“It's a pity we can't send Jet Jaguar to go and get Godzilla!”

Ah Godzilla. Haven’t really discussed any of his films here yet, which is a shame, since I’m a fan of giant monster movies. 1973 Gojira tai Megaro (Godzilla vs. Megalon), is considered one of the lesser Gojira films, though.

Story
So, we’re obviously in Japan and the boring human characters we have to follow are an annoying kid, his inventor older brother and another guy who… I don’t really know what he does. Anyway, the inventor has created a robot, Jet Jaguar (he has nothing to do with jaguars), that can fly and do other robot stuff. Unfortunately, the subterranean civilization of Seatopia is pretty angry about nuclear experimentation below the surface of the earth, and they decide they’ve had enough of our nonsense, so they send a giant beetle monster named Megalon up to teach us a lesson by destroying model tanks and buildings. Jet Jaguar is useful to the Seatopians because if controlled, he can help guide Megalon. Naturally, Jet Jaguar breaks free of that control and gets a message to Godzilla on Monster Island. And then suddenly he becomes sentient, taking control of his own programming, decides he has to take things into his own hands, and then grows to kaiju size because he subscribes to the Megatron school of Physics (where the laws of conservation of mass are optional), and he fights Megalon. It goes well too, until another Godzilla foe, Gigan, shows up and he & Megalon double team our hero. Can Jet Jaguar hold out long enough for Godzilla to show up and even the odds?

So its really a Jet Jaguar movie and Godzilla only shows up near the end.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Jun Fukuda, it provides about what you’d expect from a Godzilla movie, though production values seem a little lower than some others. Regardless, we do get four monsters in a tag team match by the end of the movie, so you can’t say they didn’t deliver on the kaiju. The designs themselves are also fairly interesting. Megalon and his drill hands and Gigan with his hook hands and buzz saw belly are both really damn weird, but that’s why they’re likable. Godzilla doesn’t get much screen time at all, but when he shows up he wrecks some faces and does a really goofy tailslide kick that is so insane that they show it to the audience twice to prove to you that it just happened. And as for Jet Jaguar, I dunno. I just really like the guy, with his Ultraman-like body and giant hammy grin. That grin really adds a lot.

Writing
Written by Jun Fukuda, and story credits to Takeshi Kimura (for "Gojira tai Uchu Kaiju") and Shinichi Sekizawa. The plot is ridiculous, but then again, who watches a kaiju film for the plot? The human stuff is boring, the military tries to stop the giant monster of the week, fails and then Godzilla shows up (in this case with an ally). Its not complicated, just thoroughly formulaic.
Sound
The score by Riichiro Manabe is totally suitable for the movie. The sound effects work is fine, but I just wish Jet Jaguar had more than just futuristic clanks for when he talks to the monsters. I know R2-D2 was still four years in the future, but something that sounded like robot speech would’ve been preferable.

Conclusion
I know its considered one of the lesser Godzilla movies, but I have an incredible level of fondness for Gojira tai Megaro that I don’t really have an excuse for. No, Godzilla’s not really in it all that much, but Jet Jaguar is a perfect blend of goofy and badass and the two vs. two battle at the climax is really damn entertaining.

I make no excuses for myself.



And then there's this:

How can you hate that??

“I have the sky as a roof and I sleep wherever I may.”

A year and some change ago I reviewed Legend of Drunken Master. Which, while an awesome movie in its own right, was also a sequel. Well, I finally saw the original film, Jui Kuen (aka Drunken Master in English), which, while still starring Jackie Chan, was made in 1978. So yeah, young Jackie Chan. So young he was credited as Jacky Chan.

Story
Wong Fei-Hung (Jackie Chan) is an extremely talented but precocious youth who’s father wants to drill some sense into. Dad calls in a relative, the wandering drunk Su Hua Chi (Siu Tien/Simon Yuen) to pound some humility into Fei-Hung. Fei-Hung naturally resists, butting heads constantly with his teacher. Meanwhile, the assassin Thunderleg (Jang Lee Hwang) is hired to take a contract out on Fe-Hung’s father, and naturally its up to our hero to save his father from getting kicked into the grave, but only after a grueling training period where he learns the intricacies of drunken-style kung-fu. That’s pretty much the plot right there. Refreshingly simple.

Visuals/Effects
Woo-ping Yuen (who’s kind of a big deal in the fight choreography world and the director of RMWC favorite Iron Monkey) directed this movie, and make no mistake, the entire movie revolves around martial arts (and fight scenes). It is important to note that it’s a fairly low-budget film, so many of the action sequences lack the flair of a lot of the sequel’s set-pieces. This movie gets by with the sheer athleticism of the cast, which is a different level of impressive. This was Jackie Chan’s breakout movie for a good reason, after all.

Writing
Written by Lung Hsiao, See-Yuen Ng, and Woo-ping Yuen, the story is quite straightforward in terms of plotting. It serves to follow Fei-Hung’s development from immature, selfish boy to more mature, less selfish young man. Simple, really. There’s also a fair amount of slapstick and most of the comedy is physical and broad.

Sound
Original music by Fu Liang Chou, which works great for the film. There’s also the issue of dubbing (which listening to the commentary enlightened me about). Apparently not all of the original Chinese audio track survives and so parts of the film use the English dub track, even when you go for the Chinese with English subtitles option on the DVD. Such is life.

Conclusion
Jui Kuen is a different experience than the more commonly seen sequel. This isn’t bad, just different. For instance, its much more self-contained, less concerned with geo-political situations and is much more…permissive of a hero who’s abilities are essentially “Popeye with booze instead of spinach.” It also has a smaller budget and lacks the polish of the sequel. However, both feature excellent martial arts and showcase Jackie Chan doing what he does best, and when you get right down to it, isn’t that what’s really important here?

“What we have just heard are the first words of the inhabitants of a new planet; a cosmic document!”

This next dip into old sci-fi is an interesting case, not because it’s good, but because of its origins. It’s a joint East German/Polish production from behind the Iron Curtain made in 1960 as Der schweigende Stern in German and Milcząca Gwiazda in Polish. It was edited, dubbed, and released in the US as First Spaceship On Venus (the version I saw) in 1962. Let’s find out if it’s an early victory for glasnost, or a bowl of bad borscht.

Story
Remember the Tunguska explosion? Of course you don’t, it was in 1908, well before you were born. But you’ve heard of it, yes? Well, according to this movie, it wasn’t a meteor that exploded, but a Venusian spaceship and some equipment will be recovered in the far future of 1985 and get scientists all in a tizzy. Fast forward a few years after that and SCIENCE is getting around to checking out Venus to see what’s going on. An international crew is assembled (naturally bringing a robot with them) and off they go in the rocketship Cosmokrator. There’s too many characters to really go into them (and they don’t really have too much in the way of personality). On the way to Venus, they pick up a signal and the linguist is able to eventually decipher it, and the astronauts learn that the Venusians planned to attack Earth, but its an old signal.

Instead of going back to warn Earth, they press on, reach Venus and discover that the planet is pretty much uninhabited. They do some exploring, some accidents happen, some scientists die and they learn that the Venusians blew themselves up with atomic weaponry a long time ago. So its basically an anti-nuke message, but coming from the other side of the Iron Curtain.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Kurt Maetzig, the special effects aren’t actually that bad for Soviet Bloc Sci-Fi. Its standard rockets on strings stuff for the space ships, but I’m okay with that. The robot is a bit less interesting, being a squat little thing that looks like it gets underfoot.

Writing
Based on the novel “Astronauci” by Stanislaus Lem (a well respected Polish novelist who’s had works adapted into other films, such as George Clooney’s Solaris). Adaptation by Jan Fethke, Wolfgang Kohlhaase, Günter Reisch, Günther Rücker, and Alexander Stenbock-Fermor and Screenplay Collaboration by the director Kurt Maetzig. Aside from giving short shrift to most of the character development, I don’t have much to complain about in terms of writing. It gets the job done and some of the ideas (a hostile and belligerent Venus that screwed itself over with nukes before man gets there serving as an anti-nuclear weapon message) are kind of novel. Still, the adaptation doesn’t really bring anything new to the table aside from a few suspect scientist deaths. They flat out leave the black scientist on the planet when they leave with the fairly flimsy excuse of “being hurled off the planet.” Hmmm…

Sound
Original Music by Andrzej Markowski is your typical orchestral spacy stuff from the rocket age. Nothing fancy or unexpected.

Conclusion
Its not bad, actually. Its not great, but you can tell they actually tried to make a legitimate, somewhat accurate (for the period it was made in) science fiction film. Given the constraints of the time and the fact that it was made in the Soviet Union, they did a pretty good job of it. Still, its value exists more as a curiosity and a look at filmmaking from behind the Iron Curtain than it is a movie that can stand up on its own merits. You’re better off tracking down the MST3K Version to enliven this otherwise dull movie.