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1. 

   Maradona

   104 Kudos

   10/29/09

   Oh, my son loves absolutely Ghidorah! His favourite is Vs the Astro Monster at the moment.
   
   I also bought him ten of his favourite monster Bandai Godzilla toys from Japan for his birthday a couple weeks back; he's crazy about Ghidorah and Mecha King Ghidorah in particular.
   
   We haven't seen any Toho monster movies, besides Godzilla, at all. Any you'd recommend for us?
   
   Keep on rockin,
   
   David
   
   Original comment »

   10/29/09

   Reply from Bifocals:

   Hi David. Tell your son I said Happy Birthday! With ten figures he can recreate DESTROY ALL MONSTERS whenever he gets the urge. :) Always amazed me how much kids love the Big G , usually on first sight. Friends have brought their children over & I've given quite a few smaller ones away over the years. The last ones available in retail stores here were way back in 2002 when Bandai released a set of four sweet looking 'Classic Godzilla' figures: Burning Godzilla, Rainbow Mothra, Gigan & my favorite the Godzilla 1954. The toy stores were flooded with licensed TOHO items from the mid 90's until the '98 Americanized version killed the market. Biggest Godzilla I've got is about 13" tall. My son & siblings always give me a hard time about what's going to happen to all that stuff when I die (as if I'd know anyway). Got shelves of Universal Monsters, Harryhausen Giant Critters, robots & things sitting around the living room. Eventually told people that was the person I was & if they didn't like them to stay home. My two favorites are the recreation of a Martian War Machine for the '53 WAR OF THE WORLDS & a life-sized exact replica of the alien from THE OUTER LIMITS episode "The Zanti Misfits". I just love opening that box & letting someone see it up close and personal. Even if they've never seen that episode the Being is just so malevolent looking & staring right at you. My Dad ruined me when I was four & took me to see a double feature of THE WEREWOLF and EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS. Poor guy always regretted he did. Anyway, made me decide I was going to get older but that didn't mean I'd ever have to 'grow up'. My favorite Toho 'classic' Godzilla has always been DESTROY ALL MONSTERS since it includes pretty much every one in the Japanese Giants version of a Pro Wrestling Battle Royal. ADV used to sell a gorgeous letterboxed DVD of the movie over here but not sure if it's still in print. THE H MAN is fun with a criminal who can turn himself into liquid & escape down sewers. This had disappeared from TV until TCM showed it a while back. I made sure to burn a dvd. With the SF Tohos I've always loved THE MYSTERIANS. When the original Mogera appears I smile like a six year old. Think that is one of the best designed Toho creations. As a kid the 'steal Earth women' plot didn't mean much (at that age who likes girls anyway? LOL!) but the battle scenes held my interest. We have two 24 hr. movie marathons in Columbus (about a three hour drive from here): SF in the Spring & Horror as Halloween approaches (that lasted from noon Oct. 17 till noon Oct. 18 this year) & back in the 90's I finally got to see it on a huge screen after all those years on TV. I probably sound crazy but I'm 57 with a bunch of health problems but still attend those marathons & plan to as long as possible. Golly, this one was a bit of a nightmare since it was in a different cinema than usual & the restoration wasn't finished. Only about 1/2 of the theater seats were delivered so the other 150+ were literally folding chairs! Ouch! Wore me out but I have no plans to retire from life. Matter of fact the evening before the friend I attend these with (he's a mere youngster of 56) & I went to the drive-in in our home town for a showing of CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON in 3-D & THE ADDAMS FAMILY then went home to rest a few hours before heading up the highway to Columbus. Still haven't recovered all the way but should be fine by the SF one in March/April 2010. BATTLE IN OUTER SPACE is an excellent movie too. This & the original RODAN contained the most frightening scenes of any Toho movies when Alien weapons or giant flying critters would create hurricane like winds and there were scenes of (usually soldiers) holding on to anything solid to try and not be blown away when the force overcame gravity. Also like FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD as the plot is just so out there. Classic Media released a two DVD set of the original RODAN & the FQTW 'sequel' WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS (when I got older it was amazing afterI discovering it was a sequel) which contain both the 'Americanized' & original Japanese versions of both movies. Once again my Dad contributed to my passion for all this material when he took me to the same cinema & I saw RODAN in the late 50's when it got released here. Had nightmares about those giant insects in the mine for quite a while). Classic also put out a set with both GOJIRA & the GODZILLA we saw here with Raymond Burr. Read a review of the Blu-ray release & they left off the American version. Glad I picked up the regular edition when it first came out since it also includes audio commentaries (I usually skip those but these were informative), shorts about the creation of the suit & developing the story + trailers. A good deal. Do you like many of the non-Dracula Hammers? My favorite series was the Cushing Frankensteins since they took him from a ruthless young man all the way to Old Age ending up in an asylum. Peter Cushing can 'say' so much using only his eyes. The only Cushing Frankenstein I don't care much for is THE EVIL OF FRANKENSTEIN. I know it made Hammer quite a bit of cash but some of the movies done during their brief association with Universal were less than stellar & EVIL seemed like a 40's Universal mixed with Hammer. Still remember how let down I felt when walking home after seeing THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. The costume and mask looked striking and the opening credits ominous then the Phantom himself turned into a crashing bore who had an assistant carrying out the dirty work. Of course back then I'd never heard the rumor that Cary Grant supposedly wanted to play the Phantom so the script writers had to figure out some way to make the character sympathetic. Then, at the end he jumps down while pulling the mask off himself? I still remember wondering why. Always loved their Mummy movies and pretty much everything except for some of the 'Psycho/madness' variations I'd get stuck watching as 1/2 of a matinee double feature at the local cinema & the last couple of 'women in fur bikinis' caveman ones. I love PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES & the 'dream' sequence is one of the most frightening Hammer put on film. Collecting movies takes ironic turns at times. I've been doing a lot of trading since joining this message board and finally tracked down copies of VAMPIRE CIRCUS which got a token edited release in cinemas here then showed up on TV censored even more so it didn't even make sense and TWINS OF EVIL a month or so ago. I was so happy to finally get the opportunity to enjoy them. Got looking at the schedule for MGM-HD & as part of their two day Halloween programming are showing three Hammer movies this Sunday. You guessed it: VAMPIRE CIRCUS, THE VAMPIRE LOVERS & TWINS OF EVIL. All are listed with an 'R' rating so hopefully CIRCUS won't be that cut up mess. For some reason VAMPIRE CIRCUS has never gotten a legitimate video release in the U.S. so I hope lots of people finally get to see it. From what I've read on the board MGM started their HD channel & sometimes odd combinations were programmed since they used just whatever they had HD masters of. Supposedly now they are also going to be showing movies that were remastered, in the pipeline to get released then they decided not to (maybe the bad economy?). What's the strangest Hammer you've watched yet? Mine has been their co-production with Shaw Brothers THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES. Complete anarchy! At times it's like a waking dream it gets so far off the wall. Like THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA this never got picked up by Warner Bros. in the U.S. so they got sold to a small company which was partially owned by Max Rosenberg who co-ran Amicus at one time & released them as 'Blaxploitation' features! LEGEND got retitled THE 7 BROTHERS MEET DRACULA while RITES became COUNT DRACULA AND HIS VAMPIRE BRIDE. Both had lots of running time cut out but they kept the violence & nudity so the movies make even less sense than the originals. At one time Anchor Bay released a double feature on video here of both LEGEND & BROTHERS. I used to not care for the latter but watching them again recently the edited cut works better as a horror movie as the vampires are really brought to the forefront & scenes of them in action are often repeated superimposed over dialog sequences keeping the movie constantly moving. In the U.S. at least Anchor Bay is beginning to offer the out of print Hammers beginning with DRACULA-PRINCE OF DARKNESS on Amazon.com as DVD-Rs. Only thing is they are priced the same as regular discs. Have any of the Hammer characters been released as toys in the U.K.? I had to purchase a STAR WARS toy just to get a Peter Cushing figure! Hammer figures would look so neat if they were done like Sideshow used to produce the Universal Monsters with exact sculpting. Sorry to have run on for so long David. Once I get started enthusiasm takes over from common sense. My apologies. Toho & Hammer especially were such a big part of going to the movies from childhood & remains so today. When we were small my brother & I always tried to sit in the front row of the cinema so we could look straight up at the screen. The monsters were huge! Dan

2. 

   Maradona

   104 Kudos

   10/28/09

   Nice! Yeah, what a great board this is, I'm so glad I found it when researching Godzilla movies with my 9 year old son. I can spend hours here reading the great threads. There's a lot of knowledge here, and I'm lookin forward to reading more...
   
   Cheers,
   
   David
   
   Original comment »

   10/28/09

   Reply from Bifocals:

   Hi David. Glad you joined. :) I'd just about given up message boards since the few I'd tried got downright nasty at times. Lots of information here and people who like helping people out with questions instead of making fun of them. Nice that you and your son are sharing an interest. I'm an old geezer (57 YIKES!) & my son is 29 now but we have a ton of pleasant memories of attending conventions and watching movies together. Matter of fact we still hit the cinemas together. Has your son got any favorites among the Toho giant critters yet other than the Big G? Wonder what he thought the first time he saw Ghidorah in action? God bless you and yours , Dan :)

3. 

   Crespi

   11 Kudos

   10/27/09

   It is great that one can find nice and helpful people around the world through the internet.
   Thanks for your help Dan, am also very happy I got to know you. yours, Dom
   
   

   10/28/09

   Reply from Bifocals:

   Thanks for the kind words Dom. When I set the DVR for TCM last Sunday Thought the last thing I needed was another version of "Nosferatu" but was pleasantly surprised yesterday to discover it was one of the British TV 'Channel Four Silents' TCM often programs. This was done in 19997 but I'd never heard of the particular restoration. It was like seeing the movie for the first time! Virtually flawless quality and I don't know if it was done via computer or what but everything moved at the proper speed. Beautiful tints along with two delightful bonuses: scenes & extended bits I'd never seen before and a musical score by James Bernard of Hammer Films fame. A treat for the eyes and ears. I even put four stars down along with the other info on the non-recordable side. Caught some kind of bug Saturday & spent all day Sunday & most of this week in bed. Doesn't make sense because the doctor insists I get a flu shot every year. Felt like the day after someone had beaten me up. Got an appointment with the pain specialist around 8 a.m. tomorrow morning.Your kind message made the day much brighter. God bless, Dan :)

4. 

   Geezermonster

   111 Kudos

   10/20/09

   Dan: My home e-mail is jfsteinle@msn.com if you want to send some photos. Send me yours and I'll scan and send some pics I still have of when I painted monster pictures on the windows of my Dad's pharmacy in Hamilton for Halloween when I was 11 or 12.

   10/20/09

   Reply from Bifocals:

   Will do. :) Which pharmacy did your Dad own? Lord willing my so be back safe, sound and rested this weekend so they should be sent within about a week from today. Your post amazed me! One of my favorite people on Earth is a movie fan that I got introduced to around 1980. I'm 57 & Steve is at least 14 years older but hunted me up at Champion Paper when someone told him I collected films. Way back then you had to buy actual film prints so the hobby wasn't very common. Got introduced to the wonderful world of 'B' Westerns when we'd get together once a month to watch a several oaters in his basement. Golly, most of the co-workers we both knew who attended are all dead now. Steve and I still get out for lunch occasionally. Sorry for running off at the keyboard so much. Sure am happy I discovered this board after a couple of bad experiences on a couple of others that weren't exactly civilized. Talking about Hamilton theaters: Steve and his older brother always crack me up with tales of their adventures at The Lyric Theater on High Street. This one specialized in 'B' Westerns so they'd work odd jobs & hunt up empty soda & beer bottles to get money for admission. The place was so ancient that supposedly it didn't even have an inside toilet! They were front row kids just like me a couple of decades later. It must have been primitive because my Dad was several younger than they were and when I asked him about The Lyric informed me he never set foot in the place. LOL! Looking forward to hearing from you here so I don't get booted off the board for long posts. :) You brought up names I hadn't heard from anyone else for years & memories kept returning. Hang in there & God bless, Dan

5. 

   Southern Beau

   91 Kudos

   08/01/09

   Wish you could attend my lecture on The Black Cat. Glad to know the showing a few weeks ago revealed Lugosi still has that magnetism women drool over.
   
   

   08/02/09

   Reply from Bifocals:

   Yep, Bela still has 'IT' big time. We were seriously surprised to hear ladies in different parts of the theater (it's a huge place) sigh and make those comments. Another of those aspects of Bela's career that makes a person wonder, "What if?" I always think of Mr. Lugosi as Bela since "Dracula" was the first movie I saw on SHOCK THEATER probably in 1957 when I was five years old & his movies and unique persona got me through lots of difficult times growing up & still do even at age 57. Missed "Frankenstein" the previous week due to the folks not letting me watch the program so I then made a point of staying at my Aunt Minnie's house on Friday nights. LOL! My father made the mistake of taking me to a double feature of "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers" and "The Werewolf" at the Rossville Theater in 1956 when I was four and the experience changed my life forever. To his dying day Dad always said he wished he hadn't. Again best of luck & thanks for the happily accepted friend offer. You are my first one here! :) God bless, Dan

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