (not original....and not a surprise) "Mighty Joe Young", this is a later chapter in my blog though

Its a boy!

Son of Kong was the next kaiju film to see the light of day in 1933. After the surprise success of "King Kong" the studios were all ready to go on a new adventure adding another page in Kong's chapter but the main character was dead so what to do then? Easy! create a Kid Kong. The film begins with a King Kong poster and focus's on Carl Denham a month after the death of Kong, he is harried by lawsuits and flat broke due to the damage caused by the first Kong after it escaped.Denham and Captain Englehorn decide to attempt ot find wealth and financial escape via shipping lines through the Orient but are less then successful. They run into Nils Helstrom who sold Denham the map to Skull Island in the original who tells them of great treasure on the island and the two decide that due to their financial troubles it is worth the try to obtain it. In fact, the man is lying so they will take him to another jurisdiction, as he has just caused a man's death. From interviews with the Script writer Ruth Rose it was learned that Rose intentionally made no attempt to make a serious film on the logic that it could not surpass the first. Interestingly enough however the film although being released in the same year as its forerunner was a modest success financially.It is also known now that Many props from the first film found their way into the second film such as The "longface" Kong Armature from when Kong fought the T-Rex in the first movie, some of the prior made dinosaurs and Willis O'Brien once again was employed to make the movie come to life. No new technological breakthroughs came with this film however... that is other then further proof of stop-motions effectiveness at creating the illusion of life.


Below Is a Trailer from the film

The King that was known as KONG!

The Big boy of Kaiju fandom King Kong followed only by Godzilla who was the only other Kaiju ever to gain such a large following. "King Kong" was the second giant monster film ever released and is still considered to be the original Kaiju even if "Lost World" came before. The Original working titles of the big guys film were The Eighth Wonder , and The Beast and Kong but inevitably became as we know it today simply "King Kong". The film was released in 1933 and actually came to employ a name that had been heard before...Willis H. O'Brien, the same man who made the dinosaur models for the Lost World. Cooper who was producing Kong decided O'Brien's stop-action animation techniques, which O'Brien first developed in a 1925 First National film, The Lost World , should be used to realize his own “giant gorilla” idea. Cooper intelligently realized that by using O'Brien's techniques, Kong could be made without costly location shooting in Africa and this played a role in Kong's release. A funny fact in Kong's history is that Cooper orignally spoke of his creation as a "Giant Terror Gorilla", which those of us who have seen the film see as a very odd interpretation of Kong. The Dunning and Williams Traveling Matte Processes enabled the filmmakers to combine with greater realism scenes in which foreground and background action were shot at different times and places. O'brien and his collaborators greatly enhanced this process though, giving birth to brand new technologies and techniques, much like during the development of "Lost World". They were techniques which could, and would, be used effectively by future filmmakers and even television show writers.Thanks to AFI (American Film Institute) I learned that he improved upon the original process because His "cellulose-acetate screen was much larger than previous screens, and was flexible, non-breakable and heat resistant, attributes that significantly reduced lighting problems that had previously plagued the process. In addition, King Kong is generally acknowledged as the first film to use miniature rear projection, the process whereby previously filmed live action sequences were projected into the miniature settings". This was a giant step for filmmakers since they no longer were forced to go from country to country to film their movies and they could pre-film scenes and inject them in any point of the film by combining two different scenes. Instead of first shooting Kong's animated movements and then projecting them on a screen behind the actor the opposite was true for the film since the actor was shot on a screen, against which the model Kong was moved. Kong himself was built around an articulated steel skeleton and had latex rubber muscles, which moved in a lifelike manner. The model was then stuffed with cotton, covered with liquid latex to form the basic shape, and then covered with bear fur. Two Kong miniatures were actually constructed since the models would wear and tear and thus they were used interchangeably depending on the lighting, they would be used in scenes where previous damage could not be seen based on lighting. For close up scenes a giant head, arm and hand and foot of the beast were created which was another first for film. Stop Motion was truly put to the test in this film and the success in using it effectively was astounding. Through budget concerns and accusations on whether the film would actually be worth producing "King Kong" was inevitably released to the public in 1933 and as of 1946, King Kong had earned RKO $2,361,002.10. The success of King Kong greatly boosted the ailing RKO and the success of the film justified all of its costs and silenced all those who spoke badly of the film. Now that we have entered the 20th century King Kong is still considered one of the greatest films of all time and still is sold even in our modern times including a special edition dvd release of the original in 2006
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Below is one of the official 1933 trailers

The Original

Monsters have always been in human mythology and legends and this is why they are so intriguing even to today's realist world. Filmmakers have shown everything from vampires and fish people to killer mushrooms but of these creations the biggest creatures come out on top. From dragons to mutant beasts created by man's folly to giant insects, Kaiju are some of the most bizarre yet powerful figures in science fiction and horror. One of the still most well known, and earliest, Kaiju to make their presence felt by its creator was "King Kong" in 1933 but the real granddaddy of the Kaiju genre was "The Lost World" in 1925. This was a silent retelling of the Arthur Conan Doyle's novel. The dinosaur models were built largely out of clay and cloth on wooden armatures and brought to life with the aid of stop motion. For those who are wondering, Stop motion animation is a process where models and other objects are photographed one frame at a time, with very small but carefully planned moves between frames. When it is shown together at the proper speed, "persistence of vision" creates the illusion of life. Of course Willis O'Brien went one step further even as seen in Interviews it was learned that he went as far as to apply foam musculature and detailed latex skins onto the armatures to make them more lifelike, and that many of them even included an air bladder for breathing effects. This was state of the art technology that was developed and this took place in the early twenties, and all for the sake of providing entertainment but it led to these amazing new techniques and technologies being brought mainstream. According to Wikipedia In 1998, the film was even deemed "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. The story itself was an example of how things should be left in their natural habitat. The film did this by showing an example of what a brontosaurus would do when removed from its natural habitat, which resulted in death and massive property damage.

(any feedback from readers is welcome)















Below Is a trailer of the original Film, Enjoy!

The Beginning

Filmmakers have given movie goers fantastical films and stories galore but of these stories some of the most popular of the early days of filmmaking were Giant Monsters (Dai-Kaiju In Japan). Whether through Willis O'Brien's stop motion models, Harryhousen's claymation, or even full scale models (THEM), to the Japanese's entry with suitmation, and recently in stunning CG, filmmakers have been able to bring these creatures to life. It is this cultural significance that will be focused on in this blog, for those who have grown up with them and love them to this day this blogs for you. The concepts have changed over time but many of the messages were both deep and important fables that were told in these stories. While it is true that others were simply created to be entertaining they were often inevitably important in the evolution of film.

(any feedback from readers is welcome)