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Back in February, I reviewed the unexpectedly excellent Hellboy Animated: Sword of Storms, the first in what promised to be an ongoing series of animated Hellboy offerings from Starz. To the good fortue of Hellboy fans everywhere, Sword of Storms received enough attention to warrant a sequel, Blood and Iron, with promises of still more on the way. On June 12, Blood and Iron was released on DVD… and here’s the review!

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We have mentioned the tendency of human beings to see things according to their preconceptions. And it would appear that the esteemed opposition to the Loch Ness Monster idea is every bit as susceptible to this phenomenon as the pro-Nessie crowd. In the short time after the Holmes video hit the net, a mind-shattering array of alternate explanations were put forth. To some people, the object in the film looked like a seal; to others, a fish. Some thought it was the reflection of an airplane. Some thought it was a length of tubing being dragged along. Or an otter. Otters are nice!

What this broad variety demonstrates is fairly clear: The image is not clear enough to be certain just what it might be. Anything that could be an otter or the reflection of an airplane is something that is hard to identify for certain. Most commentators, therefore, had the basic sense to qualify their statements. When engaging in a debate, armed with such uncertain data, a simple “it looks like this to me” is only reasonable.

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Welcome, before we begin, to ‘The Hidden Menagerie,’ a column dedicated wholly to cryptozoology. Because you demanded it! Sorta.

On Saturday, May 26th, 2007, a man called Gordon T. Holmes took a short film of something that he apparently saw. Within a week, news of this footage was a worldwide affair, because Mr. Holmes claimed that what he saw was the Loch Ness Monster. (You can read and/or see more about this here, and here, and here and here.) But putting aside, for just a moment, the question of what he saw, let us consider: What does the film show?

Well, it does not show final, definitive proof of the existence of the Loch Ness Monster – I’d like to lead with that. Capital-S Skeptics, people who are entirely certain that there assuredly is not a Loch Ness Monster, work themselves into a special froth over the idea that such-and-so “doesn’t prove anything!” And I would like to put their minds at ease. Nobody’s saying this proves anything. Well, some people probably are, but they are no real threat to the rule of reason, such as it is. So calm down. If this were conclusive proof of Nessie’s reality, it’d be in such heavy media rotation by now that even I’d be sick of it. It could, however, be suggestive of Nessie, without proving anything. So:

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The American Version

Aw, I don’t wanna see Godzilla! Whatever happened to Gigantis?

John Beck, as you’ll recall, retained for himself most of the western distribution rights to Kingukongu tai Gojira, and he sold them promptly to Universal-International, the deal being reported in Variety in April of 1963. And Universal released the film, and released it big. Universal’s delightfully-named Exploitation Department published an advertising handbook for cinema owners, with many excellent publicity suggestions. It urged them to send telegrams to local sports journalists, encouraging them to cover the movie as a prize fight. It suggested that local children be recruited to carry around signs supporting one monster or the other. It proposed that the theaters send people out in monster costumes, which “should be easy to prepare.” And so on. Whether any cinemas did any of this is unrecorded.

Of course, none of this could happen until the film was tarted up for an American audience. A number of new scenes were added, under the direction of Thomas Montgomery (which Godzilla scholar Steve Ryfle thinks to be a pseudonym, an ‘Alan Smithee’). These had been written by Paul Mason and Bruce Howard, and featured Michael Keith as Eric Carter, James Yagi as Yukata Omura, and Harry Holcombe as Arnold Johnson. These gentlemen, who were probably very nice in person, came together to do the most godawful hack-job on the American release of a Godzilla film ever.

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Review

Electrical wires! Those’ll kill me dead! Not like that other time!

It’s remarkable how different the first three Godzilla movies are from one another. The first is a serious, ominous, and potent piece of cinema. The second is a sloppy and dull monster movie. And the third is weird, even silly. Now, there are two reasons for this sudden change. One is that Toho ordered Ishiro Honda and his crew to make Godzilla a more child-friendly property; presumably, Toho felt that they could get a series out of such a thing, whereas a series of towering allegories of atomic destruction would be maybe less viable. Honda didn’t like it, but he did as he was told. The second reason for the silliness of this movie is more unusual: Kingukongu tai Gojira is, among other things, a satire of monster movies. Where before Godzilla was entirely a threat, here he becomes a Japanese cultural obsession. We see the press go wild when he appears; a small child begs his mommy to go and see him. There are piles of magazines, plans for a movie, and then, when Kong appears, all this attention swiftly switches over to the ape. People start taking bets on the outcome of the inevitable fight. Kong and Godzilla are media superstars, and that, friends, is a comedy joke, a wry commentary on monster movies in general. This silliness spirals out into the rest of the film; Tako and Furue are both played as rather broad comic relief. And the former is blithely willing to sacrifice the safety of his country for the sake of pharmaceutical promotion – advertising is another major satirical target here.

Of all the weirdness of this film, the fight choreography might be the most famous example. Kong grabs Godzilla by the tail and swings him through the air. Godzilla bats thrown boulders back at Kong, using his tail. Kong stuffs a tree into Godzilla’s mouth, and Godzilla dislodges it with his atomic breath. It is said that Tsuburaya’s staff was incredulous about some of the effects they were asked to produce. For all this, though, the fights aren’t bad; there’s a bit of a remnant of the too-quick combat of the last film, but overall the fights are varied and well-paced and fun to watch.

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