The Setup

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to tonight’s main event!

That sound you hear in the background? The wrenching howl of scraping steel and crumbing concrete? Have no fear ladies and gentlesirs, for it is only our contenders getting ready to astonish and entertain you with amazing feats of strength and pyrotechnics!

The Giant Monsters have arrived for a battle royale. Cities will be destroyed, Lives lost, the world will shake, and creepy little children will cheer on their favorites.  So bring it on the titanic turtles, awesome armadillos, massive moths, destructive dragons, and legendary lizards! Because it’s fight night, and we came to see an ass whuppin’!

So without further ado: LLLLLLLeet’s get ready to RUMBLEEEEEEEE!!!!!

When you get right down to it, there are essentially two types Giant Monsters flicks:

Solo Stompers: (Godzilla, Cloverfield, The Host,  Reptilian) They’re here to kick-ass and chew bubblegum, and they’re all out of bubblegum. Some ancient creature has risen from the ocean, crashed from space in an asteroid, or burst forth angrily from a volcano and is venting their frustration all over some city-usually Tokyo. Florida and Louisiana get hurricanes, California gets earthquakes, and Tokyo gets giant monsters.

Last Beastie Standing (Godzilla Vs. Etc, Attack of the Super Monsters, Boa Vs. Python)

Again, blame Tokyo, because every once in awhile, more than one natural disaster gathers in their fair city-which of course leads to some wrestling with each other in pseudo Sumo matches. And just like real Sumo, these contenders are not above eating the spectators either.

The Formula

The formula for these movies is stricter than most, and thus easier to discuss, for there are grand traditions that must be maintained.

• In the beginning there has to be some mystery to the creature’s arrival. Strange, since everybody coming to the movie watched trailers hailing the arrival of the ginormous destructive beastie.  If you’re watching a movie called Anaconda, it’s not going to be a real surprise to anyone but the protagonists to find out there’s A GIANT KILLER SNAKE involved. Fortunately, films like the recent Godzilla franchise eschew any kind of setup, with recent films simply starting during the initial attack.
• Massive Property Damage. In the movies we’re focusing on, cities burn and get buildings smashed. Other films take place in some deep jungle where evolution and/or time has run amok, leading the big things to be huge trees, and in a few cases, a mountain or two.
• Humans will Attack with puny, inneffectual weapons. If an M16 can’t penetrate the hide of a damn elephant, what the hell do you expect it to do against a 100-foot tall lizard with scales of iron that can breathe fire and, in some cases, survive hurtling through the atmosphere after falling from orbit, or in other cases, withstand the pressure of deep ocean? Really? Tell me what your bullets will do against that?
• Humans will then reconsider and use an energy weapon. Shocking the creatures is surprisingly effective, if not good for our dependance on foreign oil. It takes a huge amount of energy to power these things, and you usually only get one shot. But as we said, it tends to work….until the sequel. The same gun never works twice.
• Giant Monsters fight like wrestlers. Suplexes, DDTs, and Clotheslines are par for the course. Personally, the next time Godzilla attacks, I want humanities response to be that they shoot Dwayne Johnson (The Rock) in the same ray that witch always used in Voltron to make the monsters bigger, and have him make the lizard smell what the rock is cookin’….but that’s just me.
• Except they always have ranged attacks. Fire breath, Electro-breath, Wind gusts, flying buzzsaw blades, shooting spikes. Yeah, the Rock would be doomed here, unless he had a candy-ass-attack. Mental note.
• There will be some message about how this is environmental retribution. In other words, Godzilla is Al Gore, and his fiery energy breath of DOOM is an inconvenient truth that can fry you to a crisp in a second. Whether by being a mutant lizard created (or awoken) by the use of nuclear weapons, or an unearthed monster found by strip-mining a volcano.  We pretty much f#$%ing asked for it.

The Menu

The Booze: Sapporo, Kirin Lager

If you’re watching giant monsters, you’re going to watch at least one “Kaiju”  (or “Strange Beast”) movie. The Japanese have perfected the fine art of smashing cities underneath the boot of some Giant terrible monster. As such, we honor them by choosing their beer to watch the show.

The Food: Giant Sub

We could eat sushi, but we needed something more filling. LIKE 6 FEET O’ MEAT, topped with lettuce, tomatos, MEAT, onions, peppers, MEAT, cheese, cucumbers, MEAT, mustard, mayonaise…and MEAT. Because if you’re going to watch giant monsters duke it out while humanity’s future hangs in the balance…. you’re gonna need some protein. Eat fresh, bitches.

The Movies

This was one bipolar month for the Cavalcade, we had both the best and worst films ever screened at an event here.

The Fallen Ones (2005): A movie that features Giant Mummies, Angel rape, Casper Van Dien, and the father from Happy Days trying to speak with some kind of “oy” accent. Should have some kind of redeeming Schlock value, right? I mean, there’s no way that could lead to soul-sucking-badness that haunts you in your sleep, can it?

D-War (2007) This is an odd movie. Dragons that look more like snakes, a Korean production that has American actors and supposedly takes place in LA, and glowing orbs that grow out of one of the protagonist’s breasts. Oh, and Robert Forster.  Odd movie.

Godzilla: Final Wars (2006) This is it, ladies and gentlemen. This is the holy grail of Cavalcade movies. 25 monsters. Aliens. Planets made of fire. Mutants. Creepy rhyming girls.  Super Saiyans. Bullet time. This movie has it ALL.

Suggested Alternatives

Anything with “Godzilla” in the title that wasn’t produced by Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich is a good place to start. Giantmonstermovie.com is another. While any movie is a better choice than The Fallen Ones, you just don’t get better than Godzilla: Final Wars. In all honesty, you could simply show Final Wars twice and call it a night. But if you’re not going to do that, then check out GMM.com, they’ve got hundreds of suggestions.