'It's so fantastic you won't belive it until you hear it from the boys in the band. Now everybody, lets go!'
Welcome back to my Dark Corner of this Sick World.
‘It’s really super-big news’
We’re looking at Japanese film Legend of Dinosaurs and Monster Birds.
This is a post-Jaws kaiju which means there is a little more subtle inference,
#screams and splashes#
before the big monsters appear.
But before we get to that we’ve got to address another legend that we’ve tackled before on Dark Corners.
‘Remember, you’re a geologist, they’re supposed to be practical'
That of the playboy geologist.
‘I guess you came here to find more stones so you can make more money’
It’s not about the rocks, it’s all about the babes and the cash, that inevitably come with the rocks.
‘Today’s hero seeking adventure’
We meet hero Ashizawa in what seems to be a reference to the graduate.
'Then you won't change your mind?'
Mr Miyawaki you’re trying to seduce me.
‘That’s ridiculous’
He’s been enticed to Lake Sai by stories of a stone egg.
‘Did he say stone egg?’
Like his father before him.
‘I said this petrified egg was a snake’s egg but your father said it was a dinosaur’
then he asked me how big I thought snakes were and slapped me round the head.
‘Another joke’
There’ve been strange goings on around here...
'A horse without a head, a horrible practical joke.'
Either the Colone family is trying to send a message or...
‘I bet it was Nessie, the monster’
We go to Scotland on holiday, why shouldn’t she come here?
And then...
‘It’s a monster! It’s a monster!’
There’s something in the lake.
‘It’s a dinosaur! It’s a dinosaur!’
But…
'Hey, it just a fake.'
just some jerks.
'Boy, 'm all pooped out.'
'Yeah that wasn't easy.'
But the boy who cried Nessie and his mates pay a terrible price.
Now Nessie’s here, and they do seem wedded to this Nessie thing.
‘This looks very much like the Nessie monster’
She behaves more like a typical kaiju monster, attacking people…
peeping on girls…
and disrupting a Japanese country and western singer.
Which frankly came as a relief, then vanishing for long periods so no one believes in her any more.
‘Somewhere in this lake there’s a live plesiosaur’
Now, an hour into the movie you do start asking questions along the lines of where are my monster birds?
‘Look at this’
‘A pterodactyl’
'Ptero-what?'
Well it looks more like a ramphorynchus, neither could be described as a monster bird
and while we’re on the subject a plesiosaur isn’t dinosaur,
but I don’t think we care too much about the science?
‘If a dinosaur appears we’ll also have magnitude 5 earthquakes’
Bigger questions; where is it? And why now?
‘If it’s a dinosaur it wouldn’t be very strange if there was also a pterodactyl here’
Okay, can’t stress this enough; the pterodactyl or whatever hasn’t even hatched yet.
This man is saying, if there’s one prehistoric animal, why not two? This randomly chosen one for example.
And lo and behold...
It doesn’t appear till much later but still,
of all the weak justifications I have had to sit through in these movies this is the most cravenly pathetic.
‘And that’s bad?’
Meanwhile Ashizawa is desperate to see the plesiosaur to prove his father’s theory.
‘My father firmly believed a hibernating dinosaur existed in one of these lakes’
Sounds as if his father had as much proof as the pterodactyl guy but we’re past that now.
His girlfriend, Akiko, objects, and…
I’m afraid this is typical, geologists are the bad boys of the earth sciences.
He’s probably strung out on quartz.
‘You’re terrible’
Ashizawa dives into the lake, but…
’20 minutes from now depth charges will be dropped into the lake’
Akiko leaps into action.
I’d like to hope she’s abandoning him as the best way out of an abusive relationship,
but I imagine she’s going to tell the army to hold off on the depth charges.
Actually no. Rather than making a phone call,
she drives home puts on a wetsuit and drives back to dive down
and tell Ashizawa in person he’s about to get depth charged.
Too slow.
You may think it odd that depth charges designed to kill a plesiosaur have so little effect on a human
that he just continues with his search,
but remember, he is a geologist.
Elsewhere, the pterodactyl finally hatches,
and attacks.
Oddly reminiscent of the giant claw.
Finally, with minutes to go the monsters meet and fight in a series of furiously edited close ups,
while hanging from wires.
Now I called this a post-Jaws kaiju, it’s a bit bloodier than usual,
and it does step back from the monsters to focus on the human drama but it doesn’t work,
and we don’t have to look far to see why.
'Hi'
Geologists.
Thanks for watching. For more giant monster reviews click here.
B Movies always struggle with geologist heroes, what other professions have movies tried and failed to depict as heroic,
sexy or improbably living the life of an international playboy. Let us know in the comments below.
'Well I've found something more interesting.'