Kaiju
is one of those terms that has been around for years, used primarily for fans
of Japanese pop culture to sound smarter than the rest of us when they wanted
to talk about big honking monsters. Unfortunately, thanks to three decades’
worth of importing their TV to jaded American audiences, “kaiju” has entered
the pop culture lexicon. It’s a word of Japanese origin, that, loosely
translated, means “big honking monsters.” Way to move the discussion forward,
folks.
Specifically,
the term as it applies to movies is considered a genre, though what monsters are
considered kaiju are hotly debated. For
the purposes of our discussion, I’m going to break it down like this: King Kong
(1933) is not a kaiju movie. King Kong vs Godzilla (1962) is. Simple, right? Also,
I’m going to give it my best effort to pick the scariest kaiju movies I can, knowing full well that these movies aren’t
anything like what’s on the other Top 5 lists. However, I am a Monster Kid, so neener-neener,
we’re doing this anyway.
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| The Japanese poster. |
5. Dogora the Space Monster (1964)
This
is easily one of the nuttiest Japanese movies of all time, and certainly a
bizarre entry into the Kaiju category, but bear with me. A bunch of satellites
in orbit crash into some space protoplasm and the radioactive fallout results
in a mutated tentacled gelatinous creature that eats diamonds, pisses off wasps,
and acts as a kind of foil for a gang of diamond thieves.
You
have to trust me on this; it’s weird, but it’s also a strangely compelling
movie, made all the more unusual by the hanging space tendrils that keep
picking up cars and dropping giant carbonized meteors on people. The effects
are sparse but very creepy, and the glimpses of the space monster in question
bring a lot of Lovecraftian terrors to mind. This isn’t just a one-off for Toho
Studios; it’s out there where the busses don’t run, Jack.
4. Godzilla vs. Biollante (1989)
After
a slew of increasingly silly Kaiju movies where the monsters were little more
than rubber-suited wrestlers, bouncing on trampolines and crashing into balsa
wood buildings, there was the first real effort to turn the venerable Godzilla
name around. No, not Godzilla: 1984,
that was terrible. Dr. Pepper product placement? What kind of nonsense is that?
If you’re going to watch the rebirth of the Godzilla franchise, you gotta get
the original version in Japanese. No Dr. Pepper ads. But I digress.
I’m
talking about Godzilla vs. Biollante,
a late 1980s movie with a great premise and even a couple of chilling moments
imbedded between the undercranked destruction. Scientists have been studying
the last time Godzilla appeared in 1984, attempting to merge Big G’s cells with
plants to create a a substitute for fossil fuels. Thanks to a lab accident,
this actually creates the Pottsylvania Creeper from Rocky and Bullwinkle. Meanwhile, a bunch of gifted and talented
children all start having the same dream about a big ass irradiated lizard
coming up out of the ocean…
This
is one of the darkest and also one of the creepiest movies in the Godzilla
franchise, a fantastic mix of scientists playing with fire, anti-nuclear sentiment,
and really interesting monsters, in particular Biollante, which deliberately
and dramatically breaks from the “guy in a bipedal suit” model. As long you can
follow along with the set-up, the movie is great fun and almost—almost—a date
flick.
3. Cloverfield (2008)
You might not want to call this
a Kaiju film, but the Cloverfield monster qualifies if only in size
and temperament. In the absence of a clear biological event, we are left wondering
where the monster came from, but subsequent movies have now filled in some of
the gaps. Cloverfield features one of the last gasp iterations of the “found
footage” trope; the set-up opens on a group of friends at a farewell party,
celebrating, only to have them end up trapped in the city when a giant space
monster hits town—literally—and starts stepping on a bunch of people.
This is another film where the
monster is a stand-in for the forces of nature as the people run and run and can
never quite get free of this lumbering, capricious entity. The found footage manages
to add to the suspense and helps sell the idea that these people are genuinely about
to be killed by a big honking monster.
The Cloverfield monster itself is
pretty impressive, too, as it lumbers through the narrow streets, at times
disappearing behind the massive skyscrapers until it hits an open patch of
night sky and then, Whoa, look out, it’s freaky as hell. This idea of hiding
amongst the buildings was used, terribly, in the Roland Emmerich and Dean
Devlin travesty that was their 1999 attempted homicide titled Godzilla,
wherein they tried their best to kill a venerable and beloved franchise. In Cloverfield, the idea is reclaimed and
works much better, thanks very much. If you missed this in the theater, give it
a shot on DVD.
2. Them! (1954)
Them! has the distinction of being one of the first
“radiation-makes-things-bigger” movies and the first Giant Insect movie and I
have to say, they got this one more right than not, and nothing that came along
after it was quite as good. The plot is pretty basic: early atomic testing was
done in New Mexico. Those tests resulted in irradiating a colony of giant ants
in the desert. Mayhem ensues.
Why does this one work so well? For
starters, director Gordon Douglas knew the first rule of monster movies—don’t
show the monster until you absolutely have to. Instead, play this creepy,
high-pitched squeal every time they are nearby, and have a shell-shocked little
girl say “THEM!” in a horror-choked voice when asked to describe the monsters.
Really effective stuff.
Of course, once the monsters do show
up, it’s giant prop ants on wheels. Sigh. But the build-up is still very
effective and the movie is quite entertaining in the way you think it ought to
be: Serious with a side of schlock.
1.Godzilla (1954)
Before Kaiju movies were a codified thing,
and while the genre was flailing around trying to define itself, there was the
first, original Godzilla movie, a film that personifies the wrath of a planet
scarred by radioactive bombs and testing; our own technology revisited upon us
in the form of a mutated dinosaur that wantonly destroys without conscience or
consequences.
The fledgling effort, even with
American actors inserted, is a sobering denouncement of the bombing of Nagasaki
and Hiroshima. There’s no guesswork, no subtlety to the message of the movie;
it clearly spells out, “This is happening because we played God.” The anti-science message is crystal clear, here, and you can slap a mad science label on this movie quite easily.
The suit and the miniature work is
good in the movie, and Godzilla moves in darkness for several scenes, which
adds to the believability. Of course, we get to see all of the old standbys,
such as the atomic breath, but in this movie, it was the first time for
everyone. Still an effective film, very different in tone from the Godzilla
movies most of us grew up with.
