Despite the slow crawl of fresh giant monster movie news these days, there's still a lot of cool historical information and fan-based kaiju content coming out, and to highlight some things of note, rather than bury them in the regular Random thread, I thought they might be better served by a thread in a more appropriate subforum. Please post kaiju items of interest you have run across. Here are two things I've seen in the past couple days:

-Following one of Prankster's links in the comic book movies thread, I saw this article about a much-maligned '90s comic "event", but one that had some really neat creature designs. Specifically, things clearly derived from the question, "What if xenomorphs infected the Toho monsters?" Not just vaguely dinosaurian things, either, they all have particular antecedents: going from top to bottom it looks like designs based on King Seesar (for Gluttony), Varan (for Sloth), Kamacuras (for Pride), Mothra (for Lust), Anguirus (for Anger), Rodan (for Greed), and Kumonga (for Envy).

-A new brontothere (extinct group of giant horned mammals most closely related to horses) was described today, with the name Diplacodon gigan, from the obvious inspiration. Given how a number of kaiju are named after prehistoric animals (e.g., Rodan, Anguirus), it is fun to see that pattern come full circle thanks to the efforts of fan-scientists. D. gigan joins a rarefied group of monster-taxonomic critters that includes Gojirasaurus (dinosaur), Sinemys gamera and Gamerabaena (turtles), and the Godzilliidae (a family of minute cave crustaceans comprising the genera Godzillius, Godzilliognomus, and Pleomothra--good names, but I have to criticize carcinologists for not going with the more apt Destoroyius and Pleoebirah instead).

Or, for that matter... wait, what was the big crab in Yog, Monster from Space called? Ganime, was it?

I believe so. Gezora was the cuttlefish and Kameba was the turtle. Lord I miss that movie.

Got it in one, El Santo.

I have GOT to find that one of these days...



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At least I'm FINALLY seeing Gamera 3 this weekend...

The DVD can be bought for like 10 bucks, and is well worth it. It's kind of slow (nowhere near Dogora levels, though), but has some of my favorite Toho monster designs. The shuffling squid Gezora has been dear to me since I first saw him in the old Godzilla: King of the Monsters game for the NES, and I love the weirdly elongating neck of the giant turtle Kamoebas (which goes a long way to distinguish him from Gamera).

His showing up (albeit as a corpse) in Godzilla, Mothra, Mechagodzilla: Tokyo SOS was one of the highlights of a movie whose other highlights were pretty much the updated SFX on the battle sequences they stole from previous movies. Although it was a nice bit of continuity that Hiroshi Koizumi's character from Mothra was back.