Attack of the Super Monsters

My three kids and their friends loved this film.From the animated portions to the dino puppets.My boys were especially fond of King Tyrannus,surely one of the most camp villians of all time.The picture plays like it might have been meant to be the first of many sequels or an unsold tv pilot.At any rate,park your sensibilities at the door,grab your popcorn and enjoy.Let the farce be with you.

I'm not here to say this movie is good. When inflicting it on my friends, I have found they often experience physical pain. And while this is not the worst of all Japanese giant monster sojourns (Redman, I'm looking at you), it generally isn't worth it even for a kaiju enthusiast.

BUT...there is something to be told about this movie that people need to know when they go in to see this. When giant monster movies were all the rage in Japan in the mid-60s to mid-70s, dozens of superheroes sprung up to combat this rubbery menace. Some, like Ultraman or Spectreman, had staying power and would later prove to be cultural icons. Others, like Silver Kamen and Fireman, would fade into obscurity.

Enter Tsuburaya Productions. Eiji Tsuburaya's company, the owners of Ultraman and the special effects producers behind Godzilla, decided to continue with the trend that had netted them so much money and also jump on the embiggening anime bandwagon. Hence the new TV series Izenborg. It combined live action giant monsters, miniatures, and fairly primitive anime.

Enter Quality Video. They cut four of these episodes together into one movie. That's why it is "episodic" and "formulaic."

That doesn't explain why Jim hits his sister (which drew laughter), or the line "I'll get you, you ratty rat rat!"

I will give it this much, this film is definitely something different. It's live action guy-in-a-suit monster action with anime humans. It's obvious that whoever produced this film had a limited budget, but how many movies are there in which dinosaurs can not only talk, but work together to kill humans? Not only that, but I thought it was only cartoons where the monsters literally yell "ATTACK! DESTROY! KILL!" as they are attacking the city but, once again, this movie proved me wrong. The concept is hilarious, which in itself makes the movie worth watching, but its hard to follow sometimes and even gets a little typical. Overall its a decent addition to a monster movie collection.

Wow, this was something. The kaiju dinosaur monsters are depicted in 3D clay stop-motion animation. After being imprissoned for (I didn't catch how long, but at least millenia), they awaken, vowing vengeance upon all humans. They turn all of the dogs on earth red, which somehow makes them evil, and the dogs start wreakaing havoc and destruction on humans and their cities.

It's up to four heros, depicted in 2D cell animation, to somehow stop the madness. Unfortunately, two of the heroes are bumbling klutzes. The other two are siblings? Married? I couldn't tell, but they unite in mind, body, and spirit to fight the evil monsters and restore sanity.

The rapid switch between the stop-motion and cell animation was jarring. Overall, the movie was quite bonkers.

Watched via "Rifftrax: Attack of the Super Monsters"

Imagine an anime where you get live action models and such being destroyed by dinosaurs! Cool, eh? Well this one had its moments, but they kind of failed on the anime portion of this thing. This is one of those films that is actual episodes from a television show pieced together to make a film featuring monsters attacking every episode like a lot of those Japanese shows in the 70's like Ultraman, only here we get anime heroes who ride what looks like a giant bus into action which is also live action. The whole thing is messed up to the extreme!

The story, some Tyrannosaurus is introduced telling all these weird monsters to destroy, but this part seems to go unexplained and may have just been the initial introduction to the television show. Seems like if these three monsters and the main one went on a super attack they could have easily been victorious, but instead they generally like to attack one at a time and incorporate other, smaller animals to do their dirty work like dogs, bats and rats in that order. I wonder if in future episodes if they continued to get smaller animals to assist. Well fear not as Gemini force is going to help as their team consists of a brother sister combo and two idiots who fly the back half of the bus. For reasons unknown to me, the sister and brother combine to form one being and this for some reason makes their ship stronger. Why they need this odd and disturbing transformation is beyond me as you could just make a more powerful weapon, but hey, Gemini Force!

The monsters attacking is pretty out there, but cool in a way as we have yelling dinosaurs. The first scene had one jumping out of the ground and it reminded me of Godzilla the way it did that. Too bad the anime portion is so weak and poorly animated and I would have much rather they become a giant robot to fight the beasts rather than just a plane with a drill and buzz saws. I also got a bit confused as there are two of the super monsters that looked just like the leader and i was like, "What, they killed him already?"

So this thing is wild and definitely worth a look see. I mean, you have dinosaurs wrecking havoc and brother and sister arguing over the sister's refusal to ask for a refund when her blouse got chewed up by rights. We have dogs overrunning the city and then we watch as the two idiot members bulldoze through the dogs! This thing is just crazy and an insane mixture of various formats to make it even more odd. I will warn you, you will get tired of watching them explain the incredible transformation the brother and sister undergo...