Thursday, February 16, 2012

When Giant Monsters Fall In Love

Before we begin, there's two things that you all should know about me.

The FIRST of which is my unfathomable knack for incredibly bad timing, especially when it comes to corresponding dates and releases of films or television shows worthy of mentioning. For example, I upload an article discussing an art project that I'm personally proud of, and then suddenly, Godzilla decides to return from movie retirement, overshadowing my aforementioned post.

The SECOND is something that's most certainly my willing fault, and its my disliking (sometimes dreading) of Holidays in general, and my attempts to ignore or avoid them outright. And I've been doing this for so long (mixed with my own bad timing), that I've often forget the majority of their yearly arrival times.

I really don't mind, if not care, about this at all, because for me personally, Holidays are like mandatory company picnics; you're forced to have fun with a relatively unimportant event, that eats up into both your own free time, and more important matters in real life as well.

Although to be fair, if you refuse to enjoy a Holiday, you'll usually get called a 'Scrooge' or a 'Grinch' before you even have the chance to explain yourself. But at a company picnic, where a similar situation happens, you run the very real chance of getting fired for not participating with the troublesome event 'one-hundred-and-ten-percent'. So I guess holidays is the lesser evil, BUT that still doesn't mean I want to put up with either of these two torture sessions.

And needless to say, this includes my own birthday, which I know doesn't technically count as a holiday...but its still just a bothersome, and as such, ends up being a holiday (bother) for me overall.

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So with all that said, I do find myself sometimes, JUST SOMETIMES, getting into the spirit of some of these blasted holidays, because it really is infectious at times (i.e. Halloween). But again, mixed with my own bad timing, I often find myself doing such activities way too late.

The following portion is such an example of all the previously mentioned, and was originally uploaded at my DeviantART group dubbed Kaijuden. And it was my friend Mark Rivers who suggested this would have made better fodder for my official blog. And of course, me not giving a damn about holidays and proper scheduling, I'm presenting it here as my weekly update, as a good 45-minutes worth of online entertainment for all of you.

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It's (late) Valentine's Day! And what better way to celebrate than to take a quick look back at bizarre moments in giant monster history, when the air was thick with romance.

"Inhumanoids: Primal Passions"

The 1980's cartoon (loosely inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft), was a fairly straight-faced affair when it came to its main villains, the subterranean beasts which included the demonic tyrant Metlar, the prehistoric zombie D.Compose, and the destructive plant being Tendril. But as with all cartoon shows from this decade, even the Inhumanoids had their silly moments, with this as a particularly infamous episode!

A failed chemical experiment puts our three main villains...well...'in the mood', who then seek out worthy mates for each of them. Though to be honest, only D.Compose ends up somewhat successful, by re-mutating, and then re-hooking up with the human heroine Sandra Shore. You can watch this surreal entry in the following link:

Godzilla's Dr. Pepper Commercials

In an early example of painfully overt movie product tie-ins, the US distributor of "Godzilla 1985", New World Pictures, teamed up with Dr. Pepper for mutual exposure. And resulted in some truly awkward product placement in the American version, while Godzilla stared in some surprisingly decent comedy ads on television.

The second of which featured a brand new monster called 'Newzilla' (AKA 'Mrs. Godzilla'), of whom the King of the Monsters becomes instantly smitten to (must be those blue ultra-bright spotlight eyes of her's). Warning, the following videos have low audio.


"Godzilla the Series: End of the Line"

Of course you can't talk about Newzilla without mentioning this far more beloved suitor to the King of the Monsters...or at least the animated American incarnation, that fans can tolerate better than the 1998 live action disappointment that spawned it.

Komodithrax is a mutated Komodo Dragon who is discovered on an isolated arctic oasis, heated by geothermic features. And because Komodithrax is somewhat similar to the mutant iguana version of Godzilla (or Zilla), the two fall in love, with the American Godzilla becoming a surrogate father to the female monster's unhatched egg. Unfortunately, both a trigger happy US military, and a Giant Arctic Turtle, threatens this makeshift monster family.


There are of course many other giant monster items beyond these three examples, but this post is going on way too long as it is, and may save those for next year's Valentine's Day...Or maybe not.

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