My love of Godzilla was first truly embraced during the same afternoon that I decided I wasn’t that into skiing. Long story short, I was a kid, we went to a cabin, the family went skiing, I stayed in the cabin and rented a VCR and some Godzilla movies. The rest is nerd history.
In my life pursuit of watching every scifi/cult/horror film ever made I have realized that some uber-sub-genres are actually pretty large. There a lot of Kaiju movie… hell, there are a lot of specifically Godzilla movies. And, luckily, Toho is still making movies, so I hope that there are more to come. (I hear Toho is putting out an Attack on Titan live action film).
So, as a part time audiophile/part time cinemaphile, I figured a great place to start was Godzilla vs. Mothra. Perfect because it has both kaiju and The Peanuts. I’m guessing that we are all familiar with Godzilla but, are we all familiar with The Peanuts? My buddy Matt really turned me onto them outside of them being Mothra’s tiny little twin pixies. They have tons of rad albums of awesome retro 60s Japanese lounge pop… or something like that.
I could go on about The Peanuts for days but, I’ll spare us all and continue.
So, What’s Up with Godzilla vs. Mothra?
This was a good time for Godzilla. Just like anything that gains monetary popularity, they ended up watering it down to the point where it starts to become unrecognizable. Eventually they made Godzilla a good guy. At this point however, Godzilla is the bad guy and Mothra is the good guy. I like bad guy Godzilla better… or at least unstoppable force of nature Godzilla.
It’s slow. You would think that a movie about giant monsters fighting in major cities would be action packed but, most of these films are not… and frankly, that’s what I like about them. There’s this slow comatose trance verging on the psychedelic that one enters when watching just the right kind of slow movie. I’m not sure how to explain it. I got the feeling from Trance, I got the feeling from Thunderball and 2001, and I get the feeling from pre 80s kaiju films. By the time we reach Godzilla 1985 action is attempting to take over but, prior… It’s like a nirvana experience to drone out to these awesome flicks.
Kaiju University 