Kids today are missing the pure joy of transcendentally crappy monster movies, and James “The Nerd” Rolfe is just the one to educate them. The dude behind Angry Video Game Nerd, the Godzillathon is the latest series on Rolfe’s Cinemassacre site. It consists of Rolfe walking you through, movie by movie, Toho’s beloved franchise, beginning with the original 1954 classic, which now seems like a somber Kurosawa film compared to the increasingly wacky sequels that came after it (including the Americanized re-cut with Raymond Burr’s U.S. journalist character inserted into the Tokyo mayhem.)
In each 2-4 minute capsule review, Rolfe cuts to the moments of each installment’s maximum silliness or smackdown awesomeness. See Godzilla in a 70’s psychedelic head trip with hallucinations and a monster made of poo! See — no, seriously, see — Godzilla dancing an Irish jig for no discernible purpose! (I hope someone makes that last one into an animated .gif.)
This is all geektastic fun in itself, but Rolfe also adds cultural context and back-story trivia that movie nerds will love. For instance, I knew that “Godzilla” is an Anglification of the Japanese word Gojira, but didn’t know that that’s a mash-up for “gorilla” and “whale” — or that it was originally the nickname of a thick-thighed Toho employee. Rolfe tracks down the urban legend that there are alternate endings for King Kong vs. Godzilla (as the “American” monster, Kong supposedly loses to the local favorite in the version that played in Japan), or the even stranger rumor that in the German version, it turns out Dr. Frankenstein made the monsters.
On the downside, Rolfe’s tone is uneven, flitting between monster geek cinephile and ironic cultural commentator. Considering the source material, there’s ample room for Rolfe to scale higher heights of weirdness, but he usually passes, as he’s too busy digging crushed pagodas and man-in-suit wrestling. So it’s not up there with MSTK 3000’s take on Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster. Still, it’s ideal lunchbreak viewing if you’re in need of a quick Godzilla fix — and really, who isn’t?
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