Dreams of Godzilla

Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 by Robert Hood

Godzilla may have gone into retirement, but that doesn’t stop people from dreaming. It seems that the Big G returns to Japanese cinema screens in Always-zoku san-chôme no yûhi [aka Always – Sunset on Third Street 2] (2007; dir. Takashi Yamazaki) — sequel to the same director’s multi-award-winning mega-hit drama Always san-chôme no yûhi (2005).

In a two-minute dream sequence, the Big G makes a nostalgic visit to the film’s 1959 Tokyo neighbourhood as an all-CGI giant — and the effect looks considerably more Godzilla-like than the maligned 1998 US effort.

Godzilla in Always 2

Always Godzilla 2 screenshots

Source: TarsTarkas.net via Kaiju Search-Robot Avery

On the film, see The Japan Times Online.

Posted in Daikaiju, Film, Giant Monsters, Godzilla | 6 Comments

Probe-Bats

Posted on Monday, March 31, 2008 by Robert Hood

At the end of last year, I reported on the sale of Stan Winston Studio’s maquette for Jan de Bont’s unmade American Godzilla movie. Now another maquette from the “lost” film has been sold on eBay.

Probe-Bat 2

Probe-Bat 1

This is one of the Probe-Bats, or “Bat Minions”, associated with the Gryphon, Godzilla Might-Have-Been opponent in the abandoned version of the film. The eBay description went like this:

Never finished as a full-size character, this is the henchman for the Griffon [sic] Beast that was the nemesis in an early version of the Godzilla story. The script changed as drastically as the look of the lead monster did when he became the terrorizer, rather than the protector of Earth as he was in the original storyline. Made of solid resin and hand painted at Stan Winston Studio, this is a maquette of a character that would have been just larger than human scale if it had been realized on film. Measures 45 in. long x 35 in. wide.

Link (limited life, as the auction ended a few days ago)

David Russell’s storyboard drawings (available on Todd Tennant’s American Godzilla ’94 Project site) illustrated what the Bats would have been getting up to:

David Russell probe bat

Posted in Daikaiju, Giant Monsters, Godzilla, The Lost | 7 Comments

Monsters of the Bermuda Triangle

Posted on Sunday, March 30, 2008 by Robert Hood

The internet is a remarkable place. It inspires such astounding work at times. For example, conceptart.org is a community of artists who meet online, share and critique their work and often produce pictures of a high quality without recompense beyond what they can learn from each other. One of the community’s weekly activities is “Creature of the Week”; apparently a concept is announced and those who wish to be involved create a creature accordingly. Often, by following a thread, you can watch the picture developing.

Creature of the Week #57: Secret of the Bermuda Triangle

This theme produced some fantastic giant monsters. Click on the pictures to see larger versions.

Bolman COW big

This one was painted by someone who goes by the moniker Supervlieg. His real name is Bolman.

Bermuda triangle 2

This one is by Simon Boxer.

Bermuda triangle 3

And this is by Chuck Wadley.

Great work, guys.

The “Secret of the Bermuda Triangle” thread is here. For those who like such things, there are many more monsters to enjoy, so go take a look around!

Posted in Daikaiju, Giant Monsters, Pictorial art | 13 Comments

Review: Devi

Posted on Sunday, March 30, 2008 by Robert Hood

Now this is what I call a giant monster!

Devi Snake 1

It towers so far out of the atmosphere that meteors and planets revolve around its heads (though lack of oxygen proves no hindrance to its fire-breathing, I notice).

Devi Snake 2

And when it chomps on the bad guy, he can definitely consider himself chomped.

Devi Snake 3

The gargantuan multi-headed cobra is a manifestation of a female naga, Devi, granted the power of the Goddess in order to right a wrong. As a climax — filled with giant monster spectacle, song, superb clothes and romance — it really gives the story its own unique pizazz.

Assigning this film — Devi (India-1999; dir. Kodi Ramakrishna) — to a genre in the traditional Western sense isn’t easy and is probably irrelevant anyway. It veers wildly between fantasy, romance, farce, horror and supernatural mayhem, often so abruptly pursuing its own narrative logic that it appears to have little of the latter at all. You have to pay attention; its sudden cuts and abrupt scene changes aren’t tolerant of the slow-witted.

The DVD cover brands Devi “a special effects film”.

Devi cover

While it is certainly full of special effects and was considered “big-budget” for Bollywood, everything is relative. In fact, apart from occasional supernatural spectacle, the scenario keeps its focus domestic and confined to a small group of people; it’s rather like a romantic comedy, with horror elements and a thriller plotline thrown in. Much of it is pure romance, Hindi-style, and the SFX, while effective enough, are hardly state-of-the-art, even for 1999.

Still, it’s hard to complain when the clouds boil and the Snake God descends through them in a huge metallic “mothership” molded into the form of intertwined serpents (or something like that… it’s hard to say). Or when the evil snake demon Dantra towers above the heroine, his lower body a seething cascade of superimposed fire, and declaims on the inevitability of fate. These scenes, and the spectacular climax, are enough to justify the DVD’s tagline.

Besides that, actress Prema as Devi is gorgeous, as her divine character struggles to pay back a debt by manipulating time and defying fate and the “rules” of the Snake Realm — veering, like the plot, between character qualities that could be at odds with each other, except she somehow manages to encapsulate ditzy girlishness and divine authority with such aplomb that the mishmash nature of it all becomes part of the film’s bizarre appeal. Even her wardrobe changes illogically between leaving one room and entering the next, but it hardly matters; Prema’s spectacular array of dresses would be more important than conventional logic for most of the film’s audience, no doubt… and anyway she’s a goddess… She can do pretty much what she likes.

The film was a huge success in its home country, its mix of romantic comedy, Bollywood fantasy and traditional spirituality a winning formula. If it strikes Western sensibilities as rather chaotic, that’s our problem.

Posted in Film, Giant Monsters, Indian, Review | 5 Comments

Alan Brooks and the Flying Saucers

Posted on Friday, March 28, 2008 by Robert Hood

One of the great cinematic creators of giant monsters is famed stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen, whose movies have rested firmly at the centre of the Hollywood giant monster tradition since his 1953 The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms. Even earlier than that, of course, he was mentored by the great Willis O’Brien and hence can boast a sort of lineal connection to King Kong (1933) and The Lost World (1925) — the two films that set the template for things to come.

Harryhausen’s name is currently attached to a series of graphic novels from Bluewater Productions, under the banner Ray Harryhausen Presents. Among its upcoming titles is Flying Saucers vs the Earth, with artwork — cover and internals — by Alan Brooks.

Alan Brooks is an English boy living in Illinois, who produces some rather spectacular images — an example of which is his cover to the upcoming Flying Saucers vs the Earth (the first issue is set to appear at the end of April).

Flying Saucers vs the Earth cover

“The Ray Harryhausen Presents project came about from a meeting between Ray Harryhausen and Darren Davis of Bluewater Productions at a Comic convention,” Brooks explained. “Davis, who has been involved in all things comic for some time now, simply asked Ray, ‘Have you ever thought of making comics of your movies’? Ray informed him that he had not and if he had been approached in the past nothing concrete ever transpired. Darren showed him some themes and approaches a couple of weeks later and things got moving!”

Other titles in the series include Wrath of the Titans (the first to be released, based on the Harryhausen film Clash of the Titans), 20 Million Miles More (based on 20 Million Miles To Earth), Sinbad: Rogue of Mars (based on an idea that had at one time been put forward as a Harryhausen movie but did not get past the development phase), Jason and the Argonauts — Kingdom of Hades, It Came From Beneath the Sea… Again, The Elementals (another Harryhausen project that never emerged from Development Hell), and Back to Mysterious Island.

Brooks explained:

“The rational behind the project was to explore themes from Ray’s movies. Harryhausen oversees the artworks and story lines. Either a What-If-This- Happened, or a What-Developed-Next kind of thing. What happened after Clash of the Titans ended? Why were the aliens attacking Earth [in Earth vs the Flying Saucers]? So we have my involvement in Flying Saucers vs the Earth. This one explores why the aliens would attack Earth in the first place? The why of it all. It isn’t Shakespeare and isn’t meant to be. It is a fun romp and has all of the ingredients that Harryhausen loves, that is, lots of saucers and giant monsters!”

Flying Saucers vs the Earth looks at similar events to those of Earth vs the Flying Saucers from the aliens’ point-of-view, including what is happening on their home world — an interesting approach to say the least, and one that offers significant potential.

“Darren knew my work and said he would approach me with some titles that he thought may be right for me. Flying Saucers was amongst the ones he showed me and I grabbed it!”

From the images below you can get some idea of the detail and dynamic quality of Brooks’ artwork. Immediately below are pages 8 and 9, a double-page spread. (You can click on either side to see a large version of each page.)

FSVEpage 8FSVE page 9

Brooks added: “Here’s a pic of a suited alien on his bike [with monster] and below that a pic of a monster I designed for Episode 3.”

FSVE page 10

FSVE page 15

The words are written by Ryan Burton and all 3d models are designed and built by Brooks’ son Jay Brooks. Below is a 3D model of Jay’s alien suit and bike that was designed for the series.

Hoverbike model - Brooks

I for one can’t wait to see the final results.

Note: All the above images are copyright © Alan Brooks

Links:

And, though it’s not Brooks’ artwork, here is the cover for Back to Mysterious Island — because… hey… it’s a BIG reptilian eye!

Back to Mysterious Island

Posted in Flying Saucers, Giant Monsters, Graphic novels, Pictorial art | 4 Comments

Godzilla vs the US Navy

Posted on Thursday, March 27, 2008 by Robert Hood

Godzilla does what he does best in the next installment of Todd Tennant’s American Godzilla ’94 graphic novel:

Godzilla ‘94 Todd Tennant

For those who don’t know, kaiju artist Todd Tennant has for some time been engaged in an ambitious project to create a graphic-novel version of the abandoned 1994 Ted Elliott/Terry Rossio Godzilla screenplay that Jan De Bont was planning to film. Pre-production involved such SFX and artistic luminaries as Ricardo Delgado, Carlos Huante, Stan Winston and David Russell, who were all working on the design side of things before the studio cut the project off at the knees (because it was going to cost so much) and then handed it to Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin to mess up a few years later.

The original screenplay is a vastly different affair to the one we eventually got — and one that is a lot more faithful to the spirit of the Gojira franchise. Todd obtained the blessing of the various parties concerned to create a non-commercial graphic novel version of the script, using designs based on those of the original project. He has now created some 62 full-colour pages, which you can read for the cost of the data transfer!

The American Godzilla ’94 graphic novel begins here.

The latest pages — G’s battled with the navy — begin here.

If you want to view some of Ricardo Delgado’s conceptual artwork or a collection of David Russell’s original storyboards, go here.

This work of Todd’s is not only superb artistically, but it represents an act of generosity on his part that I still find amazing.

Posted in Daikaiju, Giant Monsters, Godzilla, Graphic novels, Pictorial art, The Lost | 3 Comments

Zeppelin vs. Pterodactyls: The Serial?

Posted on Wednesday, March 26, 2008 by Robert Hood

Synchronicity! I casually mention Hammer Film’s unmade film Zeppelin vs. Pterodactyls (as I did in a comment to the previous post) and then find this:

After watching the episode, check here to learn all about its history.

Posted in Dinosaurs, Film, Fraudulent information | 2 Comments

Will the Eagles Fly?

Posted on Wednesday, March 26, 2008 by Robert Hood

How’s this as an idea for a giant monster flick?

Modern adventurers discover a lost tribe of Vikings in a secluded valley. These vikings have survived amidst some pretty fearsome wildlife, including dinosaurs and giant prehistoric eagles. As they reacquaint themselves with the modern (1930s) world, they learn of an imminent invasion of New York by Nazis in zeppelins and altruistically take to the skies on their tamed War Eagles to engage in a huge airbourne battle over the streets of Manhattan.

One of the most famous non-films in the Great Lost Film Archive buried beneath Skull Island was the brainchild of Merian C. Cooper, the creator of the first great giant monster film. With the help of the grandfather of stop-motion SFX, Willis O’Brien, Cooper was responsible for kickstarting the whole giant monster movie genre by letting an angry, lovelorn giant ape rampage through Skull Island jungles and then New York in the 1933 film King Kong.

Before that, the Rampage template had been set by O’Brien when he animated a displaced brontosaurus going berserk in London in the 1925 film The Lost World. O’Brien would animate an endless array of dinosaurs during his career (and a giant scorpion), mentoring the young Ray Harryhausen who, in many ways, perfected the art over the decades that followed.

In 1937, Cooper conceived a spectacular scenario for a film called War Eagles, intending to top his work on King Kong. Its plot was the one I described above. A script was written and work began on the film. Many sketches were drawn, models made and a test reel featuring a Viking on his Eagle battling an allosaurus prepared by O’Brien and his crew.

Marcel Delgado — a well-known stop-motion animator — had worked on the War Eagles project:

About 1939 I worked for Obie at MGM on War Eagles which Cooper was going to make. I made a spearman riding a giant eagle and throwing a spear at a tyrannosaurus. It could have been a hell of a good picture. I don’t know exactly why they didn’t finish it; they spent a hell of a lot of time and money on it. The film is lost now. George Pal has been searching for it. MGM was going to start on it again after the war, but they didn’t.

In an interview with Travis Fickett, Harryhausen said of the film:

That was a picture Merian Cooper was going to make in color for MGM. But then the war came along and he was called away to the Flying Tigers. The whole picture deteriorated. Willis O’Brien was going to do the special effects work. It would have been a really spectacular picture at the time. That was the first time I met Willis O’Brien, during the preproduction for War Eagles. They had three rooms filled with the paintings and drawings of the potential picture. It looked terrific.

The project was shelved after Cooper left to organise mercenary pilots fighting for Chinese nationalist Chiang Kai-shek and it was never continued, despite some attempts to do so. At the time, such an expensive film simply became too daunting for the studio, particularly without Cooper’s push.

Now, however, it seems like a revival of the project may be underway. Though some have already noticed the project, I hadn’t until I stumbled upon an IMDb entry, which suggests that War Eagles is currently in pre-production, set to be released in 2010!

The listing of Cooper as the source of the “original concept” tells us that this is a re-visiting of his old project and the fact that the production company is “Ray Harryhausen Presents” (whatever that means) at least suggests that the SFX may be done in the style Cooper and O’Brien had intended. One rumour I’ve heard confirms that the film will be a period piece, set in the 1930s — as it would need to be in order to work properly. I mean, giant eagles, dinosaurs, vikings, Nazi-types and zeppelins over NY! Modern jet fighters wouldn’t fit into that scenario at all.

If that doesn’t make your heart start palpitating, you’re reading the wrong blog!

War Eagles (1938-39) Abandoned. (US; Dir. / Prod: Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack; Screenplay: Cyril Hume; SFX: Willis O’Brien, Marcel Delgado & George Lofgren; Drawings: Duncan Gleason.) (Source)

As an aside I notice that a comic series based on War Eagles is about to take flight. In fact, here is the cover:

War Eagles comic

I also came upon a novel that draws on Cooper’s concept:

 Cover of the book “War Eagles”

 Suddenly there seems to be a lot of buzz. I’m keeping my monstrous talons crossed!

Posted in Animation, Dinosaurs, Film, Giant Monsters, Teaser | 40 Comments

Kong’s Ancestors

Posted on Tuesday, March 25, 2008 by Robert Hood

Over the years, there has been much discussion of King Kong‘s descendants — including in an article of my own. Analysis of the 1933 film’s ancestors, however, has usually been confined to accounts of Kong co-directors Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack’s real-life adventures and the degree to which they inform the character of the film’s directorial adventurer / entrepreneur, Carl Denham, as well as to wider cinematic influences such as generic similarities between the plot of King Kong and that of the early The Lost World (1925) — which, of course, featured stop-motion animation (of assorted dinosaurs) by Willis O’Brien, Kong‘s visual effects creator.

But what of pre-Kong giant apes? Generally it is said that King Kong was the first and the greatest of the giant ape films. There’s no real argument to be made against the second part of that statement, but what of the first?

A while back some excitement was generated over the existence of giant ape footage ostensibly from the film The Gorilla, a comedy-thriller made in 1930 by Bryan Foy, now classified as lost. Films that included gorillas were not uncommon at all in the decade leading up to Kong, but a giant ape is another matter. Whether or not he was the first to notice, Mark Cofell on his Gorilla Men website tells how he had stumbled upon some footage of a giant gorilla walking through a cityscape in a stock film-clip catalogue owned by Getty Images. He says that he recognised the man-in-a-suit style ape as the work of Charles Gemora, “one of the great gorilla suit performers who worked in the movie industry from the 20’s until his death in the 50’s”, but was baffled as to where it might have originated. He says:

The suit was used in the late 20’s and early 30’s though was out of use after KING KONG’s release. The film appeared to predate KONG – I and a few of my fellow film fanatics wondered if it was test footage for Kong or, just as fascinating, another giant ape project never realized?!

It was Bob Burns — “World renown archivist and historian of props, costumes, and other screen used paraphernalia from some of the greatest (and not so great) science fiction, fantasy, and horror motion pictures” (IMDb) — who clarified the mystery:

Some months after I came across the footage [Cofell continues], I was introduced to Bob Burns by artist George Chastain who informed me it was trailer material from 1930’s THE GORILLA, a film about a murderous (and relatively short) ape. The city footage was illustrating the grip of terror the beast had on the urban populace. Oddly enough I came across a notation about the film on the IMDB as I was waiting for Bob’s reply; the film is considered lost and the shots I viewed are all that remain of it.

This held up the exciting possibility that a giant ape existed on film pre-Kong.

The Gorilla 1

The Gorilla 2

You can view the clips on the Getty Images site here and here.

That the footage was never part of the film itself but was used in advertising for the film to suggest the power of The Gorilla to terrify the populace is generally accepted now — but the afterburn of fannish possibility is nevertheless exciting.

But there appears to be another possible branch to the Kong family tree, albeit one just as inconclusive. A potential King Kong ancestor (or at least antecedent) is the 1929 film Stark Mad, a US jungle-adventure directed by Lloyd Bacon. It, too, is currently considered a lost film, but the AFI describes the plot thus:

James Rutherford has organized an expedition to the jungles of Central America to find his missing son, Bob, and his guide, Simpson. Professor Dangerfield intercepts the party, bringing with him Simpson, whose jungle experience has made him a raving maniac. They go ashore and decide to spend a night at a Mayan temple. After Irene, Bob’s fiancée, disappears, they come across a gigantic ape chained to the floor, and Captain Rhodes, commander of the yacht, is abducted by a strange monster with great hairy talons. Messages are found warning the party to leave. Sewald, an explorer, is mysteriously killed by an arrow. Simpson’s reason returns, and he saves the party, revealing that the demented hermit, whom he has just killed, and who formerly occupied the ruins, murdered Bob two months before.

Intriguing…. Has anyone out there seen it?

Posted in Film, Giant Monsters, The Lost | 6 Comments

New: Hunting Grounds

Posted on Monday, March 24, 2008 by Robert Hood

Hunting Grounds [aka Terre de Chasse] (France-[in development]; dir. Eric Bilodeau)

Yet another new zombie film, still in production/development stage. This one’s French, set in the future and based on an interesting premise. Check out the “preliminary” trailer, which includes some flat acting that can probably be excused on the grounds that it’s very early days. At any rate, I think it shows potential.

The website is still rather basic, but it includes a higher res version of the trailer and, if you click on FRENCH or ENGLISH, offers some production information — personnel, origins, casting info… that sort of thing.

Posted in Film, Trailers, Zombies | 1 Comment