I was surprised, flattered, and honored to be approached with the offer for this unholy alliance. In the short time I have shoehorned myself into the live tweet movie community, I wasted no time revealing my major leanings toward the tokusatsu genre, so #TrashTue came to me when they decided to do a kaiju night that will live in infamy as "Trash Tuesday vs. Gaping Head Wound Playhouse." Bad and obscure kaiju movies are slim pickings on YouTube, but one and ONLY one movie came to my mind when I tried to think of kaiju synonymous with Trash Tuesday: Daai Se Wong AKA Godfrey Ho's Kong Kong giant monster spectacle Thunder of Gigantic Serpent. Lo and behold, it has been on YouTube for a little while now.
I know there is no account for taste, but I'm the sort of person not willing to call a "bad movie" a bad movie no matter how much I may ridicule or riff it. Forgive me for lifting the veil, but typically any expression of pain is part of the act. I am a complete cinemasochist (insert shameless plug for Cinemasochism.com here). When it comes to kaiju movies, I won't hesitate to say that Gojira 1954 was the big daddy best of them all, but I'm also one of those people that often has occasion to drop everything and watch Legend of Dinosaurs and Monster Birds for the umpteenth time for no particular reason at all, and I don't mean the hilarious Mystery Science Theater 3000 version. We're talking uncut Japanese with subtitles. There is just something about it that resonates with me. A lot of it is sentimental, but the movie itself had some sort of something that keeps bringing me back to it. I've even watched it in German, and I don't speak German. It had a handful of plot holes, a unique soundtrack, and a cat-playing-with-a-wounded-mouse style for a horror movie. It was weird, and I just love it. I also think Manos: The Hands of Fate gets a bad rap, so you know what sort of cinematic roads you may travel with me if you dare to take the journey.
With bad giant monster movies, I have a sort of unholy trinity of favorites. Legend of Dinosaurs and Monster Birds tops the list since the first time I saw it at age nine, but I ran across a couple of others in more recent years that I am willing to put very close to it in terms of being something that I could drop everything to watch again no matter how low the budget or how much Swiss cheese made up the script. One of those movies is Yeti: Giant of the 20th Century. I only just found out as of this writing that Yeti is on YouTube as well, and my choice for Trash Tuesday would have been a difficult toss-up if I had known. The third film is the horror to which you are going to be subjected for this GHWP/TrashTue team-up: Thunder of Gigantic Serpent. A complete plot description doesn't do this film justice because it is scattered all over the place like so much litter on a windy highway. I also don't want to turn this into a full spoiler-filled review because this is one of those movies you just have to see. What I will tell you is that it manages to succeed at what it strives to be: a matinee movie with something for everyone. This is more than just a giant monster movie. This is an experience for the whole family.
Our story opens with a terrorist gangster named Solomon. Like all terrorist gangsters, Solomon wants to rule the world, and he has his sights set on a secret formula. Instead of delivering on what seems to be the promise of a big action movie, the story jumps immediately to a Disney-esque kiddy fantasy in a little girl's bedroom when we are introduced to Ting Ting, a little girl whose dub voice is perhaps the most annoying in giant monster movie history. Ting Ting loves reptiles as much as most any other normal kid loves puppies and kittens, but giant monster movies teach us there is no such thing as a normal kid. She brings home a pet snake and affectionately names him Mosler. Hiding Mosler in her room, Ting Ting gives the snake a pretty little bow to wear on his head, and the string operating him from the ceiling leads us to believe that he is more intelligent than most snakes. But what about that secret formula? It turns out that the military is working on The Thunder Project, a formula that can make any animal grow to massive sizes, and Solomon wastes no time getting his hands on it. This formula, however, isn't in a test tube or stored on some encrypted floppy disk: it's a glass box that just happens to look like an average, everyday aquarium. One plot convenience later, the glass box is in Ting Ting's bedroom as a new home for Mosler, but Solomon is still looking for it. Oh, and I mentioned the possible promise of action, didn't I? Well, look no further than American military agent Ted Fast, a violent loose cannon investigating the deaths of the Thunder Project scientists and hot on the trail of Solomon and his men. Meanwhile, the residual energy from the glass box has triggered a growth spurt in Mosler...
As much as I love this movie, you're probably going to think that even Gamera vs. Guiron would be an appropriate palate cleanser after enduring it... and what luck for you because that is just what #TrashTue picked for their second feature. Join me Tuesday, August 18, 2015, at 7PM EST when it's Mosler vs. Gamera and #GHWP vs. #TrashTue in a kaiju smackdown double feature.
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