Tuesday, August 4, 2009

WTF?!?!?


This is a still from a 2007 Japanese monster movie entitled (I kid you not) Big Man Japan. The eponymous hero is some kind of mutant who can apparently inflate himself to Godzilla-sized proportions in order to fight surreally weird rubber-suit monsters like the pink squid-thing in the picture (is it me, or does the look on its face imply that it is relieving itself against that cardboard skyscraper?).

Anyway, I found the trailer below on a blog I visit daily and keep meaning to mention. BitsandPieces is a fairly random, but often funny collection of flotsom and jetsom from all over the Internets. I often post YouTube clips from them on my Facebook page. They're motto is "We Search the Web, So You Don't Have To." Blogger Jonco is a pleasant gentleman from St. Louis who often incorporates some very amusing Southern philosophy into his posts. If you haven't found his blog, I urge you to go. There is certain to be something to amaze and amuse almost everyone.

And now, without further ado, the latest WTF?!?!? moment. Ladies and germs, I give you the trailer for Big Man Japan:







Truly - do we need more proof that the Japanese have lost their pop-culture minds? Between this and films like RoboGeisha, I am convinced that modern Japanese Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror filmmakers have rejected the perterbing and inexplicable 'J-Horror' style of the late '90's/early 00's and re-embraced the over-the-top ridiculousness of Japan's Atomic Age cinema.

Along with the Universal Monsters pantheon, I grew up on Toho Studios movies. Godzilla, Mothra, Ghidra, Rodan and Gammera were both to be feared and revered and "Ultraman" was the world's greatest giant hero (even though by age 6 I knew they were just stunt-men in latex). Like Lugosi, Karloff, Lorre. Chaney and Price, those rubber monsters were icons of my youth and certainly influenced my appreciation of both the absurd and the inept... and how they often intersect.

Hope you got a giggle out of that, at least.

More, anon.
Prospero

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