Friday, February 17, 2017

The Bloody Pit #50 - GODZILLA VS KING GHIDORAH (1991)


Until now we have danced around the 1990's Godzilla films in our series of shows focused on Kaiju films but we have only briefly discussed them. That is over!

Closing out our Ghidorah Files series we come to 1991's GODZILLA VS KING GHIDORAH and it is a joyous time. The Heisei films are special to both Troy and myself for several reasons. I explain my discovery of this movie through the VHS gray market and the awakening of Big G love it inspired. Luckily this film and the entire seven film Heisei Godzilla series is now available on Blu-Ray so you no longer have to take the dark path of underground dupes and sleazy bootleggers. Unless you want to, that is.

As you might expect, this film sports some amazing monster battle action with locations in both the countryside and among the modern skyscrapers of Tokyo getting the worst of these two creature's destructive power. But the movie also has some great human characters that lead us through the often complicated time travel storyline and add some texture to the villainy. Of course, the 1990's Godzilla films had much worse luck with casting Caucasian actors than they did in the 1960's so we also have some pretty terrible acting in a few scenes. Nick Adams, oh, how we miss you!

So join us as we talk about this incredibly fun science fiction monster adventure. We touch on the controversy about the film's supposedly anti-American sequences as well as obvious TERMINATOR steals and the towering brilliance of Akira Ifukube's score. We also discuss the just below the surface metaphors and often hidden societal commentary with which the movie is laced. And then, courtesy of writer Keith Aiken's excellent article entitled GODZILLA VS KING GHIDORAH: Time Travel and the Origins of Godzilla we dig into the timeline of the Heisei films and talk about just how many Big G's there were!

Thank you for downloading and listening to us tackle this film. If you want to let us know what you think about the podcast, this movie or any other film you can contact us at thebloodypit@gmail.com or over on The Bloody Pit's FaceBook page. As we say near the end of this show we are casting about for ideas on what movies to cover in the near future and would love to hear your opinion. 




No comments: