Skip to content

Monster great: Gargantua brothers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swC1wZAJ5lU

In the monster world, the Biblical of equivalent of Cain and Abel exists in the form of two Gargantua brothers, one colored a motley green while the other, a light chocolate brown.

Reared in a Japanese laboratory and looking to be miniature Frankensteins, the Gargantua brothers eventually escaped to being very large.

“War of the Gargantuas” is a classic Japanese monster films, one of the first that really scared me because the monster brothers looked like one of my grammar school classmates. It is also a sequel to the lesser known “Frankenstein Conquers the World,” which explains how the Hiroshima atomic bomb gave birth to one of these special boys. The storyline is solid, and the tension between the warring brothers — one trying to kill the world, the other trying to save it — is good enough to carry the film through to its end.

What I like about “War of Gargantuas,” along with many other Japanese monster movies, is that there is an intelligent, quick-thinking female lead. So many American monster movies confine their female roles to helpless doctor assistants, wives or panicky screamers, so it is refreshing to see a balance of a strong female lead to counteract the poor, unfortunate female who gets eyed and eaten like a rice cracker.

In his post-“West Side Story” life, Russ Tamblyn appears in this film as one of the good guys who tries to save the nice Gargantua.

There is extensive use of laser guns. By now, the Japanese military should have known that the laser guns are never effective and always gets stepped on, but it gets whipped out to combat every monster because laser special effects are so nifty.

 

(c) 2014 Slow Suburban Death. All rights reserved.

Published inChildhoodEntertainmentFilm Review

Be First to Comment

Leave a Reply