Frankenstein versus Baragon

... okay, I'll admit to being addicted to RSM flicks. Most folks know it already anyway. I'll put up with most anything just to see Tokyo get stomped and monster fighting goodness, and cheer them all on good bad or indifferent.

I have limits, though. When I dump the film to a window on my desktop so I can play solitaire as well, that means all is not well in kaiju land. But I suffer along, even at that point. Yog: The Space Amoeba was a film of that calibre. But when I pull up a notepad instance because the movie's so dull I need to liven it up with 'color commentary' then it's truly a /bad/ one.

And thus I present Frankenstein versus Baragon. What follows is purely a result of the movie being one of the worst Toho flicks I've -ever- seen. It makes baby Godzilla (Godzilla Jr, Son of Godzilla, whatever) look like brilliance.

It opens 'somewhere in Germany' in 1945 with a German scientist, who promptly gets pissy because Reich soldiers have stomped into his lab and stolen his work; whatever it is is contained in a steamer trunk that gets carted to a German submarine, then transfered to a Japanese submarine. The German sub, for its trouble, gets blown to bits by an allied bomber as the Japanese sub makes good its escape. The trunk evenutally ends up in a military hospital in Hiroshima, where the audience finally gets to see what it is: Frankenstein's heart. Apparently this heart is the original 'little engine that could' and is immortal. The Japanese scientists were about to start running tests when the big one dropped and Hiroshima became the world's first city-sized graveyard.

Somehow, and it's never explained just how, in the wake of the Bomb the heart managed to regenerate into a normal-sized boy. He's discovered by scientists and put under study, and rapidly becomes a not-so-normal sized boy. Eventually he escapes and vanishes into the hills (just how the hell do you lose a 9' tall 'boy', anyway), with the scientists and the military in pursuit. There's also a bit in here about an oil rig that's destroyed in an 'earthquake'... it's supposedly foreshadowing that Baragon is around, but it's so damned random it makes no sense at all.

... and finally, at the 55:00 mark, Baragon wakes up for no reason whatsoever. He just randomly erupts from a mountainside and starts stomping buildings. Plastic buildings. And plastic animals with little pieces of string tied to them that get pulled through the plastic houses. This is seriously sad, folks; this makes the costumes in Godzilla vs King Kong look like masterpieces... and it's hailed as one of the worst 'zilla films of all time.

And at the 1:15:00 mark we -FINALLY- get to actually see Frankenstein's much enlarged monster versus Baragon. ... for just over 2 minutes. At this point I'm losing all sorts of patience here; when I uncase a kaiju film I want to see the monsters FIGHT, dagnabbit. Throwing styrofoam rocks at each other does NOT count.

1:20:00, the battle resumes. We've got less than 10 minutes left in the film, though. Sheesh. Ah, here we go. Side headlock, and Baragon breaks the hold. Frank rebounds from the ropes and leaps on Bara's back, trying for a reverse neckbreaker, but Bara manages to shake him loose. Bara's got Frank on the mat, but Frank kicks out and monkeyflips Bara out of the ring. Oh, Bara's -pissed- about that. Frank's throwing chairs at Bara (well, trees, but you get the idea), then tries for the reverse neckbreaker again. OH, Frank's hit Bara in the noggin with the ring bell; that's GOT to hurt. We got us a real slobberknocker here, folks. Bara goes for a throat lock, but Frank breaks it and tosses Bara back to the mat. There's nowhere to go, though, and Frank wades back into the battle. We cut briefly to crowd reactions, then back to the action as Frank executes a stunning airplane spin on Bara, lobbing him into one of the ringposts. Bara bails out of the ring, then UNDER it! Frank's looking all over for him, but ... OH MY GOD, Bara's come up BEHIND Frank. This doesn't look good, folks. Wait. He's trying... he did it! Folks, Frank just got Bara into a sleeper hold. Baragon is OUT, ladies and gentlemen, which makes... wait a minute... the ring is collapsing under the combined weight! Frank and Bara are sinking, vanishing into the arena floor before we can declare a winner! And they're gone, folks. Well, that's all we have for you folks tonight, since the ring's been destroyed and most of the arena's on fire.

... I need a cigarette.