Movie Review: The Return of Godzilla (1984)

With this film, I've finally seen all the main Godzilla films, not counting the Netflix anime movies. A fitting way to wrap up, I think. However, maybe not the most exciting way to wrap up. I've never found solo kaiju movies to be as fun as multi-monster mashups. In solo kaiju outings, the burden of spectacle falls on a singular monster stomping around and destroying miniature sets. Those scenes will always be fun, of course, but it just can't match the joy of two guys in rubbery monster suits duking it out. The Return of Godzilla is still a decent film, it's just not as appealing to me as some of the others of the Heisei era.

This is a reboot of sorts for the Godzilla franchise, ignoring every film except for the 1954 original. Godzilla, as the title would suggest, returns to destroy Japan once more. It's never clear if this is the same Godzilla who somehow survived being vaporized at the end of the '54 original, or a separate Godzilla altogether. Either way, volcanic activity in the ocean has brought the big galoot back to Japan, and he's on a rampage.

The bulk of Return is dedicated to Japanese officials trying to figure out what to do about their giant lizard problem. For a while, before the whole world realizes that Godzilla has in fact returned, his Soviet-submarine-destroying undersea rumblings are blamed on the United States. Cue a Cold War-era diplomatic crisis. Japan steps in, revealing that Godzilla's back, but now the U.S. and Russia want to handle Godzilla themselves. All the governmental back-and-forth and heated diplomacy feel quite similar to the original '54 film and prescient of the most recent Toho Godzilla film, Shin Godzilla. In a way, this is the connective tissue between the original and Shin Godzilla. Three solo Godzilla ventures that are much more concerned about Godzilla as an entity and how that affects international politics, rather than a bunch monster fights and sci-fi kookiness. 

Your mileage may vary with Return. If you prefer your giant monster movies to actually be thematic and trying to say something, this will probably be your cup of tea. Especially considering the majority of the 60's and 70's Godzilla films were silly and kid-oriented, Return comes as a darker, more grounded take on the monster. Some people might prefer that. If you're like me, you might like the serious tone but still find yourself pining for monster fights. Of course, the rest of the Heisei era films deliver in that regard, but it's still a bit of a let-down. This is a perfectly fine Godzilla film, just not what I'm looking for in this franchise.

Movie Review: Son of Godzilla (1967)

In my quest to watch all the Godzilla movies, Son of Godzilla was one I kept putting off. It just seemed like the dud of the series. Even Godzilla vs. Megalon, another well-known low point for Godzilla, has a major cheese factor to it that makes it kind of fun. Sure, the absolute worst of the series is probably Godzilla's Revenge, but I saw that as a kid and barely remember it (that still counts in the overall "I've seen every Godzilla movie" thing, so hush). As a fully cognizant adult, I dreaded having to watch something with Minilla, Godzilla's not-quite-son. Nevertheless, my compulsion to finish the series won out and I went ahead and sat through it. It wasn't as bad as I expected, but that's not saying much.

The human storyline, the part you usually tune out while waiting for monster action, is sort of interesting. A group of scientists stationed on a remote island are fiddling around with weather technology, trying to find a way to terraform inhospitable areas of the planet, thus preventing overpopulation in the future. This is all just a contrived excuse to get Godzilla to show up, but it's an interesting idea. Meteorology is not a common subject in science fiction, so even though it's not really relevant to the plot, it's kind of an interesting aside. An experiment with a weather balloon goes haywire, which screws up the weather and causes all the bugs on the island to grow to kaiju-sized proportions. The crazy weather also unearths a giant egg, which unfortunately contains Minilla. The egg hatches, which causes Godzilla to show up to the island. The movie acts like Minilla is related to Godzilla, but this raises a lot of questions. Who is the mother to Minilla? Is Godzilla an asexual creature that spawns its own eggs? Who knows? The movie sure isn't answering these questions.

Godzilla and Minilla have a weird sort of father-son relationship. Godzilla tries to teach Minilla to breathe atomic breath, but the creepy little dude can barely muster a smoke ring. Other antics include Minilla jumping over Godzilla's tail while his dad tries to sleep, and otherwise making a nuisance of himself. It would almost be charming in a dopey sort of way if the costume designs weren't so gnarly. The Godzilla costume was apparently redesigned for this film, ostensibly to make him appear friendlier for the kid audience. He certainly looks less reptilian, but I don't know if he looks any friendlier. His head shape and eyes are strangely humanoid, which is quite unsettling. Little Minilla fairs no better. He too shares his father's unpleasantly humanoid noggin, complete with creepy Hamburglar buckteeth. He also looks like a sack of potatoes, and his roar sounds like a braying donkey. Definitely not what you'd call cute, especially compared to the more aesthetically pleasing designs the series would go on to use in the 90's Godzilla films.

Son of Godzilla isn't the worst film in the 65-year-old franchise, but it's definitely one of the weaker entries. This one is clearly going for kids and kids only, which is a perfectly fine goal, but I don't know how many kids would enjoy this. The monster stuff is pretty sparse, and the stuff with the scientists is too dry to hold most kids' interest. Godzilla does eventually do battle with the giant bugs, so maybe some kid watching this on TV back in the 70s would have been placated by that. I certainly wasn't.

Movie Review: Who Can Kill a Child? (1976)

Boy, talk about bleak. Who Can Kill a Child? is a Spanish horror movie about an island of killer kids, but played as seriously as you can possibly take an absurd premise like that. Thanks to some intense suspense and an eerie atmosphere, this transcends the threshold of shlock and delivers a genuinely unnerving experience. 

The movie opens with an extremely dour credits sequence that features nearly eight minutes of actual footage from various wartime atrocities like the Holocaust, the Vietnam war, and famines resulting from African civil wars. The accompanying narration articulates the idea that children always wind up suffering the most as a result of war. It's shocking and kind of exploitative, but bear in mind, this is from the heyday of exploitation movies so it kind of works. If nothing else, it sets the appropriate dour tone that is to follow. 

Once the movie begins in earnest, it follows Tom and Evelyn, a married couple from England who are vacationing in Spain before Evelyn gives birth to their third child. The opening third of this feels remarkably similar to the Stephen King short story, "Children of the Corn". The couple travels from a coastal Spanish resort town to the nearby island of Almanzora, only to find it mysteriously deserted save for a few taciturn tykes. There are no adults to be found on the island, which perplexes the couple. After getting a mysterious panicked phone call from a non-English-speaking woman, Tom and Evelyn go on high alert. A lesser film might have bungled this part; it's all too easy for characters in a horror movie to fall prey to that terrible "they're only making dumb decisions because the narrative says so" trap that plagues many horror movies. Thankfully, the characters are cautious and about as smart as a normal person would be in a bizarre situation like an island of killer kids. 

The couple slowly begins to realize that the children are the only people living on the island because they killed all the adults. Why they collectively snapped and why they're on a killing spree are never clearly explained, but the movie is better for it. Tom offers a hypothesis towards the end, suggesting that maybe it has something to do with the collective unconscious of children who have suffered during wartime. It's a pretty lame speculation, and thankfully the movie treats it as just that: speculation. It's much creepier never knowing exactly what caused the children of Almanzora to turn evil, but there are a few hints it's maybe something supernatural. The evil kids seem to have the ability to psychically turn regular kids into evil ones, just by staring at them. 

For a horror movie about killer kids, you might expect a great deal of violence, but Who Can Kill a Child? is tastefully restrained. The violence is very brief, and when it occurs, you really feel the dramatic weight. Horror movies, in particular, can be bad about cheapening the dramatic weight of violence. This, however, does an excellent job of making the few deaths feel shocking and impactful. We learn that the children were able to take over the island because no adult could bring themselves to kill a child (thus, the title). When push comes to shove and the tourist couple has to strike back, it's every bit as horrific as it should be.

This is a fantastic work of suspense. It's reminiscent of Night of the Living Dead, both in the silent, shuffling antagonists, and the film's downbeat ending. The empty Spanish village is as eerie as it is beautiful. It's a film that had the potential to be a goofy exploitation movie about evil children but instead delivers a harrowing, nail-biting experience. If you weren't creeped out by kids before, you will be after this.

Movie Review: Shock Waves (1977)

Shock Waves is an early entry into the niche subgenre of Nazi zombie movies. Like most films in this subgenre, it isn't very good. It's hampered by a low budget and an aimless script, but there are sporadically interesting things going on that keep it from being a complete failure.

The film follows a group of tourists who were either too cheap or not rich enough to go on a fancy cruise boat. Instead, they're aboard old man Robert Carradine's dinky boat. They spend the first half hour or so of the movie aboard the boat, arguing and otherwise wiling away the time until they get to the island of Nazi zombies. Eventually they near the island, and decide to go ashore after Captain Carradine goes missing. They find him dead in the shallows and search the island for help.

Unfortunately for the forgettable bunch of tourists, the island is occupied by Peter Cushing, who plays a scarred Nazi scientist who fled to South America at the end of WWII with a batch of supersoldiers. The ship sank and only Cushing seemingly survived, but the arrival of the tourists has somehow triggered the indestructible Nazi soldiers to come back to life and stalk the island. The movie is vague about how the zombies came back, but it doesn't really matter. What follows is a long stretch of the tourists wandering around the wooded areas on the island, occasionally stalked by zombies. Even when the film strolls into a climax, it still feels weirdly padded.

Sure, Shock Waves is cheap and uneventful, but is it entirely dull? Not exactly, because the movie has the good graces to make the Nazi zombies look really, really goofy. They wear goggles all the time because it turns out their weakness is sunlight for some reason. So basically, you have a bunch of guys wading through swamp water with giant welding goggles on. They look like frog-men, and it's really funny. It's not enough to make the movie worthwhile overall, but at least there are some silly looking villains.

Movie Review: Shock (1977)

Shock is the final film from Italian horror legend Mario Bava, and it's a bit of a flat note end a solid career on. It's almost creepy but not quite. The great cinematography Bava is known for is still present, at least, but it's not enough to make this a highlight of his career.

The film follows a woman named Dora (the lovely Daria Nicolodi), who moves back into her old house with her second husband and her son from her first marriage. She's moving back in after seven years away. We learn that she initially moved away after her previous husband, a drug addict, seemingly committed suicide at sea. 

Dora doesn't want to be back in the house, but her husband Bruno (John Steiner) seems to think it's a good idea. Unfortunately, the house seems to be haunted by the ghost of the old husband. Right off the bat, it's clear something is amiss. A sheet goes flying off a table while movers bring in boxes, but nobody seems to notice. It's an understated and eerie visual and one of the few genuinely creepy moments in the film. 

The ghost-dad sets about possessing the son, Marco, which doesn't sit well with Dora. He's a creepy little kid who sometimes has telekinesis and is apparently into incest. He dry humps his mom and later steals her underwear. Whether this is the result of being possessed by his ghost-dad or of his own perverse volition probably should have been made clearer.

Bruno is a pilot, and thus conveniently away from the house for most of the story. The majority of the movie is Marco being increasingly strange and Dora being increasingly paranoid. Things occasionally fall or smash as a sort of jump scare to keep the audience from dozing off. Marco makes a bizarre voodoo doll out of a photo of Bruno and a swingset, which causes the plane he is piloting to nearly crash. You know, normal possessed-kid activities. 

Eventually, after alternating scenes of Dora having nightmares about floating boxcutters and scenes of Marco pushing a slinky down the stairs, we find out the truth. It turns out that the dead husband didn't commit suicide, he was murdered! With a boxcutter! By Dora! And then the body was hidden inside the basement wall by Bruno! What a twist! It doesn't really make sense why they had to move back into the house in the first place, and this only further complicates things. Bruno claims the seven-year gap was to wait until the old husband was declared legally dead. But why move back in at all? My suspension of disbelief can only go so far.

Shock isn't unwatchable, and it's hardly the worst Italian horror movie out there, but it is a disappointing end to Mario Bava's career. The possessed kid is sometimes creepy, and there's a decent Goblin-esque score, but it's just not a compelling horror movie. Other movies have told stories with haunted houses and/or possessed kids better than this before and since. It's not exactly bad, it's just kind of underwhelming. It does not, sadly, have the power to shock.