Ghosts on a Train

As a little girl, Oh Mi-sun’s train conductor father was deemed responsible for a commuter train wreck that killed 100 or so travelers. This coincided with her birthday. (Looks like no B-day present from papa this year.) This causes Oh Mi-sun to internalize inner shame for 15 years.

Now old enough to get a job and buy her own dang presents, she takes a position as an attendant assigned to ride on this particular train’s last run. Oh, yeah — several of the train cars not damaged by the wreck all those shame-filled years ago are the very ones she’s serving Sapporo™ and squid snacks on. What are the odds?

Slowly, Oh Mi-sun starts having visions of dead people on the implied haunted train (they better have a ticket). Along the way the choo choo stops on the track to let a little ghost girl go by — long enough to allow the ghost train behind them to merge into a “two-for-one” hell ride.

In a pace made for ghost snails, it comes to our attention that the conductor also had links to the past ka-BOOM. Then several more passengers are given time to associate themselves with the historic disaster. Things finally pick up as the ghost train and the regular train come to their proposed conclusion (see, “ka-BOOM!”). Oh Mi-sun’s dead dad re-appears for a look see, as do several other dead-yet-breathing passengers.

Normally a ghost train movie would be a welcome site to my sore TV. Not this one. South Korea’s Red Eye (2005) is slow, patience-testing and filled with coach-class special effects. By the time it was over I felt as though the ghost train had left me at the station. All a-bored.

P.S. I challenge you to not confuse this Red Eye with the U.S. Red Eye, with the same title and released the same year. This one takes place on a plane. That rhymes with train, so I can see why you might be flummoxed.

Countdown to Godzilla

As I’ve been e-blathering all over this blog-o-rama, Godzilla: Resurgence – a top-to-bottom, brand spanking new Godzilla movie – is coming out mere days from now, which would put it at July 29, 2016.

Released in Japan only, it’ll take a few hours for it to get stateside by way of illegal digital bootleg, then legally in theaters months after that. Screw both of those delivery systems – I plan on using Stargate Lyft to travel to Japan, watch the movie, drink several gallons of Sapporo™, then arrive back in my apartment just in time to use the can. (Note to self: set Stargate to high – that last “running late” trip to the bathroom was almost a deal breaker on several levels.)

What can be seen in these new screenshots is that Godzilla gets all purple at one point. (I’ve done that – not easy.) Then we see him getting a face full of military artillery, which he pretty much eats like potato chips. And you wonder why he keeps f’ing stuff up. Being shot in the mug shot all the time wouldn’t make you an ambassador of goodwill, either.

The effects look pretty cool, with Japan getting the tempura stomped out of it YET AGAIN. Actually, it could be any city and I’d still be a happy emoji. Regardless, I’m drunk with giddiness (okay, maybe just drunk) at the impending new big screen release of my favorite movie monster of all time. (Sorry Gamera; you had your chance, but your movies keep getting delayed. Like Stargate.)

Less Than Hero

There’s a reason they waited 15 years to do another Gamera movie after 1980’s Gamera: Super Monster. It took that long for the worst Gamera movie ever made to be purged from our memory banks. But the thing is, I DON’T FORGET. At least when it comes to giant monster movies. So nice try, Japan. It’ll be a cold day in Kitakyushu before you can put one over on me.

Gamera: Super Monster isn’t really a stand alone movie, but rather a “greatest hits” muddled mess that relied on stock battle footage from all the other Gamera films to try and put one over on me. Zanon, an evil alien (aren’t they all?) arrives in our atmospheric zip code in a spaceship that looks suspiciously like the Imperial I-class Destroyer from Star Wars (1977). You hear his boom-y voice as he commands a Japanese (?) chick alien enlistee to enslave all of humanity. I think not; first they gotta get by Gamera, the giant turtle with reverse walrus tusks and fire that shoots out of every orifice.

Where this thing rolls over on its back and can’t get up is when the three Superwomen, also from space (but working in disguise at pet shops and driving around in a Scooby Doo™ type mystery van), do some choreographed kung-fu cheerleader moves and suddenly appear in costume to put a screeching halt to this enslavement hoo-haw.

One of the Superwomen befriends a small boy with really f’d up teeth (think Timmy from South Park) who has a psychic connection to Gamera, whom the overdubbed voices think is pronounced “guh-MARE-uh” instead of something that sounds like “camera.” She gives him an enslaved turtle from the pet store, not knowing little bugger is you-know-who.

Too much plot. Time to cram in stock footage of Gamera smack-smacking all his other foes: Gyaos (vampire pterodactyl with an anvil shaped head – an ongoing pain in Gamera’s protective shell), Jiger (fat ass dinosaur), Guiron (space reptile with a head shaped like a chef’s knife), Viras (giant space squid, who, when cooked properly, could be served with rice balls and any variety of noodles), Zigra (a flying shark with razor sharp dorsal fins designed to cut the gut of enemies and then feast on their guts), and Barugon, the lizard with the longest tongue ever. And he can fart rainbows. Not kidding, he really does.)

The Spacewomen don’t do much more than change their clothes every five minutes and hang around while the evil space woman tries to get the other monsters to make turtle soup out of Gamera so Zanon can assume the position. Then there’s the painfully prolonged scene where she and the f’d up tooth boy transport to the beach to watch the monsters piledrive each other (cut to the stock footage), with no one else in the city even noticing the kaiju are even there.

The previous seven Gamera movies – known as the Shōwa series – are camp classics, mostly made for kids, but highly entertaining to adults when augmented by some Sapporo tall boys. Note: There was supposed to be Gamera vs. Garasharp in 1972, but the movie studio went bankrupt and they sold everything to Tokuma Shoten, who promptly lifted his kimono and squeezed out the mega-turd Gamera: Super Monster. Okay, uncalled for stereotyping; He probably wore Dockers™.)

Now that I think about it, they missed the boat here; a sure fire hit would’ve been to make a movie called Gamera vs. Mega-Turd. Then, as a sequel, they could’ve followed up with Gamera vs. Mecha-Turd. I have a script ready if Japan is interested in reclaiming their pop film culture heritage.

Final note: If Gamera: Super Monster didn’t make you give up on giant turtles altogether, I beseech you to check out the three in the Heisei series: Gamera: Guardian of the Universe (1995), Gamera 2: Advent of Legion (1996 – arguably one of the best giant monster movies ever made) and Gamera 3: Awakening of Irys (1999). What followed is a prequel of sorts for the Millennium series called Gamera the Brave (2006). Extraordinarily dumb, at least Gamera, as a teenager, fights Zedus, a fairly gnarly kaiju who beats the sea water out of Gamera to the point you want the ref to stop the match. I’m big into Gamera (love you, mean it), but I got a lot of satisfaction watching the beatdown. I’m a sick dude.