Fred Olen Ray Joins the Versus Club

Godzilla and his mates started it, but these days everyone’s getting on the bandwagon. The first Giant Monster Versus Giant Monster film (GMV) was probably the sequel to the original 1954 Gojira — Godzilla Strikes Back! [aka Gojira no gyakushu] (1955; dir. Motoyoshi Oda) — though it was King Kong vs Godzilla [aka Kingu Kongu tai Gojira] (1962; dir. Ishiro Honda) that put the GMV conflict right up there in the title.

Of course if we look at human-sized monsters the principle was started much earlier by those Universal monster flicks of the 1940s that pitted Frankenstein’s monster against the Wolf Man or Dracula. And the idea goes back further, back to the novel Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verrne (1864), when two aquatic monsters duke it out in the Inner Sea while helpless humans look on in terror.

Nevertheless it was the Japanese who really created a tradition of the Giant Monster Versus Giant Monster trope, sticking it upfront in the films’ titles as well as foremost in the plot. Godzilla wrestled endless monstrous opponents from Godzilla vs Mothra through Godzilla vs Hedorah [aka the Smog Monster] (1971) to Godzilla, Mothra, Mechagodzilla: Tokyo SOS (2003), and monster battles became a mainstay of franchise such as Ultraman.

Recently the Asylum had a big success with MegaShark vs Giant Octopus (2009), but over the past decade we’ve also seen such GMVs as Boa vs Python (2004),  Komoda vs Cobra (2005), Dinocroc vs Supergator (2009), not to mention Alien vs Predator and battles between all the smaller monsters we’ve come to know and love.

Now B-flick legend Fred Olen Ray , whose films include the exploitation classics Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (1988), Evil Toons (1992), Attack of the 60 Foot Centerfolds (1995), Billy Frankenstein (1998), Dire Wolf (2009), Turbulent Skies (2010) and the TV series “The Lair” (28 episodes, 2007-2009), is planning on joining the Versus club (if not the GMV version) by pitting two well-know cryptozoological critters against each other in Sasquatch vs Chupacabra (scheduled for 2010).

He is joined in this enterprise by wife Kimberley A. Ray as producer.

So far we know nothing of the plot (beyond the obvious) but be assured that the Backbrain will keep you informed.

Meanwhile, if your cryptozoological knowledge is a bit tenuous, here’s a primer for you:

Sasquatch:

aka Bigfoot: “a supposedly ape-like creature purportedly inhabiting forests, mainly in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. Bigfoot is usually described as a large, hairy, bipedal humanoid” (Wikipedia entry).

Source

Chupacabra:

from the Spanish words chupar, meaning “to suck”, and cabra, meaning “goat”; hence, literally, “goat sucker”: “a legendary cryptid rumored to inhabit parts of the Americas… The name comes from the animal’s reported habit of attacking and drinking the blood of livestock, especially goats… It is supposedly a heavy creature, the size of a small bear, with a row of spines reaching from the neck to the base of the tail.” (Wikipedia entry)

Source

• Source: Fred Olen Ray and Official website
• Writing and Secondary Research: Robert Hood  |  Research: Avery Guerra