IMPORTANT NOTE: Tonight's originally scheduled #GHWP Midnight Spectreman (The Great Hedoron Strikes Back) is POSTPONED until next Friday. Beginning at midnight EST tonight on Shoutfactorytvlive.com and Pluto TV, kaiju expert August Ragone is hosting a 24-hour kaiju movie marathon online, and I just discovered that he is kicking off the festivities with several episodes of the first series of the Ultra franchise,
Ultra Q. I'd already finished this entire write-up when I found out about it, but I have decided to go ahead with this episode live tweet anyway because, chances are, you will be missing this underexposed classic if you're tuning in to tonight's #Bmoviemaniacs feature in the first place. I'm swooping in to make sure you don't. I can't even begin to stand in August's shadow on the background, but I do my best with what I've learned and don't want anyone to miss out on this gem.
Last night (July 16) on #Driveinmob, we paid a visit to Ultraman Hayata with a "special" episode featuring the monster Jiras, a recycled Godzilla suit with a new paint job and a frill added to its neck. What you probably don't know, however, unless you dabbled in some Japanese-only material through imported or bootleg VHS and DVD before Shout Factory finally released
Ultra Q on DVD, is that Jiras was the second Godzilla suit to be recycled for an Ultra show. The first recycled Godzilla suit went on to become one of the debut kaiju in the first episode of
Ultra Q, and his name was Gomess.
 |
| All I need are a few more bells and whistles, and you won't even recognize me. |
The first episode, similar to the plot of
Rodan,
involves a mining company digging up more than they expected. Not only
do they discover the egg of a giant prehistoric bird, Littra, but they
also discover that the bird's legendary natural enemy, Gomess, has
awakened from its ancient slumber. Gomess is very recognizable as a recycled Godzilla suit, but it clearly received a great deal more attention and care to be recreated as a new monster than Jiras.
 |
| Approximate representation of Jiras. |
A year before Tsuburaya Productions introduced Ultraman Hayata to be Earth's savior from the incursion of kaiju from the bowels of the earth and the depths of outer space, helpless mankind alone remained the formula on TV just as they were in the movies for combating the scourge of the gigantic and supernatural with
Ultra Q. I have to confess that tonight will be my first time seeing this particular episode with subtitles. I have seen a few in raw Japanese as well one rare dubbed episode (I know very little Japanese myself), so I have enough background to concur with a few fans that call this a delightful blend of Godzilla and
The Twilight Zone. Well-paced and well-written, this black-and-white series followed the exploits of the Science Patrol as they investigate strange phenomena around Japan, almost always discovering some giant monster in the process. The small bits and pieces I have seen certainly have a Serling quality to them as well as some shades of
The Outer Limits, and they are chock full of staple Toho tokusatsu actors that any Godzilla fan will spot in a minute.
Ultra Q was the essential series that transitioned Tsuburaya's kaiju creations from the big screen with Godzilla to the small screen with the Science Patrol and Ultraman. It only recently received a DVD release in the US, but I completely forgot about it. The fact that I don't have the complete set of
Ultra Q in my home library should be a crime. After a few conversations with tweeters during screenings of
Agon The Atomic Dragon, I stumbled upon some episodes uploaded to YouTube with English subtitles and was beyond ecstatic.
Tonight, after #Bmoviemaniacs' feature presentation, I will be co-hosting the first episode of this series to fill in the
Agon void. If it leaves you wanting more, then the finale of #Bmoviemaniacs tonight will leave everyone ample time to switch over to shoutfactorytvlive.com or Pluto TV to see
several more episodes of
Ultra Q as well as
Ultra Seven, and the remaining three episodes of
Ultra Q on YouTube likely will be featured on
#Bmoviemaniacs in the weeks to come.
No comments:
Post a Comment