There’s just no way around it; King Ghidorah is the most heavy metal monster in movie history. I mean that in the literal sense, since the supreme kaiju being is seemingly armored by a layer of gold scales, making his “heavy metal” designation as matter-of-fact as Mechagodzilla‘s. Of course, I also mean it in the colloquial sense. The three-headed dragon beast is loudly & proudly metal as fuck on a cellular level. When Ghidorah flies into the frame to take down Godzilla and his fellow skyscraper flunkies, the image conjures the crushing sounds of heavy-metal guitar riffs in audiences’ brains, even in the 1960s pictures that were produced well before Black Sabbath had a record deal. Ghidorah is so metal, in fact, that it takes at least three other Toho-brand monsters to muscle him out of the pit, one for each lightning-spewing head. 🤘
The first time I encountered King Ghidorah was in the 1968 kaiju crossover picture Destroy All Monsters, in which the space-alien bio weapon was unleashed to union-bust a gang of kaiju that included Godzilla, Mothra, and Rodan (among the less-famous monsters Minilla, Gorosaurus, Anguirus, Kumonga, and Varan). Seen out of order in my winding journey through Criterion’s Godzilla box set, this appeared to be an especially grand ego-boost for the giant beast, like when WWE puts over their biggest, brawniest wrestler by having them eliminate every other competitor on the roster during the Royal Rumble. As it turns out, that was Ghidora’s exact funciton from the very beginning, and his debut entrance into the Toho kaiju ring marked the very first time Godzilla felt compelled to team up with other monsters to fight on humanity’s behalf. That Godzilla face-turn was in 1963’s Ghidorah, The Three-Headed Monster, in which evil space aliens declare interplanetary warfare by launching Ghidorah at Planet Earth, threatening to take over. It’s then up to Mothra, in her squirming grub form, to convince Godzilla & the pterodactyl-like Rodan to stop throwing rocks at each other like schoolyard children and instead join forces to fight off this existential, heavy-metal threat. They’re both petty assholes about it, but they eventually relent and team up to repel the flying hell-beast before going their separate ways.
The reluctant tag team of Godzilla & Rodan reforms when King Ghidorah returns in 1965’s Invasion of the Astro-monster. Rebranded with his new wrestler gimmick as Monster Zero, Ghidorah is once again deployed as an interplanetary weapon of mass destruction, one that can only be disarmed by the collective power of multiple kaiju opponents. His inevitable 2-on-1 battle with Godzilla & Rodan is delayed until the climactic 15 minutes of the runtime, though, as the invading Xiliens from Planet X smartly abduct Godzilla & Rodan with UFO tractor beams and imprison them for as long as possible so Ghidorah can do maximum damage, unchecked. Without the large-scale monster battles to fill up the runtime, Invasion of the Astro-monster spins its wheels with lengthy indulgences in political espionage and The X From Outer Space-style extraterrestrial cocktail parties. It’s maybe not the most thrilling approach to making a monster movie, but it does lead to some gorgeous 60s-kitch imagery. It’s impossible to decide what the most striking image of the film is in retrospect, but I’ve narrowed it down to two options: literalizing the Cold War aspect of the Space Race by putting a gun in the flag-planting astronaut’s free hand or Godzilla being abducted by a UFO. Then, Ghidorah soars into the frame to battle Godzilla & Rodan once again, erasing such questions entirely with heavy-metal bursts of lightning.
If there’s one detail of Ghidorah’s design that makes his metal-as-fuck majesty immediately obvious, it’s that each of his individual dragon heads moves independently, which is especially impressive when combined with his suitmation power of flight. It’s a lot like watching Kermit the Frog ride a bicycle for the first time in The Muppet Movie, adding an entire new dimension to kaiju suitmation spectacle audiences previously did not dream was possible. The suit was reportedly exceedingly difficult to operate as a result, often leading to longer shooting schedules as his operators struggled to keep his long, golden necks from tangling like noodles. Like headbanging to thrash riffs, it was well worth the headache. Everything else that makes Ghidorah so thunderously badass is immediately, visually obvious. He is the essence of metal, skyborne and beautiful. Godzilla mastermind Ishirō Honda’s impulse to bulk up the monster’s reputation by making him undefeatable unless several other kaiju attack in unison was a smart one, but it was also necessary. Look at him. No one would buy into the kayfabe otherwise.
Welcome to Episode #223 of The Swampflix Podcast. For this episode, Hanna, James, and Brandon discuss a grab bag of movies about uncanny alien encounters, starting with the Christopher Walken alien abduction horror Communion (1989).
For this lagniappe episode of The Swampflix Podcast, Boomer, Brandon, and Alli discuss Paul Verhoeven’s satirical adaptation of the Robert A. Heinlein sci-fi military novel Starship Troopers.
Most genre movie freaks may have moved on to shiny new boutique Blu-rays and moldy old VHS tapes, but I still collect most of my movies at the tried-and-true distribution hub of the thrift store DVD rack. You don’t always find rare gems at the thrift store, but you often find movies cheaper than they cost to rent on streaming, with the added bonus of a Special Features menu that most streamers don’t bother to upload. My recent pickup of the 1960s sci-fi lucha libre classic Santo vs. The Martian Invasion felt like a blessing by both metrics; it’s rare enough that it’s not currently available to stream at home with English subtitles, and the disc includes several Bonus Features, including full-length commentaries and a 30-minute interview with Santo’s heir, Son of Santo. It felt like even more of a blessing when those subtitles turned out to be a variation of Comic Sans, which I’m not sure I’ve ever seen outside of an ironic lyrics-only music video on YouTube. I don’t know that reporting on these details is useful to anyone who didn’t happen to be shopping at the Thrift City USA on the West Bank last weekend, but I still want to advertise that the dream is still alive in the thrift store DVD racks of New Orleans in general. I suppose I also want to report that the home distribution label Kit Parker Films is surprisingly generous with their bargain-bin DVDs’ bonus content, so look out for those discs in particular while you’re digging through the stacks.
Billed on its title card as Santo the Silver Mask vs The Invasion of the Martians, this specific bargain-bin discovery is a fairly typical Atomic Age sci-fi cheapie about an alien invasion of planet Earth; its hero just happens to be the masked luchador Santo, protector of “the weak and the defenseless.” The alien-invasion plot is a little confused, with the Martians announcing their presence to the citizens of Mexico via multiple television broadcasts and having their evil deeds widely reported in local newspapers, then later being treated as a conspiratorial government secret hidden from the public. Instead of getting that story straight, the movie intensely focuses on the physical abilities & vulnerabilities of the Martians. Much attention is paid to the fact that they frequently take “oxygen pills” to be able to withstand Earth’s atmosphere, among other needless explanations of their uncanny ability to speak Spanish. There’s also an intense fixation on their cube-shaped helmets’ Astral Eye, a glowing eyeball that allows them to either hypnotize or disintegrate nearby Earthlings, depending on the demands of the day. They can also wrestle fairly well, which makes them the perfect opponent for Santo, the greatest & bravest wrestler who ever lived. Santo repeatedly grapples with the blonde-wigged beefcake models from planet Mars, eternally flustered by their ability to teleport back to the safety of their spaceship every time the impromptu matches don’t go their way. He eventually wins by stealing one of their teleportation devices to infiltrate and explode that ship himself, like a wrestler claiming a championship belt (literally; the device is belt-shaped).
The Martian Invasion loses a little steam once these intergalactic lucha libre matches return to a proper wrestling ring instead of being staged in exterior locations on the streets of Mexico, but most of its vintage sci-fi hijinks remain adorable & fun. Instead of brooding in the bootleg Gothic atmosphere of horror pictures like Santo vs The Vampire Women or Santo and the Blue Demon vs Dracula and the Wolf Man, a lot of the runtime is filled with insane, rapid-fire dialogue about the peculiarities of the Martian species. There’s also some fun 60s kitsch to the cheesecake Martian women in particular, who hypnotize & seduce the major players of Mexican patriarchy with the laziest futuristic go-go dancing you’ve ever seen. Between that half-hearted eroticism and the absurd over-reliance on stock footage to pad out the budget, I was often reminded of some of my favorite Atomic Age sci-fi novelties: Nude on the Moon, Cat-Women of the Moon, Queen of Blood, The Astounding She-Monster, etc. None of those comparison points feature extensive wrestling matches, though, which gives this an extra layer of novelty the same way the Santo horror films feel novel compared to their classic Universal Horror equivalents.
Something I don’t have context for is how much of an anomaly The Martian Invasion is within the larger Santo canon. It felt a little zippier & goofier than the couple horror films I’ve seen starring the masked luchador, which rely heavily on classic haunted-house mood & dread. I don’t have enough evidence to say how typical that is to Santo’s filmography, though, because I’ve only seen three of what Wikipedia lists as “at least 54” titles in his catalog. Given the pace at which I’m finding notable Santo movies on used discs or streaming, it’s likely I’ll never get the complete picture of his big-screen work before I run out of time and die. Honestly, I still can’t even pin down the exact list of titles that make up that catalog. Wikipedia, IMDb, and Letterboxd all have conflicting lists of what count as an official Santo film, and the “Filmografia” Special Feature on my Martian Invasion disc only includes 52 of his “at least 54” titles. To help illustrate the immensity & inconsistency of that catalog, I have transcribed the entire “Filmografia” feature of the Kit Parker DVD below. It’s the kind of list that has made me accept that I will only see whichever films I happen to pick up at local thrift stores, completionism be damned. May they all be as fun & loaded with bonus features as Santo vs The Martian Invasion.
Filmografia
1958
SANTO CONTRA EL CEREBRO DEL MAL aka El Cerebro del Mal Santo vs The Evil Brain
SANTO CONTRA LOS HOMBRES INFERNALES Santo vs The Infernal Men aka White Cargo
1961
SANTO CONTRA LOS ZOMBIES Santo vs The Zombies Released in the U.S. as Invasion of the Zombies
SANTO CONTRA EL RED DEL CRIMEN Santo vs The King of Crime
SANTO EN EL HOTEL DE LA MUERTE Santo in The Hotel of Death
SANTO CONTRA EL CEREBRO DIABOLICO Santo vs The Diabolical Brain
1962
SANTO CONTRA LAS MUJERES VAMPIRAS Santo vs The Vampire Women Released in the U.S. as Samson vs The Vampire Women
1963
SANTO EN EL MUSEO DE CERA Santo in The Wax Museum Released in the U.S. as Samson in the Wax Museum
SANTO CONTRA EL ESTRANGULADOR Santo vs The Strangler
SANTO CONTRA EL ESPECTRO DEL ESTRANGULADOR Santo vs The Ghost of the Strangler
1964
SANTO EN ATACAN LAS BRUJAS aka Santo En La Casa De Las Brujas Santo in The Witches Attack
BLUE DEMON CONTRA EL PODER SATANICO Blue Demon vs The Satanic Power Cameo appearance
SANTO CONTRA EL HACHA DIABOLICA Santo vs The Diabolical Ax
1965
SANTO EN LOS PROFANADORES DE TUMBAS aka Los Traficantes De La Muerte Santo in The Grave Robbers
SANTO EN EL BARON BRAKOLA Santo in Baron Brakola
1966
SANTO CONTRA LA INVASION DE LOS MARCIANOS Santo vs The Martian Invasion
SANTO CONTRA LOS VILLANOS DEL RING Santo vs The Villains of The Ring
SANTO EN OPERACION 67 Santo in Operation 67
1967
SANTO EN EL TESORO DE MOCTEZUMA Santo in The Treasure of Moctezuma
1968
SANTO EN EL TESORO DE DRACULA Santo in Dracula’s Treasure aka EL Vampiro y El Sexo
SANTO CONTRA CAPULINA Santo vs Capulina
1969
SANTO CONTRA BLUE DEMON EN LA ATLANTIDA Santo vs Blue Demon in Atlantis
SANTO Y BLUE DEMON CONTRA LOS MONSTRUOS Santo & Blue Demon vs The Monsters
SANTO Y BLUE DEMON EN EL MUNDO DE LOS MUERTOS Santo & Blue Demon in The World of the Dead
SANTO CONTRA LOS CAZADORES DE CABEZAS Santo vs The Headhunters
SANTO FRENTE A LA MUERTE Santo Faces Death aka Santo vs The Mafia Killers
1970
SANTO CONTRA LOS JINETES DEL TERROR Santo vs The Terror Riders aka The Lepers and Sex
SANTO EN LA VENGANZA DE LAS MUJERES VAMPIRAS Santo in The Revenge of the Vampire Women
SANTO CONTRA LA MAFIA DEL VICIO Santo vs The Mafia of Vice aka Mission Sabotage
SANTO EN LA VENGANZA DE LA MOMIA Santo in The Revenge of the Mummy
LAS MOMIAS DE GUANAJUATO The Mummies of Guanajuato Co-starring Blue Demon and Mil Mascaras
1971
SANTO CONTRA LA HIJA DE FRANKENSTEIN Santo vs Frankenstein’s Daughter
SANTO CONTRA LOS ASESINOS DE OTROS MUNDOS Santo vs The Killers from Other Worlds aka Santo vs The Living Atom
SANTO Y EL AGUILA REAL Santo and The Royal Eagle aka Santo and The Tigress in The Royal Eagle
SANTO EN MISION SUICIDA Santo in Suicide Mission
SANTO EN EL MISTERIO DE LA PERLA NEGRA Santo in The Mystery of The Black Pearl aka Santo in The Caribbean Connection Released in Spain in 1971 and in Mexico in 1974
1972
SANTO Y BLUE DEMON CONTRA DRACULA Y EL HOMBRE LOBO Santo & Blue Demon vs Dracula & The Wolfman
SANTO CONTRA LOS SECUESTRADORES Santo vs The Kidnappers
SANTO CONTRA LA MAGIA NEGRA Santo vs Black Magic
SANTO & BLUE DEMON EN LAS BESTIAS DEL TERROR Santo & Blue Demon in The Beasts of Terror
SANTO EN LAS LOBAS Santo in The She-Wolves
SANTO EN ANONIMO MORTAL Santo in Anonymous Death Threat
1973
SANTO Y BLUE DEMON CONTRA EL DR. FRANKENSTEIN Santo & Blue Demon vs Dr. Frankenstein
SANTO CONTRA EL DR. MURERTE Santo vs Dr. Death aka Santo Strikes Again
1974
SANTO EN LA VENGANZA DE LA LLORONA Santo in The Revenge of The Crying Woman
1975
SANTO EN ORO NEGRO aka La Noche De San Juan Santo in Black Gold
1977
MISTERIO EN LAS BERMUDAS Mystery in Bermuda Co-starring Blue Demon and Mil Mascaras
1979
SANTO EN LA FRONTERA DEL TERROR Santo at the Border of Terror aka Santo vs The White Shadow
1981
SANTO CONTRA EL ASESINO DE LA TELEVISION Santo vs The Television Killer
CHANOC Y EL HIJO DEL SANTO VS LOS VAMPIROS ASESINOS Chanoc & The Son of Santo vs The Killer Vampires Cameo appearance
1982
SANTO EN EL PUNO DE LA MUERTE Santo in The Fist of Death
SANTO EN LA FURIA DE LOS KARATECAS Santo in The Fury of the Karate Experts
After checking out recent release No One Will Save You, my appetite for extraterrestrial abduction content was whet, and the streaming service formerly known as HBOMax was there with a cleanup hitter in the form of 1993’s Fire in the Sky. The movie is based upon a book written by an Arizona logger named Travis Walton that purports to recount his encounter with aliens in 1975. Walton’s is one of the more noteworthy cases in that his alleged abduction was witnessed by five other men who were with him when they all saw the same strange phenomena, the standard light/energy/noise “emanations” that are common for UFO witnesses. Walton himself remained missing despite a few search parties before reemerging from the wilderness some five days later — starved, dehydrated, and seemingly traumatized to near-catatonia.
The film plays with committing to the reality of Walton’s claims from the outset and does so rather cleverly, as it opens with the other five men arriving at the local watering hole disheveled and rattled and talking amongst themselves about the importance of getting their stories straight and other pieces of dialogue that maintain ambiguity about their relative guilt/innocence. From there, an out-of-town lawman named Watters (James Garner) arrives at the scene to assist in what’s being treated as a missing persons case. The foreman of the crew, Mike Rogers (Robert Patrick), recounts the events of the day, up to and including his future brother-in-law Travis (D. B. Sweeney) getting out of the truck to investigate an inexplicable light show and being struck by something invisible. The other loggers in the truck insist on fleeing whatever is out there, but Mike eventually insists that they go back for Travis; when they return to the spot where he collapsed, there’s no sign of him.
For most of Act II, the film plays out more like a small town drama about people’s lives collapsing under the collective weight of the presumption of guilt heaped upon them by their community, with some investigative procedural elements thrown in for good measure. Watters believes that Travis was killed by one of the other loggers, Dallis (Craig Sheffer), a “drifter” who didn’t get along with Travis, and that the rest of the crew were helping to cover it up. Desperate to prove his innocence, Mike commits himself and his crew to polygraph tests, all of which seem to indicate that the men are telling the truth with the possible exception of Dallis, whose test is inconclusive. Suddenly,Travis reappears, and from this point, the film no longer plays coy with whether or not the abduction story is true within the film. Even as Watters adjusts his hypothesis to include the men pulling a publicity stunt that wasted time and resources, Travis is tormented by the remembrance of the events of his abduction as they slowly resurface.
This is one of those movies that got significant airplay on Sci-Fi Channel in my youth, although I had never actually seen it; the commercials advertising its upcoming airings always included the iconic image of Travis Walton cling-wrapped to an alien operating table, which frankly scared the shit out of me. It was one of those childhood terrors that remained tantalizingly unresolved until this first viewing, and as such I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Unfortunately, the opening credits spoil some of the ambiguity pretty early on, given that there’s a huge wall of text declaring that the film is “Based on the book The Walton Experience by Travis Walton,” dulling the impact of the question of whether Walton was murdered by his co-workers. Still, a lot of pathos is wrung out of the disappearance, and that’s something that you don’t normally see in this kind of media, so it was a pleasant surprise. If alien abductions are your personal horror preference, this one might not exactly live up to every expectation, given that there’s less of that in the finished product than what trailers and clips might imply, but what is present is harrowing and memorable. Give it a shot.
Brynn Adams is alone. She doesn’t seem to be all that troubled by it, at least most of the time. She wiles away the hours in the sumptuous country home that she occupies by herself like a woman unstuck in time: she learns decades-old dance steps from numbered diagrams while listening to Ruby Murray’s “Knock On Any Door” from 1956; she designs and creates her own dresses; she’s even recreated the entire town of Mill River in miniature in her living room. When she ventures into the real town, she ducks to avoid certain people, and when she attempts to interact with others, all she gets in return are sneers and frigid shoulders. The closest thing she seems to have to human contact is a mailman who intentionally damages her packages. Brynn’s been alone for a long time, but she’s about to have … visitors.
Kaitlyn Dever, who I really liked in last year’s Rosaline, both stars in and executive produces for No One Will Save You, the sophomore directorial effort from Brian Duffield, who is perhaps best known around these parts for writing The Babysitter. I first became aware of the movie after a screenshot of Stephen King calling the film “Brilliant, daring, involving, [and] scary” as well as “Truly unique,” and I went into it blind, which allowed for me to be pleasantly surprised not only by all of the film’s tiny reveals but also its big one; namely, No One is almost entirely dialogue free. Dever is the only performer who ever gets to speak, and it’s telling that her single impactful line is spoken to no one, or at least to no one who can hear her. That’s not to say that she’s not well developed; in fact, I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if this becomes one of those films that achieves cult status through its use as a teaching tool via its masterful adherence to the timeless axion of “Show, don’t tell.” Everything important about Brynn is captured by the filmic eye: the regretful letters she composes to her childhood best friend Maud, her awkward attempts to practice waving and greeting others, her abject terror at the prospect of interacting with a middle-aged couple we later learn are Maud’s parents. The story moves clearly and cleanly without the need for dialogue, as the film cuts seamlessly and smartly between Brynn encountering a situation and her resolution of the same. For instance, in one simple sequence, we watch as Brynn rides her bike into town for help after being unable to start her car, experiencing an extremely unpleasant but nonetheless wordless encounter with Maud’s mother and father (the latter of whom is the chief of police) that reminds her that—as the title tells us—no one will help her, and then immediately cuts to her at a bus station, ticket in hand. There’s no spoon-feeding and there’s no need for it, either.
We eventually learn what happened between Brynn and Maud that left Brynn a pariah in Mill River, and it’s devastating. Outside of the flashbacks that fill this in, however, the film takes place over a brief time frame of only three days and two nights. The first of these nights sees Brynn (sort of) fend off a home invader, who just so happens to be an extraterrestrial. When she finds herself unable to gather assistance or successfully escape town the following day, she prepares to defend herself for a second night, only for the film to perform a little sleight of hand with its genre, transitioning from the home-invasion-with-an-outer-space-twist narrative to a more introspective form of psychological horror, as the aliens attempt to assimilate Brynn into a pod-people collective. Their means to do so involve tempting her to give up her mind and body through visions of a reality where she is no longer bound by the tragedy of her past and no longer missing the things which have been lost to her. When that doesn’t work, the snare she’s in just gets tighter.
This movie lives and/or dies on Kaitlyn Dever’s performance, and it’s a testament to her ability that it soars. The camerawork here is likewise deft in the way that the language of pans and zooms keeps us in Brynn’s headspace so effectively; the touch is so lightweight as to make its capture of all the moving parts appear almost effortless. The visual effects work is also top notch; the aliens feel appropriately otherworldly even if the CGI seams are unavoidable, while the film wisely chooses clever takes on familiar ways of visualizing standard abduction phenomena, borrowing heavily from The X-Files and its use of blinding beams of white light (the abductions of Duane Barry in the second season and Max Fenig in season four come to mind), although it also includes occasional pervasive red lighting that calls to mind the opening of Fire in the Sky. The film moves in novel and exciting ways, and it’s well worth checking out.
There’s something adorably quaint about the recent sci-fi action picture 65, in which a sweaty Adam Driver going to intergalactic war with dinosaurs in Earth’s futuristic past. Driver is technically playing a space alien, but he has no physical features that distinguish him from Earthling humanity: no antennae, no fins, no gills, nothing beyond his usual unique physique. When he arrives on Earth, he removes his helmet and vocally declares the air breathable. His weapon against our prehistoric planet’s dinosaur creatures is a ray gun. Whether intentionally or not, 65 is essentially a dumb-as-rocks throwback to 1950s schlock. It plays like a basic-premise remake of an MST3k punching bag with a title like Beasts of a Savage World or Journey to the Planet Earth, updated with modern CG but thankfully not softened with modern self-referential irony. There isn’t much to the film beyond its bar napkin premise, in which Driver drives a spaceship into Earth’s dirt 65 million years ago, then fights off the dinosaurs (and dino-adjacent monsters) that attempt to eat him along with the only other survivor of the crash. The film’s only real value beyond the novelty of watching Driver shoot laser guns at dinosaurs, then, is in comparing how differently modern action schlock handles the premise from how Atomic Age sci-fi might have over half a century ago.
The major modern affect that drags down 65‘s entertainment value is the compulsion to overexplain itself with expositional context. Directed by the screenwriters of the similarly weighed-down A Quiet Place—Scott Beck & Bryan Woods—the film is seemingly fearful of YouTube fanboy criticism of its “plot holes” & fanciful outlandishness. Because humanity evolved after dinosaurs went extinct, Driver must belong to another humanoid race of people to share the screen with the towering beasts. Surviving a spaceship crash alongside a young adolescent passenger is apparently not enough motivation for him to protect her against this far-out world’s Jurassic beasts; it’s also explained that he has a daughter of a similar age back on his homeworld, whose diaries in his absence are doled out through a device lifted wholesale from Interstellar. Between the film’s opening storybook narration informing us that these events occur “prior to the advent of mankind, in the infinity of space” and the unnecessary prologue set on Driver’s alien planet, it isn’t until 40 minutes into the runtime that our hero actually shoots a laser beam at a dinosaur. And since the film is only worth the novelty of its one-sentence premise, that’s a huge problem. If 65 were made in the 1950s, Driver would’ve been from Earth, crash-landed on a similar planet with its own dinosaurs, immediately opened fire, smooched an “alien” babe, discovered in a last-minute twist that he had merely time-traveled backwards, and the whole thing would’ve been wrapped up in 65 minutes to leave room for the next movie on the drive-in double bill. The dinosaurs would’ve been stop-motion too, and maybe even borrowed from the footage of a better-funded picture. Roger Corman is still alive & working somewhere out there, but Hollywood really doesn’t make efficient, delirious schlock like it used to, mostly because every fanciful creative impulse now has to be “justified” to keep online cynics at bay.
Still, I appreciated that this modern DTV action treatment of a retro pulp sci-fi premise never slips into winking-at-the-camera Deadpool irony. Although Driver has a knack for comedic delivery, the world is better off being spared of his alien-invasion equivalent of Kong: Skull Island. I suspect that happened because Beck & Woods are largely humorless in their craft and were somehow unaware that they were making 1950s sci-fi pastiche in the first place. Whatever the reason, the movie’s self-serious tone is a great counterbalance to its glaringly unserious premise. Its internal aversion to irony & camp does mean that it’s a little boring in stretches (especially in the dino-free opening half), but it’s a pleasant, cozy kind of boring. 65 is crash-landing on Netflix soon, but its ultimate, ideal presentation is in afternoon daylight programming on whatever basic cable channel dads nap to these days. As a creature feature, it’s got a playfully unscientific approach to what counts as a “dinosaur.” As an Adam Driver vehicle, it’s going to make for a delightfully odd footnote in what’s sure to be a delightfully odd movie star career. It was also partially filmed in Louisiana swamps (the parts that weren’t filmed against green screens on New Orleans sound stages), which gives it an extra layer of novelty for local napping dads, too tired to find the clicker.
In Moonfall, the moon is a hollow “megastructure” that very nearly crash-lands into Earth (getting close enough to scrape a few mountain tops) before course-correcting back to its proper orbit. It is the exact same moon-crash disaster epic that director Roland Emmerich would have made in 1998 had the script crossed his desk then, except with fewer movie stars filling out the ensemble cast; only Halle Berry & a brief Donald Sutherland cameo pass the Would Emmerich Have Cast Them in the 1990s? test. As a genre, the over-the-top, over-budgeted CGI spectacle has continued past the 90s in the respective movie industries of India, China, and Korea, but Emmerich’s distinctly retro charms only recall pictures from its Hollywood heyday: Armageddon, Mission to Mars, The Matrix, Contact, Deep Impact and, of course, Emmerich’s own Independence Day. Everything from the film’s shameless Lexus product placement to its astronaut hero’s anxieties over being an absent father are so distinctly 90s that it’s hard to shake the feeling that I’ve already seen half of it before on TBS, intercut with hours of commercial breaks and an unplanned afternoon nap.
Well, maybe not everything here would’ve made its way into the 90s version of Moonfall. Game of Thrones‘s John Bradley is assigned the thankless task of modernizing the falling-moon disaster premise with some 2020s internet lingo. Bradley plays a conspiracy theorist blogger & YouTuber, a self-proclaimed “megastructurist”. We are told he is very smart, as he is the first civilian to deduce that the moon is crashing into Earth and that it is not a natural moon at all, but rather an alien-made megastructure. Since he’s a cat-meme nerd who asks the question “What would Elon do?” for self-motivation, however, I retain that he is, in fact, very dumb. Halle Berry & Patrick Wilson’s heroic NASA defectors agree with that assessment, and continue to poke fun at his absurd, idiotic conspiracy theories about moon lasers & the moon’s hollow core long after he’s been proven correct. They’re right to do so. Moonfall‘s premise is absurd & idiotic, and it was only written to set up the CGI spectacle of the film’s final act (where, spoilers, the mismatched trio stop the moon from falling). Thankfully, in the process it also sets up some beautifully asinine dialogue exchanges about the peculiar nature of our megastructure moon, a few of which I will transcribe below for your reading pleasure:
“You’re telling me that the moon was effectively the biggest cover-up in human history?”
“I told you! The moon was built by aliens.”
“You are the key to our moon’s knowledge.”
“We scanned your consciousness; you’re part of the moon now.”
Between Moonfall & Ambulance, it’s been a big year for vintage vulgar auteurs pretending it’s still the 1990s. Michael Bay at least updated his schtick with modern drone camera tech; Emmerich simply stuck to his basics while committing to the biggest goofball premise he could find. Sometimes, that nostalgia for Hollywood’s knucklehead disaster-epic past feels like a deliberate intent of the script, which laments several times that all of NASA’s moon shuttles are collecting dust in museums instead of standing by to heroically save the day (in case, you know, the moon decides to fall). It’s much more likely, though, that Moonfall is just the Emmerich production machine on autopilot. Any byproduct nostalgia is an incidental result of how that rusty content mill differs from the MCU and Fast & Furious empires that have taken its place in the past couple decades. Neither Emmerich nor Bay put in their career-best work this year, but there is still something reassuring about watching them do their usual thing in a post-superhero Hollywood. All we need now is for Jerry Bruckheimer to produce a big-budget swashbuckler about the recovery of Atlantis to complete the cycle.
I was initially careful not to divulge too many third-act details when reviewing Godzilla vs Kong, but it’s been an entire year since it first premiered so I don’t mind spoiling it now. The only reason Adam Wingard’s kaiju smash-em-up is the best American Godzilla film to date is that the monster fights promised in its title felt exceptionally tactile & novel for a modern CG blockbuster. And what really launched those fights over the top was the WrestleMania-style surprise entrance of Godzilla’s mechanized doppelgänger Mechagodzilla in the third act, injecting an excessive rush of adrenaline into a movie was already plenty entertaining before the bionic monster’s arrival. The delight of that last-minute surprise really leaves audiences on a fist-pumping high, forgiving all the mundane humans-on-the-ground storytelling it takes to get there.
Looking back at the delightful surprise of Mechagodzilla’s most recent onscreen appearance, I can’t help but wonder if the robo-monster should always be presented as a last-minute swerve. At the very least, I can say for certain that its first franchise appearance in 1974’s Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla would’ve been greatly improved if its existence weren’t teased in the title & poster. There’s a brief, glorious moment in the film when Godzilla is being framed for mayhem he didn’t commit by the mechanized imposter, frustrated that other kaiju and the citizens below believe he has turned heel. The film could have been an all-time classic if that conflict was allowed to drive the plot, delaying the reveal of the “space titanium” under the faux-Godzilla’s “skin” as late in the runtime as possible instead of immediately degloving it. Basically, I wish Mechagodzilla was the Gene Parmesan of the series.
There is plenty of novelty to be found elsewhere in Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla without that surprise reveal. While Mechagodzilla is almost always a manmade weapon in subsequent films (including in Godzilla vs Kong), it arrives on Earth as space alien tech in its first appearance. The sub-James Bond espionage antics that thwart that alien plot can be a little dull (an unfortunate holdover from the previous entry in the franchise, Godzilla vs Megalon). The aliens themselves are amusing knockoffs of the Planet of the Apes creature designs, though, which adds a post-modern mash-up quality to the premise. The film also doesn’t entirely rely on the novelty of Mechagodzilla to freshen up its monster roster. It also features appearances from Anguirus (a spiky armadillo) and King Caesar (a personified Shisa statue) in its Royal Rumble rollout of surprise combatants. It’s a fun picture as is, even if it had much greater potential as a kaiju whodunnit.
To be fair, I’m not sure Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla needed to be especially novel to be worthwhile, considering that it was already arriving fourteen films deep into the Godzilla canon. Fifty years and twenty-two Godzilla movies later, there have been plenty of boring, uninspired kaiju duds with way less to offer than this standard-issue monster flick. At the very least, it attempts to establish its own playful sense of style between the kaiju battles in its cave-painting illustrations, Brady Bunch news-report grids, and double-exposure shots of religious prophecies. It’s no Godzilla vs Hedorah in that respect, but few movies are. Most importantly, Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla gets by on the exact same merits that made Godzilla vs Kong such a delight: the inherent entertainment value of its pro-wrestling style kaiju fights (which are often shockingly bloody in this case, imagery that was often softened in its American edits). I just can’t help but wish that it also held back Mechagodzilla for as long as possible in the same way Godzilla vs Kong did, though. It could have been an all-timer instead of just another good’n.
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