Tax Day seems like a perfect time to talk about massive kaiju stomping cities and killing people. Monster movies were a staple of 50s and 60s movies so of course there were lots of them on MST3K and the like. Even the King of the Monsters--Godzilla--was on MST3K, though rights issues have prevented those episodes from being reshown or released on DVD or streaming.
Gamera: One of the kaiju who came after the popularity of Godzilla, Gamera has a similar story: he's a giant turtle who is woke from his slumber at the bottom of the ocean and begins stomping the hell out of things. Instead of breathing fire, Gamera can pull all his limbs in and fly.
Despite all the stomping and murdering, an annoying kid named Kenny keeps telling everyone that Gamera is good. Somehow this kid is able to get into top secret military locations and command centers to whine about Gamera's goodness.
Eventually Gamera is trapped in a rocket and sent to Mars. But don't worry, he'll be back! Like Godzilla the movies started to become more geared towards kids. They also went from black-and-white to color. And like Godzilla to make Gamera a good guy they brought in other monsters like the pterodactyl-like Gaos and the knife-headed Guidron. Though unlike Godzilla, Gamera hasn't had any big Hollywood reboots, though there was a well-regarded revival in Japan in the 90s.
I got all five MST3K episodes with Gamera on DVD back in 2012 or so when they were on sale on Amazon, but like Godzilla rights issues have caused them to go out of print and unable to be shown on streaming. An interesting (and gross) story about the creation of the Gamera according to an expert in a DVD extra: the studio was originally going to make a movie about rampaging mutant rats. To this extent they paid people to bring in real sewer rats because ones from a pet shop wouldn't be scary enough. To make the rats act how they wanted they had electrified plates on the set. But luckily for everyone the movie was shut down by health officials and so the studio just threw something together with a giant turtle.
Gammera the Invincible: This Rifftrax is basically the first Gamera movie only I think it was imported by a different company, hence the name change. They spliced in some lame scenes of American military people because I guess they thought the movie needed more white people in it. Also "Kenny" is actually called by his Japanese name, though still just as annoying.
Gorgo: In the early 60s the UK decided to get into the kaiju business with Gorgo. Some Brits go to an island off the Irish coast and kidnap a giant lizard monster. They take it back to London to make into a sideshow attraction. And then Gorgo's mother shows up. She's much bigger and pissed off and so starts trashing a model of London. Apparently the movie did pretty well and the family bond was a new twist. Yet this never really became a franchise for some reason.
This episode features a cameo from film critic Leonard Maltin as he chooses this movie to try and destroy Mike and the bots, which of course is unsuccessful.
Giant Gila Monster: This is a good example of a typical 50s B monster movie: a giant iguana (a normal iguana filmed against miniatures) terrorizes a small town. Only this one features some bad singing and gratuitous shots of people putting their legs up on stuff. One of the intermission skits of this MST3K episode is a montage of all the times someone puts his leg up on something.
Beginning of the End: It's pretty much the same thing as Giant Gila Monster, only with "giant" grasshoppers terrorizing Chicago--or postcards of Chicago. Young Peter Graves is a scientist who figures out how to lure the grasshoppers out to Lake Michigan where they're killed. One of the intermission skits they demonstrate how you can make your own 50s monster movie with a rubber animal and postcards and have a "giant" grasshopper terrorizing cities and even the Beatles. In another intermission sketch Crow debuts his play, "Peter Graves at the University of Minnesota," which is just Crow as Graves saying stuff like, "Hi, I'm Peter Graves at the University of Minnesota." It's still better than a Michael Bay movie.
There are actually a ton more of these I could dig up because so many of these crappy movies ended up in public domain or so cheap that they could be on MST3K back in the 90s.
Dinosaurus: This is a 60s movie in color about miners on an island who wake giant claymation dinosaurs: a T-Rex and a "brontosaurus" or whatever they're called at the moment. There's also a caveman who's unfrozen and goes around being confused by mirrors and kitchen appliances. Most of it is about as lame as the effects.
This one is actually on Rifftrax, not MST3K.
Arachnia: This is also on Rifftrax and from about 2003 thanks to our good friends at Edgewood Studios. During a meteor shower, a small plane in New Mexico (actually Vermont) is knocked out of the sky and crashes. An archaeologist, his assistant, a grad student, two bimbos sleeping with the prof to get a passing grade, and the plane's pilot find a house in the woods and are soon beset by giant spiders.
Unlike the 50s these aren't rubber spiders filmed against miniature backgrounds; they're crappy CGI spiders--hooray for progress! There are also buckets of fake blood and a lot of non-scares plus boobs! So pretty much a standard horror movie, only even cheaper.
Night of the Lepus: What's the least scary giant killer animal you can think of? Bunny rabbits would probably be near the top of the list. Since Night of the Bunny Rabbits wouldn't be very scary they use the technical name of "Lepus." This was made in the 70s and co-stars DeForest Kelley as one of the guys who has to fight giant rabbits destroying a small town. These rabbits apparently eat meat instead of veggies. Like those old 50s movies this clearly uses miniatures against normal-sized rabbits. Even when the rabbits are smeared with blood they still aren't very scary. In the end it's pretty easy to destroy them: just have a bunch of cars shine headlights at them to herd them into power lines that fry them. Problem solved!
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