Giant Monster Meets Disney's Famous Fawn: Bambi Meet Godzilla (1969)

I stumbled across a wonderful little short when researching my Monster Movie a Day.  Looking through a box of monster movies I picked up at a flea market a couple years ago, I found a VHS I didn't know I had.  This strange box is both surreal and magnificent, and quite frankly, bought without me even knowing it was among the lot I purchased.  

Bambi Meets Godzilla & Other Weird Cartoons is a treasure of obscure, bizarre animation that I feel ashamed of never watching.  The tape is 30 minutes of rare, vintage animation mostly from the animation pioneer Max Fleischer. Aside from the title-piece, which I will get to soon, the rest of the VHS is just as good. In Betty Boop in Crazy Town, an insane wonderland of absurdity knocks Bizarro World down a peg. "You Auto Lay an Egg" is  a short showing a bird eat auto parts as it eventually lays an egg.  In "Cobweb Hotel," a spider invites houseflies in for dinner.  Any fan of animation deserves this VHS (not available on DVD) among his or her collection.

Ok, now to the bizarre title-piece, Bambi Meets Godzilla.  The short itself is roughly a minute and a half and features simple, hand-drawn animation of a cute, Disney-eqsue deer eating grass.  The one joke, hilarious short is drawn by a young man named Marv Winston – entirely drawn from his bedroom in 1969. 

Bambi meets Godzilla - Marv Newland (1969) from O.C. on Vimeo.

Not surprisingly, this short was included on several VHS releases of Return of Godzilla.  Bambi Meets Godzilla was ranked number #34 in the book The 50 Greatest Cartoons: As Selected by 1,000 Animation Professionals, a 1994 book by animation historian Jerry Beck. 

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Monster Movie A Day #3

The Iron Giant (1999)

Dir. Brad Bird

In anticipation for the July 12^th release date of Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim, I am offering a Monster Movie a Day review.  Here is the third of the series.

 

(movie poster created by the incredible artists at Mondo. http://www.mondotees.com/)

Following the horror or The Host and the heartbreak of King Kong, I need to stretch my monster-loving wings and include my favorite animate feature, Brad Bird’s 1999 epic The Iron Giant.  But, before I start raving about this film, I must discuss its pedigree.  The name that strikes the loudest chord is Brad Bird.  If you don’t know Brad Bird, you just don’t pay enough attention.  This is the guy behind some of my favorite films of the last twenty years.   After directing a few episodes of The Simpsons and write the screenplay for *batteries not included, Bird nabbed his first solo directing gig with The Iron Giant.  The film was so badass and near perfect that he was snatched by an animation company named Pixar, yeah he’s that awesome.  While at Pixar, Bird jumped onboard to write and direct The Incredibles, therefore keeping the superhero boom from popping and offering a working template for ensemble superhero films.  Next up for Mr. Bird, my favorite Pixar film, Ratatouille.  Both Ratatouille and The Incredibles provided Pixar with an element missing in some of their previous films – a solo, artistic style approaching pure art.  There are frames in Ratatouille that deserve to be framed and hung in the best galleries.  Bird decided to jump from the Pixar boat to direct a live action film, the surprisingly great Mission Impossible-Ghost Protocol (2011).  Next is the amazing voice cast of Jennifer Aniston, Harry Connick Jr. Cloris Leachman, and Vin Diesel as the Giant.  Now, voicing a metallic, alien robot doesn’t seem like that notable, but man did he make that role so much more touching – making the robot a real, emotional being. 

Based on the book The Iron Man, by Ted Hughes, Iron Giant isn’t too different than the plot of so many retro science fiction films (i.e. E.T.).  In 1957, an alien robot shows up on Earth and befriends a troubled boy who must protect the robot from government agents.  Toying with Cold War paranoia and the space race, this script, paired with a director with a vision and ability to execute that vision successfully, The Iron Giant becomes a masterpiece. 

Now the reason you all came to this blog, the monster.  While not exactly a monster, the Iron Giant is an alien robot, but the sheer magnitude and presence the Iron Giant holds is special.  The Iron Giant is a militarized robot, built to cause mass destruction. He is large and menacing but his emotions and gentle humanity allow him to understand innocence and build connections with people. Audiences can relate to the robot as he has to defy the purposes of his existence and make his own path despite his expectations and programming – a freedom to be who one chooses.  While seemingly cold and stoic, the giant is true Superman with powerful feelings of grief, heroism, anger, and duty.

While only available on DVD at this moment, I cannot recommend this film more.  Truly spectacular.

Feel free to Comment below! I would love to read what you have to say.

Monster Movie A Day #2

King Kong (1933)

Dir. Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack

In anticipation for the July 12^th release date of Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim, I am offering a Monster Movie a Day review.  Here is the second of the series.

No one can claim fandom over monster films without appreciating RKO’s 1933 King Kong.  Some modern audience members might look at a stop-motion film from 1993 as archaic, but the majesty of this film holds up today as much as it did in 1933.  Here’s the deal with King Kong, is was an absolute game changer.  Modern movie monsters in film would not exist without this film, but it changed the game for more than just movie monsters – King Kong revolutionized special effects work.  Kong is the prototype of big, city-destroying monsters.  Kong inspired the likes of some of the greatest filmmakers and special effects artists from Ray Harryhausen to Peter Jackson to Stan Winston to the creators of the King of Monsters, Godzilla.  This ape is the real deal.  The great Ray Harryhausen credits King Kong with instilling in him a desire to make monsters only to find himself under the tutelage of the brilliant Willis O’Brien, the special effects supervisor on King Kong.  Approach any filmmaker who created or loved special effects and they will site King Kong as a major influence. 

In the film, theatrical showman Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) travels to Skull Island and kidnaps a monstrous ape known to the natives as Kong.  Once back in Manhattan, Denham bills the monster as “The Eighth Wonder of the World.”  The rest of the film is filled with iconic scenes from Kong’s capture of Anne Darrow (Fay Wray) to the iconic scene at the top of the Empire State Building.

King Kong is such a pleasure to watch today.  The size of this film is massive. Nothing is held back from the island, the natives, Manhattan, the Tyrannosaurus Rex (!), the score...everything is huge.  Filmmakers today should look at the delicate balance between actions, effects, and well-performed human story as an example for blockbusters.  The pacing of the action and the dialogue is snappy and quick, keeping the energy going through the entire film with falling flat and dull (much like Peter Jackson’s 2005 remake).  Credit must be given to writers James Ashmore Creelman and Ruth Rose who wrote the screenplay based on a story by Merian C. Cooper and Edgar Wallace.  The screenplay keeps the tension throughout without lifting the light, brisk pace.  The performances of the human characters, especially Faye Wray, are believable and fantastic, but the best performance in the film is that of the monster himself. 

Willis O’Brien brought the puppet models to life with such nuance and precision that he was able to give Kong emotion and thus make him relatable.  This is no small task considering the two models of Kong were 18-inches and 24-inces respectively and filmed in stop motion, a method of animation that required one slight movement of the model and then a 1-frame shot from a camera repeated until the scene was complete.  Stop motion would be used for animation throughout the 20^th century and into today with by Ray Harryhausen, Stan Winston, Tim Burton, Henry Selick, and George Pal. 

King Kong is still a pleasure to watch today due to its creativity, visions, and ambition making, not only the greatest monster movie of all time but also one of the film's best fantasies.  Watch it now on DVD, Blu-Ray, or Amazon Prime Instant Video.

Feel free to Comment below! I would love to read what you have to say.

Monster Movie a Day #1

The Host

Dir. Bong Joon-ho

In anticipation for the July 12^th release date of Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim, I am offering a Monster Movie a Day review.  Here is the first of the series!

 

I have never been a fan of lists or rankings, but I continue to list and rank nearly everything.  Who am I to tell you that King Kong is a better monster than Godzilla? Thus this column does not insist a list or a ranking but a smattering of indelible monsters movies that everyone should see. 

What is it about a monster that intrigues so many people?  A monster is simply a twisted atrocity of natural order typically associated with words like sinister, nightmare, or terror.  Humankind naturally demands definition and explanation for unnatural phenomena, and when, logical contextualization cannot be provided, people experience fear.  Fear builds from the reality, or unreality, of the unknown and the limitless perversion that exists within it.  Within that fear resides humankind’s fascination with monsters. 

The late twentieth century found its monsters on a smaller scale than the King Kongs and the Godzillas of the world.  The monsters became human, aliens, diseases, gremlins, vampires, etc.  Audiences found terror in the disguisable and the invisible (John Carpenter’s The Thing as a example).  That trend was pushed aside in 2006 with the release of the South Korean hit monster film, The Host (completely unrelated to Andrew Niccol’s 2013 film of the same name).  The monster in the film is unnamed – simply referred to as Gwoemul, a Korean translation of the word monster.  Gwoemul is a call-back to the classic giant monsters of the 1950’s and 60’s, most notably members of Godzilla’s rogues gallery.  As with the best giant monsters, Gwoemul was created by people disregarding or trying to improve Earth’s natural order.  In the case of The Host, American GIs stationed in South Korea dump chemicals into a sewer, thus constructing an allegory for Western military occupation in the East.  Gwoemul is a part of the kaiju family tree because, quite simply, it acts on pure animalistic rage.  The monster succeeds because the audience never witness the potential destruction the monster is capable of despite working on a much smaller scale than the traditional giant monsters.  The appetite for mass destruction expected by fans of Godzilla will not go unsatisfied as The Host offers plenty of impressive monster sequences that rivals the best in any monster movie.

Gwoemul works as a monster so well because of the delicate directing and performances in the film.  Nearly every element is fine-tuned to provide a heartbreaking, terrifying, and often comic film that serves as South Korea’s response to Japan’s Godzilla.  The Host is a delight.

I said it in 2006, and I will repeat it whenever asked, Bong Joon-Ho’s The Host is a must-see film.  Catch it right now on DVD, Blu-Ray, Netflix streaming, or Amazon Prime Instant Video. 

Feel free to Comment below! I would love to read what you have to say.

A New Beginning. More Awesome than the Last Beginning.

One project I regret leaving is my film blog. While wholly imperfect and amateur, it was a wonderful part of my life for the short time it existed. I've spent much time recently considering my film love. I honestly don't believe I have ever been as passionate about anything else. I pinpointed an exact moment when a love became an obsession. February 2007 I sat in a local Cinemark theater and watched a film so powerful it turned a love into an obsession, Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth. From there I discovered the artistry of film and I haven't forgotten the moment when Javier Navarrete's score flourishes over an image of a dragonfly becoming a fairy. That is my relationship with film, and I'm amazed everytime.

So, in honor of Pacific Rim, Guillermo del Toro's first original film since Pan's Labyrinth, I will kickstart my blog (with optimistic permanence).  Pacific Rim releases on July 12th (a date that places me 2 days into a Grand Canyon road trip), I will be posting a Monster/Robot Movie A Day with a review and a bit of commentary.

Follow my blog! I promise it will change your life.