Bullets Can't Stop Them!!!
This week's Ultimate Geek Fu is, as they say, ripped from the headlines. Specifically, from this absolutely legit and perfectly serious headline, which appeared recently in the London Telegraph:
Japanese fishing trawler sunk by giant jellyfish
Yeah, but was it a radioactive giant jellyfish?
Giant monsters have a long and time-honored lineage. Before there was King Kong there was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, where free-range dinosaurs snacked on unwary jungle explorers. Before the big monkey and his lizardly contemporaries there was that giant squid that tried to make a light seafood dinner of the Nautilus in Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and before the mighty malignant calimari, there was (perhaps) that monster snake large enough to swallow a donkey whole in The Swiss Family Robinson. (Although there also seems to be some question as to whether the snake was actually in the original novel, or was instead introduced by one of the later translators.) From there we pass from the domain of movies and published fiction and into the realm of myth and legend, and variously trace our beasties back to Echidna, Leviathan, or a multiplicity of dragons, pagan gods, and primal titans, depending on where in the world you live.
But never mind all that. Today, we're interested in contemporary giant monsters, and particularly, in post-1945 giant atomic monsters.
Who's the best? Who's the worst? Two falls out of three, could King Kong really take Godzilla? And was Roland Emmerich's 1998 reimagining of Godzilla merely a travesty, or something far, far worse?
I will confess to having a deep-seated and inexplicable fondness for kaiju eiga, and to owning far more examples of movie megacheese than anyone other than the late Forrest J Ackerman* might admit to having. I do in fact own the complete works of Gamera, and have been known to haul out and re-watch Godzilla: Final Wars from time to time, probably for the same reason that I occasionally pig-out on a box of Ding-Dongs or a jumbo bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos. But for my money, the all-time best giant atomic monster is Them.
No, not Van Morrison's old band. I mean, THEM!
And I do mean for my money, as I just put in an order for this treasure. So what I want to know now is: which junk-food giant monster movie is your secret, guilty pleasure?
Let the arguments begin.
* P.S. As I wrote this, I was astonished to discover that today (Tuesday, 11/24/09) is the 93rd anniversary of the birth of Forrest J Ackerman, gentleman, scholar, fan extraordinaire, and the guy who coined the term, "sci-fi." More germane to this discussion, Forry also was the founder, editor, and for many years chief writer of Famous Monsters of Filmland, the magazine that back in the days before video rentals introduced many a misguided youth such as myself to the squeamish joys of horror movies. If you don't feel up to admitting to having a fondness for Attack of the Crab Monsters, perhaps you might have a favorite memory of FMF that you would like to share.
ULTIMAGE GEEK FU runs every Wednesday. Have a question that's just bugging the heck out of you about Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate, Battlestar Gallactica, Farscape, Firefly, Fringe, Heroes, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Smallville, The X-Files, X-Men, The Man From Atlantis, or pretty much any other SF-flavored media property? Send it to slushpile@thefridaychallenge.com with the subject line, "Geek Fu," and we'll stuff it in the queue.
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