GHWP Live Tweet September 25, 2015 - Spectreman

Important Note: There will be no #GHWP live tweet for this coming Tuesday, September 29, 2015. The usual Spectreman will, however, be live tweeting next Friday, October 2, 2015, as we move into the final ten episodes of the series.

Mark your calendars! The final three episodes of Spectreman will be live tweeting on Friday, October 23, 2015. It's been a long journey, but we made it.

Episode Selections:
52 - Operation: Capture Monster Mound Dragon
53 - The Iron Claws of Horror
54 - Pulverize The Computer Monster

     George and the G-Men have their own neat little flag this week and some new weaponry for their fight against pollution, er, giant monsters, er, whatever.

Goooooooooo G-Men! Yaaaaaaay!

      First, another rare single-episode story when a dinosaur erupts from beneath the earth, and the G-Men are on the scene with a new set of anesthetic pellet guns in hopes of, for once, catching a monster alive. The Mound Dragon, a long-necked nondescript dinosaur, is interesting in how much it resembles the Plesiosaur in Legend of Dinosaurs and Monster Birds in both its appearance and the obvious wire control of its long neck. Companies like Spectreman's P Productions and Legend's Toei didn't have a Toho budget for additional time and wire support of monsters like King Ghidorah or Kumonga, so there is a lot of floppy flailing going on.

     The G-Men succeed, and George leads a great big giant monster convoy back to the city. George's cybernetic nerves are on edge when he notices a strange object in the sky following the vehicles with his enhanced vision, but he can't tell the others about the presence without threatening his secret identity. The strange object is, in fact, Dr. Gori's latest creation, the Vulture Bird Man. Last week's episodes put forth the notion that the Igorians could have been inspired by the Kamen Rider Shocker troops, and the mutant Vulture Bird Man this week certainly adds a bit more credence to that idea.

     The Vulture Bird Man is waiting upon Gori's orders for the perfect moment to wake up the Mound Dragon to cause destruction, and Spectreman faces a dilemma when one of George's close friends and fellow G-Men Otto is swallowed alive by the Mound Dragon.


      After Spectreman's battle with the Vulture and the Mound Dragon, it's another standard two-episode story with another group of aliens called the Grass Men invading a small village. It seems cliche, but, when you think about it, the Invasion of the Body Snatchers formula always does seem to come closest to success every time. Invaders can go unnoticed for a long period of time, and the unmolested land often holds a large cache of natural resources. From inside the brain of a giant computerized monster, it is those natural resources that the Grass Men seek, namely uranium.

Among our weaponry are a giant mechanical claw, a giant suction device... and a nifty typewriter.

     Remaining underground, the Grass Men evade detection until the Pollution G-Men manage to get photographic evidence of a massive iron claw and vacuum machine that nearly destroy the village. When the G-Men investigate the source of the disturbance, however, they find that the villagers themselves don't believe a monster is responsible. Instead, they attribute the earthquakes threatening their village to the anger of the gods, and they blame two orphan children-- a boy named Ken (Another kid named Ken! Drink!) and his blind younger sister-- for being "godless" and "lying" about the existence of the Grass Men.

If not for George and the G-Men, we'd probably have another Grave of the Fireflies on our hands this week.

     The G-Men witness the villager's cruelty toward the children, but there is little they can do to persuade the villagers otherwise. The G-Men follow the exiled children into the fields, and-- SPONTANEOUS ACTION! The Grass Men attack out of nowhere, and the G-Men soon discover that the villagers don't know the Grass Men exist because the alien invaders can turn themselves into tumbleweeds. When the alien computer is revealed, the stupid villagers still want to blame Ken for the loss of their loved ones despite George's insistence that the monster wants the uranium hidden beneath their village's soil. The Grass Men soon combine to form a gigantic Grass Monster, and it's up to Spectreman to destroy it.

I wish my brother Swamp Thing could see me.

     But the destruction of the Grass Monster doesn't bring things to a close yet, folks. Once Spectreman discovers their true weakness, the massive computer monster's iron claw springs from the ground to attack Spectreman... and when the G-Men finally find George unconscious, he wakes up with amnesia.

Best claw prize game ever.

    Can Ken find a way to convince the villagers that he is telling the truth and not just some godless little heathen? How will George regain his lost memory so that Spectreman can defeat the computer monster and the Grass Men once and for all? Find out on #GHWP at 12:30PM EST tonight after #Bmoviemaniacs' presentation Manos: The Hands of Fate.