Toho Studios

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Toho studios celebrated 30 years of the King of the Monsters, Godzilla, in 1984 with The Return of Godzilla. A re-edited version with clumsy inserted scene featuring Raymond Burr, much like how the original was treated, was released in the US the next year as Godzilla 1985.

Eschewing all of the continuity since 1954 Godzilla Returns places itself as the direct sequel to the original film with the kaiju once again raising from the seas and raining disaster upon Japan.

As is typical of this eras approach to the franchise the human story, one of dedicated military men, scientist, lost and found relatives, all are secondary to the spectacle of the massive monster trashing urban Japan. One does not watch these movies for deep exploration of the human condition and soul. (That you will find excellently done in Godzilla minus one.)

I watched Godzilla 1985 on its theatrical run, enjoyed it, but there little doubt that the inserted American scenes detract from the film and it is best to watch the original version with its original dialog track.

The Return of Godzilla is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

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I had originally planned to watch and comment on Cronos (1992) the first feature film from Guillermo del Toro, and I may still but when I attempted to watch it, I grew quite tired and far too exhausted for a foreign language film. Instead, I will contrast and compare the two versions of Dawn of the Dead the original from 1979 and the remake from 2004.

Both film deal with the world crashing into chaos with the now cliche ‘Zombie Apocalypse.’ The ’79 is a continuation of the plague that began with Night of the Living Dead while the ’04 goes from initial outbreak to societal collapse in the film’s opening minutes.

Laurel Group

Written and Directed by George A. Romero, the ’79 is at its heart a social satire and commentary on consumerism. The four principal characters are all people who have abandoned their greater duties to society for their own self-preservation and when flung by the zombie hordes into the outskirts of suburbia take refuge in an abandoned indoor mall.

Universal Pictures

Written by Guardians of the Galaxy fame James Gunn and directed by Zack Snyder the ’04 remake eschews the social commentary and satire for frenetic speed and a tale of pure survival. The characters, a much larger and more diverse collection, are simply the random survivors that have happened to have congregated at the shopping mall without the location providing any addition observation on humanity. The film has a few nods to the original that it drew its inspiration from, visual effects allowed Snyder to bring in the ‘copter that the original character fled with and Ken Foree from the ’70 makes a cameo appearance and restates one of his character’s lines from that groundbreaking film.

The ’79 while bleak in it ending presented the audience with at least the possibility that some of the characters may have found a sanctuary thew ’04 with its end-credit sequence eliminates any such ‘happy ending.’

I watched both films on their original release, the ’79 at a local drive-in theater and the ’04 at a mall’s multiplex. Both films grace my physical media collection but without a doubt it is the ’79 that is more often pulled from the shelves in played.

Gunn’s script is perfectly serviceable but lacks not only deeper meaning or theme but also Gunn’s eclectic and entertaining humor. Snyder’s direction is faster and better suited to modern audiences but lack the sly irony that Romero snuck into most of his movies.

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This spooky Season I think I will attempt to alternate between media I have already seen and enjoyed with pieces that are new to me and one I had not seen before is 2021’s Werewolves Within, a horror/comedy.

IFC Films

Finn Wheeler (Sam Richardson) a U.S. Forest Ranger recently reassigned to the tiny Vermont town of Beaverfield. A man with a deficit confidence Finn possesses a surplus of charm and congeniality. Befriended fellow newcomer postal worker Cecily More (Milana Vayntrub – you’ll recognize her from her spokesperson work for AT&T) Finn in introduced to the eclectic and farcical characters of the town. A snowstorm blocks all access into and out of the community just has a series of grisly attacks and murders begin and it is not long before the residents of the idyllic mountain village turn accusing each other of being the monster that stalks them in the cold winter dark.

It was not until the movie’s closing credits that I learned this was adapted from a video game of the same title, where the player is in a medieval village trying to uncover the secret of who is the werewolf. If they had approached this property as a serious film intent on being scary, I believe it would have failed utterly. I slotted this in the sub-genre of horror/comedy but more accurately it is a comedic horror. Each scene chooses comedy over shock or horror and the characters are drawn broadly with a decidedly farcical bend to their nature. If the choice was between playing it big for laughs or ‘realistically’ the consistent choice here was ‘go big.’

The cast, particularly Richardson and Vayntrub are charming and likable though What we do in the Shadows Harvey Guillen was given too little to do given his own comedic talent. Director Josh Ruben keeps the pace fast, never slowing down to let the audience question the choices either the characters or his own. Matthew Wise’s cinematography works witho9ut being flashy but lacks any deep style that might have elevated the movie.

Overall, it was an enjoyable but ultimately empty film that passed its 97-minute runtime without giving offense or earning great praise.

Werewolves Within is streaming on Shudder.

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This weekend I treated myself to a pair of horror films, one that was older, and I had seen before, Planet of the Vampires, and a new one in theaters, Azrael.

IFC Films

Azrael, filmed in Estonia, is a Christian themed horror film set an unspecified number of years after the ‘Rapture’ has removed the faithful from the Earth. The character Azrael (Samara Weaving) and her boyfriend have fled their isolated religious community trying to avoid becoming the zealots next human sacrifice to the violent monsters stalking the forest.

The community at some time in the past reached the strange conclusion that speaking was a sin and have made all their member’s mute. Azrael’s struggles to escape, survive, and extract revenge are all carried out without a word of dialog from the principal characters. A secondary character not from the community does appear in the second act but he speaks no English, leaving the film with zero English dialog.

Azrael presented several scenes of graphic violence and gore. The forest monsters, looking like charred and burnt corpses, act much like modern zombies with modern graphic make-up effects. The film has zero nudity, sexuality, or sexual violence, presenting the situation as a fairly straightforward struggles to survive. Most of the action, violence, and injury are presented in a believable fashion that doesn’t shatter suspension of disbelief. The films Christian mythological underpinnings play a vital part in the films resolution and mark the film in the same category along with movies such as Rosemary’s Baby & The Omen, but without the deep theological questioning of a film such as The Exorcist.

Written by Simon Barret and directed by E.L. Katz, this film is a challenging and bold experimentation. Denied dialog for exposition it’s a project that requires audience engagement as the viewer is constantly interpreting the events on screen. It is not a move that can be enjoyed with only half of one’s attention. Composer Toti Gudnason ably carries a great of the film with the score while cinematographer Mart Taniel captures the eerie nature of the Estonia wood as he did with 2017’s November.

I am left with questions about the world building and how this world works. IMDB lists all the character with their name, but in a community without spoken or even signed language how do names even work? That said, letting go of such questions is easy enough in the moment as the story unfolds.

Azrael is currently playing in limited release and should be making its streaming debut on Shudder soon. It is not a film for those who insist on frequent kills and witty banter, but it is one I am quite glad I watched in a theatrical setting.