GHWP Live Tweet June 28, 2015

     Sunday night, Turner Classic Movies will be running a Movie Camp Godzilla double feature, and the increasingly rare occasion that old Godzilla movies show up on television always puts me in a good mood. Whether you join #TCMParty's Godzilla festivities or #BNoirDetour, Gaping Head Wound Playhouse has a Toku Sunday Afternoon Matinee playlist that should strike your fancy beginning at 5:30PM EST.


     First up, for the #BNoirDetour crowd, I picked the only tokusatsu show I could remember seeing that came anywhere near being considered noir, a TNT English dubbed episode of Ultra Seven.

     Although known and referred to by his peers as Seven, Ultra Seven was the second hero to be introduced in the Ultra franchise. He debuted in the third self-titled Ultra series and has remained one of the most popular characters, so popular that he went on to sire a new generation of Ultra fans with the debut of his son, Ultraman Zero. The first Ultra series, Ultra Q, was more of a Twilight Zone black and white series that followed the Science Patrol's weekly encounters with eerie monsters, and Ultraman would not be introduced until his own series debuted the following year. Unfortunately, Ultra Q has no English dubbed or subtitled American release, but one English dubbed episode does exist.

Ultra Seven Episode 9 - Toys in Crisis (Japanese title - The Android Zero Directive)

     This episode stuck in my head because it had its own little version of a femme fatale in the form of a blonde Asian named "Barbie" (as if that's naturally-occurring).

Now I have to dig out my Aqua CDs...

     In this world, you'd think this would be an easy red flag to spot, but our heroes dismiss all common sense for the smile of a pretty girl. The TNT dubbing isn't even in the ballpark of subtle as it is revealed that Barbie is an oversized alien-controlled doll brought to life with only one mission: assassinate Dan Moroboshi, the alter-ego of Ultra Seven. In the original Japanese version, Barbie was called simply Android Zero-One, but the dubbed English version of the series created for TNT went in a more lighthearted direction.

Alien invaders were decades ahead of Real Doll.

     This also stuck in my head because life-sized living dolls/mannequins freak me out a little ever since I saw a short film on the USA Network called Living Dolls. To emphasize the effect it had on me, I have added it to the beginning of this playlist just to ramp up the creep factor.
 
     Barbie's alien overlord, the alien Chiburu, could be mistaken for a French Gepetto in his human form, and the mask fits well because he is, in fact, a toymaker from another planet. Chiburu might look familiar to fans of Space Ghost Coast to Coast and Cartoon Planet because both cartoons made liberal use of stock footage from Ultra Seven.

An evil Gepetto? What is this, a Bill Willingham story?

A picture is worth a thousand words but lacks a lot of justice.

     With a little inspiration from the Pied Piper, Chiburu intends to control the minds of Earth's children (and their toys) and turn them into killing machines against which the human race would hesitate to fight back. It's up to Ultra Seven and his human allies to stop the fiendish plot.

     Then, for the #TCMParty Godzilla fans out there, Spectreman takes on a three-headed dragon.
Spectreman Episode 32 - The Three-headed Dragon Rises Again
Spectreman Episode 33 - S.O.S. The Undersea Oil Field

I know I got at least one Godzilla fan's hopes up just a little. #sorrynotsorry

     The air force makes a rare (albeit useless, as every military intervention tends to be in monster movies) appearance when Dr. Gori resurrects an oil-consuming dragon from Earth's past. Funny, I don't recall hearing about any fossils of three-headed reptiles. After attacking an oil refinery, the beast makes its way to the city, forcing George to lure it away from civilization himself behind the wheel of a petroleum truck with a young girl in tow who just lost her mother in the attack (this is still a kids show, folks). Somehow, in between the military's attempts to destroy the monster, George and the little girl find time to frolic with a family on vacation before Spectreman "really" has to save the day. Overlord seems to be doing a lot of thumb-twiddling this time around... or whatever counts for Overlord thumbs.

     Tune in at 5:30PM EST Sunday afternoon for this special GHWP live tweet. Then stick around for #collinstweet, #TCMParty and #BNoirDetour.