Monster X Strikes Back: Attack the G8 Summit (2008) + Bonus micro-review

Monster X Strikes Back: Attack the G8 Summit (2008)
Director: Minoru Kawasaki

Director Minoru Kawasaki has carved out a niche for himself as a maker of super low-budget kaiju eiga, with films ranging to this to Kaiju Mono to Monster Seafood Wars. One of his most recent films was Super Legend God Hikoza, and he did a remake of Planet Prince (aka Prince of Space), which longtime fans of MST3K will be familiar with. The man has been making low-budget genre comedies since the late 1980s, so I applaud the man's ability to get funding for his ideas, like The World Sinks Except Japan and Executive Koala.

Monster X Strikes Back is a sequel-cum-remake of Shochiku's Uchu Daikaiju Guirara, which was released stateside as The X from Outer Space. In that film, a flying saucer fires spores onto a rocket (the film is set in an alternate timeline where mankind has built a base on the moon before the turn of the millenium), which absorb the heat during reentry, causing them to grow into a giant monster, Guilala. The titular beasts looks like Godzilla but with a head that resembles a flying saucer mixed with a chicken. It is one of the more "unique" kaiju to grace the big screen.

This film is set in its own timeline, centered around the G8 summit in Hokkaido, Japan. The world leaders--the USA, Great Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Germany, Russia, and Japan--have gotten together so that European countries can bitch at the Japanese Prime Minister about not being the agreed climate change goals from the last summit. While that is going on, a meteorite strikes and unleashes Guilala, who immediate destroys (what I assume to be) Sapporo. The world leaders decide to stick around and try to defeat Guilala with one cockamamie scheme after another (eg. giant holes in the ground, secret venom formulas, poison gas, etc.). In the end, a tabloid reporter (Natsuki Katou, of Eko Eko Azarak: The Awakening) and her photographer (Kazuki Kato, best known playing "Kamen Rider Kabuto"), help some villagers in a nearby forest awaken the local god, Take-Majin (Takeshi Kitano), to fight Guilala.

Much of the humor is derived from racial stereotypes, at least the Japanese view of how these foreign cultures act. The American president is all "Ra! Ra! Militarism!" and very much an Alpha Male. The Russian president is sneaky. The Italian president is coasting entirely on the reputation of Ancient Roman civilization. The French president (clearly a parody of Nicolas Sarkozy) spends most of the film trying to get into the knickers of his cute interpreter...which leads into one of the film's bigger twists. Let's just say that when the current Japanese Prime Minister steps away and lets his predecessor step in, the "new" guy has a reason for wanting to resort to nuclear weapons.

Interestingly enough, the scenes involving the reporter and her photographer feel like a reaction to Godzilla-Mothra-King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001), from her working at a tabloid to the use of native Japanese guardian monsters to scenes set in foggy forest. There is even a scene where people are being interviewed about Guilala's rampage and one guy says that he wishes it were Varan and Baragon who were doing the rampaging, which is a callback to the original script for GMK.

The early destruction scenes are actually stock footage from the original The X from Outer Space, although the new footage is sorta decent. They did a great job of recreating the original Guilala suit. But the humor is OK at best. The lack of a score worthy of Ifukubi, Oshima, or Ohtani hurts the film. And in the end, it is little more than a curio for the hardcore kaiju enthusiasts.

Earth Defense Widow (Japan, 2014: Minoru Kawasaki) - High-concept film whose premise is: "A former geisha becomes a jet pilot to fight against monsters following her husband's death and discovers that fighting kaiju makes her aroused." Despite the luridness of that description, this film is reasonably chaste in its execution, with the gorgeous lead actress (Mitsu Dan) mainly showing the viewer her bare back. After the opening monster sequence, in which the female protagonist almost kills herself by orgasming mid-flight, the film becomes a whole of talk until the final 15 minutes.

As there are no subbed or dubbed versions available as of now, I had no idea what was happening. There is some running joke of the American embassador--a Japanese actor dubbed to speak English with a British accent--always having sexy time with an African-American girl whenever the Japanese authorities call him. The film climaxes (har!) with the main girl performing a naked sexy dance in front of the kaiju. The monster--which looks like a cross between Godzilla and Gyaos, with a couple of extra horns and crests--puts its claws over its crotch and jumps up and down until it keels over. I'd like to think that it was trying so hard to not bust a nut that it simply had a heart attack. But beyond that, there isn't much to recommend this film.

Big Man Japan (2007)

Big Man Japan (2007)
Starring: Hitoshi Matsumoto, Riki Takeuchi, Ua, Ryûnosuke Kamiki, Haruka Unabara, Tomoji Hasegawa
Director: Hitoshi Matsumoto

Interesting mockumentary/satire on both Japanese culture and Tokusatsu films from comedian Hitoshi Matsumoto (he wrote 594 episodes of the series "Gaki no Tsukai", which ran for about 34 years). The film follows a never-seen documentarian (Tomoji Hasegawa) who follows a seemingly boring man around asking him all sorts of questions. The subject of the filming is Masaru Daisato (Matsumoto himself), who as it turns out, has a monstrous alter-ego: Big Man Japan.

Big Man Japan is the title given to certain people in Japan who have the ability to grow to giant sizes when exposed to electricity in order to fight giant monsters, which have been terrorizing Japan for at least six generations. Daisato's invalid grandfather (Taichi Yazaki) represented the peak of the popularity of the Big Men, but things are different now. The Japanese people are no longer wowed by the monster-fighting antics of the Big Man and tend to see him as a nuisance rather than a hero. And since Daisato's identity is widespread, he has to deal with graffiti on his house, dirty looks and staring, and falling TV ratings ("The weather report is more popular than your fights," the interviewer observes at one point). And a series of scandals just seem to make the Big Man's popularity even worse, even though it's him who's fighting the monsters, not the people.

The first part of this film is dry. Very, very dry. So understated, in fact, that I almost fell asleep watching it. It picks up a little and the monster sequences--done through an unconvincing-but-endearing form of motion capture--become more frequent. I'm sure there are lots of commentary on Japanese society amidst all of this, although as a gaijin, it is not all that apparent. Perhaps it is a comment on the declining popularity of tokusatsu as Japan's dismal birth rate means that there are less and less kids to consume the product. Perhaps it is a comment on Japan's bully culture, in which anyone related to someone unpopular is expected to be mistreated by everyone else. Perhaps it is a comment on how traditional stars--kabuki, sumo, etc--are losing popularity as demographics, culture, etc. shifts.

The film switches gears in the last 15 minutes, when it inexplicably becomes an outright parody of traditional tokusatsu shows, especially Ultraman. Even the special effects switch over from modern CGI and mo-cap to miniatures and suits, with the low quality that most Westerners assume that all tokusatsu and Godzilla movies have. And even then, there is some commentary on America in this sequence, but I'm not really sure what it is supposed to be. I think Japanese people--or people who have lived in Japan for an extended period of time--will get Big Man Japan more than people who simply casually "visit" the country when they need to scratch their kaiju itch.

Mechanical Violator Hakaider (1995)

Mechanical Violator Hakaider (1995)

Starring: Jiro Okamoto, Yuji Kishimoto, Toshiyuki Kikuchi, Mai Hosho
Director: Keita Amemiya

So, in the early 1970s, one of the popular Tokusatsu series in the midst of more than a dozen was Android Kikaider, about a half-blue, half-red robot who fights the forces of evil. One of the supporting characters was a black-clad robot named Hakaider, who seemed to jump back and forth between antagonist and uncomfortable ally. Director-artist-FX man Keita Amemiya, best known these days for his "Garo" series, was on a roll in the 1990s, starting with Zeiram. Right before he made that film's sequel, he made this movie, sort of a retelling of the Hakaider story.

A group of treasure hunters are snooping around a series of underground tunnels looking for hidden treasure, as per the local urban legends. They eventually find a secret vault, which they blow up. Instead of treasure, however, they find a human-faced cyborg (Jiro Okamoto), whom they immediately recognize as Hakaider. The treasure hunters try to destroy it, but Hakaider comes back online, takes on his tokusatsu persona, and straight-up murders them all. He then hops on a motorcycle (with his trusty shotgun in tow) and heads over to Jesus Town.

What is Jesus Town? Well, think of it as the Japanese tokusatsu version of the alternate future of the Flanders Dystopia from "Time and Punishment" from the Simpsons - Treehouse of Horror V. A white-clad angelic being named Ryo (Yuji Kishimoto) runs a "peaceful" city through fear and lobotomies (well, they are microchips inserted into brains, but the effect is the same). His main enforcer is a winged, white-painted robot named Michael (Toshiyuki Kikuchi). Well, Hakaider arrives in town and immediately starts picking fights with Ryo's security force while falling in with a group of rebels, including a woman named Kaoru (Mai Hosho), who has been dreaming of a black knight saving her from a demon in angel's clothing. FORESHADOWING!!!

The plot is pretty simple: Hakaider shows up, doesn't talk a lot, and just gets into an escalating series of gunfights (and some fist fights) until he finally has to throw down with Ryo and Michael (get it? Michael the Archangel?). There is some interesting religious iconography and I liked the visuals of Kaoru's dreams. There is a brief moment when the rebels are talking about what they'd do if they managed to overthrow Ryo, to which Hakaider points out that if they did the things they fantasize about, they would ultimately be no better than the current leaders--a common theme of left-wing revolutions overthrowing right-wing dictatorships. I didn't understand the entire story--the death of one character is handled in a rather odd manner--and some of the mechanics of Ryo's armed guard weren't explained well.

But there is a lot of gunplay and people who don't need John Woo (or John Wick) stylistics do enjoy constant machine gun fire should enjoy this. There is a robot battle at the end, followed by a typical Keita Amemiya climatic monster escalation (see his Zeiram movies) which is realized almost completely in stop motion animation. AWESOME!