Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: All Monsters Attack
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Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema Rewind. This is Rob Lamb, and hey, we just had a new Godzilla episode of Weird House Cinema. So, why don't we revisit one of our previous episodes of Weird House Cinema about a Godzilla movie. This one concerns 1969's All Monsters Attack. It originally published 2-17-2023. Let's dive right in. ♪

Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb. And this is Joe McCormick. And today we are going to be covering a film based on a listener recommendation. So to all of you out there who would like to write in with suggestions for us, this may give you some hope. I wonder, Rob, should we kick this episode off by reading the message that suggested this movie?

Sure. Yeah, go for it. Oh, okay. I'll take it. This is from Jordan. Jordan wrote in to say, hello, Stuff to Blow Your Mind team. I don't always watch every Weird House Cinema movie before listening to the episodes, but my partner and I certainly had a blast watching Robot Monster. Our streaming service then recommended us an equally short and hilarious movie with its own unrelated dinosaur fights, the 1969 film All Monsters Attack.

Jordan, welcome.

Well, Jordan, I hope you were excited for today's episode. We are indeed covering All Monsters Attack. Yeah, and listeners, keep the recommendations coming because sometimes listeners let us know about a film that's not on our radar, such as this one. Other times, like last week's episode, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, that was a case where a listener requested it and that kind of bumped it back up on our list. It was on the list, but it wasn't at the top.

But yeah, so let us know anytime something catches your eye or if there's anything near and dear to your heart that you think fits the Weird House Cinema template. So I think All Monsters Attack is a very interesting film that

especially for its place in the history of the Godzilla franchise and for its varied reception history. And I think it's also a little bit, it's interesting in the very different notes it hits. This is a movie that is both quite funny for schlock reasons, as alluded to in the email, but also I think strangely sweet and even a little bit moving. Yeah, it has a good heart. It is a monster film.

about children. Like this is not a, it's pretty common to see these various kaiju films where there is a child involved and we all know that Gamera is a friend to all children and so forth. But this movie especially is a film where the child is not just a character. Like the childhood view of the world is kind of the centerpiece of the whole picture. Like the film doesn't make sense unless you realize that it is from the viewpoint of a child.

And not just from the viewpoint of a child as in it has a child protagonist, but literally the monster drama in it is a dream in the mind of a child. Yeah. Yeah. This is a film in which none of the monsters are real. Like none of the monsters that we see, none of these fights are actually taking place. They're all in the child's head. They're all in his dreams. Yeah.

But at the same time, it's not like those battles, it's not that they don't matter. Like, it's ultimately well presented. We talked in our Robot Monster episode about films that have the, it was all a dream trope in them. And this is certainly a film where a lot of the action is taking place within the dream, but...

But also there is this, it's not presented in kind of a gut-punchy, twisty way. We know from the get-go that this is a dreamscape we're entering into. And yet at the same time, there's also the real-world plot that is taking place as well, and there are stakes in it as well. So it's not like all the stakes are in the dream world and nothing's going on in the real world.

Right. It is a movie about a child who has dreams about monsters, and those dreams about monsters teach him how to solve problems in real life. Now, whether these are good lessons or not, I mean... Yes. There may be some generational divide on that, and this is all open for discussion. Yes. So I thought it might be useful here to do a brief digression on the history of the Godzilla franchise and the place All Monsters Attack has within it.

So the first Godzilla movie was released in 1954. It was directed by Ishiro Honda, the same director as today's movie. And it was about a giant prehistoric reptilian monster with radiation breath who appears from under the ocean as a consequence of nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific.

Godzilla attacks Japan and is eventually defeated by the ingenuity of human scientists. Now, I think it's really important to note that if you have only seen later Godzilla movies, you may be shocked if you go back and watch the original, shocked to discover its much darker tone.

the heavy themes treated in a very solemn manner. And the fact that there is no kaiju meat slam, the monsters do not suplex each other. In fact, there's only one monster. Godzilla is a pure antagonist in the first movie. He doesn't wrestle other monsters and it is not light camp entertainment. The original Godzilla is a bleak, doomy movie. Yeah.

Yeah, it's kind of grimy. Its use of black and white is very stark. It is a serious film about dread and horror in the modern world. However, in the film that would follow, which was called Godzilla Raids Again in 1955...

Godzilla once again emerges to threaten humankind, but this time there's another element. Godzilla is fighting another monster. So fighting this ancient fire-breathing dinosaur enemy, sort of based on the design of an ankylosaurus.

And this would set off a kind of pattern of monster on monster violence that would continue into the following films, including movies like King Kong vs. Godzilla. That's 1962. Mothra vs. Godzilla in 64. Various battles with monsters from outer space and with three heads, other things coming up from the deep and more.

Rob, I wonder if you would disagree with anything here or have anything to add to this, but I would argue a few general trends in the Godzilla movies as they go on. One is the trend of the moral valence of Godzilla, who I think goes initially from hard heel to kind of anti-hero to full face. Would you agree with that? Oh, yeah, yeah. He's definitely a baby face in most of the films people are really familiar with.

Yeah, it's often like Godzilla has to show up to fight a bad monster in order to protect humanity from that monster. And he's kind of like a dangerous ally, but ultimately it's he who is defending human civilization from this really wicked creature.

Yeah, yeah. I think that in that trajectory tends to hold true. Occasionally you'll see some new Godzilla pictures that come about in which they kind of go back to basics and go for like the solo monster threat sort of plot. And I guess one of the main examples of that is Shin Godzilla from 2016. Yeah, well, a lot of times when they do a reboot, it's like that. Shin Godzilla is like that.

Godzilla, that horrible American Godzilla from the 90s is like that. Yeah. Or wait, is it? Now I'm trying to remember. I think it is. Yeah. Yeah, I believe so. Though I think the more recent American Godzilla remake, that had some extra monsters in it, as I recall. It had bad ones that Godzilla had to fight. Yeah, let them fight. Yeah, some sort of...

radiation eating dinosaur creatures. Yeah. Okay. So there's that trajectory. Another thing is the tone, the tone changes. It goes from the bleak, just doom laden, uh, horror of the first movie to a much lighter, campier, sillier kind of entertainment, even when it sometimes still has commentary. A lot of times these sillier, campier Godzilla movies will be satirical about say, uh,

pollution or politics or the entertainment industry even like i think there's one where there's like you know somebody's trying to boost tv ratings by capturing king kong and then he gets out and has to fight godzilla and so forth uh so they often satirize real elements in the world but they're not as dark as the first one i would also say as it goes on um

I think some people would be tempted to say that the quality of production in the films goes down, but I don't think that's exactly right. I would say the quality of production becomes more variable. It's not like there's a steady decline in the quality of Godzilla movies, but instead we see a sort of all-over-the-place quality pattern. Would you agree with that? I think so. And I do wonder how much, and this is maybe something that

that Godzilla scholars may have thoughts on. And indeed, it is worth pointing out that Godzilla movies are definitely an area where there is a, people have written whole books on this. There have been academic papers on this. This is a well-explored region of weird cinema.

But I do wonder at times they get into the sillier zone and the kid friendly zone. And I wonder what are the different forces involved there? I mean, part of it is clearly like the reception to Godzilla by young viewers. But then also I wonder how much of it is.

the filmmakers realizing like not only the limitations of rubber suit, uh, monster effects, but also the potential for humor with those suits, you know, like if you're going for just hard, um, uh, you know, sci-fi or really serious grim horror with it, it feels like you, maybe you've got to be a little, you're a little more careful about how you use the suit and how you show the suit and,

where if you open that up a little bit, then there's all this potential for the goofier stuff to take place. Yes, I fully agree with that. Though there are some films that have managed to do both, actually, and that's one thing I love about Shin Godzilla. I think it succeeds fully in real grim horror and funny camp in the same movie. Yeah, yeah. It's a careful tightrope to walk, though. But anyway, back to the film we're going to talk about today. It arrives in 1969, and...

It has long been regarded as one of the worst Godzilla films. It seems recently, though, a lot of critics have kind of softened on it. They've kind of started to come around a little bit.

And you can see the reasons for both, both for the for the initial harsh reaction and the softening and warming up to this movie. There are certainly elements that are not as impressive as other films in the franchise. The stakes are less all encompassing. I mean, this is not a world, you know, world defining conflict to save the planet from a three headed monster from outer space or whatever.

Instead, it is a child dealing with loneliness and bullying who has dreams about monsters that inspire him to stand up for himself. It's hard for that to feel as epic as the other Godzilla movies in either an awe-inspiring and scary way or in a funny way. And I think one thing that has to be acknowledged is that...

The original special effects and production values in this film are very limited compared to some other films in the franchise. And a lot of the special effects sequences that do appear are recycled from previous movies. We'll talk more about that as we go on. But on the other hand...

I think a lot of people have kind of come around on this movie today as simply a different kind of creature than most other films in the Godzilla series. It is a sweeter, more modest, more intimate meditation on what Godzilla had come to mean for the children of Japan and of the world.

Having just watched this film this morning for the first time, it's hard to imagine people hating it. I mean, it's 70 minutes. It's 69 minutes long, for crying out loud. I mean, you don't spend too much time in this picture. And it has a lot of monsters in it. I have to come back to sort of the Glenn Danzig school of filmmaking. I believe he was asked in an interview what makes a great vampire film. And he said, well, a lot of vampires. And.

And so this film takes kind of that approach, like what makes a great monster film, a great kaiju film? Well, a lot of kaiju. There are a lot of kaiju in this picture. I don't know if all of them are present, as the title would suggest, but a lot of them are present. And okay, once you've checked that box off, once you're definitely giving the audience all the monsters, what else are you going to give them? And what can you give them that's a little different? What...

What can you do that would maybe be a satisfying and different story while still delivering all of the things that this picture has to deliver for the audience that they're expecting? I think that's a great point. And I think you could also argue that

Given the general trends in the Godzilla series up to this point, increasingly kind of sillier and campier type movies and increasing use of Godzilla as a face rather than a heel, I think you could argue it was inevitable that these movies would end up including movies that were explicitly meant for kids, not just movies that kids happened to love.

So just before All Monsters Attack came out a couple of years before in 1967, we get Son of Godzilla, which true to title introduced a new character to the Kaiju Pantheon. That is Manila, who is, yes, Godzilla's son, right?

And the movie deals with parenting themes, showing Godzilla teaching his child how to roar and how to blast out his atomic breath. In fact, we see some scenes from that movie of this type taken whole cloth and shown again in All Monsters Attack.

And I have read that the introduction of Manila in this movie was the result of a desire at the studio at Toho to introduce a cute character and a cute relationship, to create a movie that would not just appeal to kids, but also to the young parents who would be taking kids to see movies. It makes sense. Yeah. I mean, if you want to introduce your children to these monster movies that by this point, you know, you've grown up on,

it helps if there is some sort of cute element. I mean, I've, I've encountered that myself with my, my own son, you know, is there, is there a baby Yoda in there, a Grogu that can, you know, get, I mean, Star Wars has tons of stuff like that, obviously, but you know, is there some sort of like cute element that'll definitely catch their attention that they can latch onto? And then perhaps they'll, they'll latch onto the rest of a, of a given franchise as well. Oh yeah. I mean, just watch the turn, like, you know, you're a,

your, your harsh, cynical 20 something star Wars geeks hate the Ewoks until they have kids. And then they watch return with their kids. And then they're like, Oh, they're actually kind of great. Yeah. Yeah.

And we'll describe Manila in a little bit here. He is cute. He is. In fact, more than once we noticed Manila in this movie doing specific sort of sounds and postures reminiscent of our baby. The donkey sound that he keeps making? Oh, of course, the donkey sound. Yeah.

But no, he does. At one point he does a kind of, I don't know, like a pose where he's like wiggling his arms and legs and he just looks like a human baby. But anyway, so a lot of footage from Son of Godzilla would end up being reused in All Monsters Attack. And in fact, not just footage from Son, but also from recent videos.

Yeah, Destroy All Monsters also has Manila in it. Yeah.

So why so much recycled footage from other Toho movies? Well, the answer appears to be extreme constraints on time and budget. I've read that this was in part due to cost overruns from other movies Toho was making in 1969, as well as just general money problems at the studio. These were hard times at Toho. But for whatever reason, the edict came down that this movie had to be made fast and cheap.

And I think you can say that when it comes to special effects sequences, it kind of shows, especially to the original ones and how much footage is reused. But at the same time, I don't think this movie is hack work. All Monsters Attack was directed by Ishiro Honda, the A-list Toho director who had made the original Godzilla as well as most of the big movies in the series since then.

And despite all the limitations on the production, Honda apparently cited All Monsters Attack as one of his personal favorites from the entire series. I was wondering a bit why this was. And so I was reading from Godzilla, the official guide to the King of the Monsters. This was the official Toho licensed book on the series written by Graham Skipper 2022.

And Skipper writes, quote,

Here, he was mostly left to do as he pleased within the constraints, and thus we get what today feels like a small indie film rather than a kaiju blockbuster. Ha!

And I think that's right on the money. We're kind of left in the end with a cozy little film about childhood struggles, bullying, courage, and the inspiration that we take from our myths. And it's also a film in which all the monster slamming is relegated to dream sequences. But there is something very charming about it.

Yeah, again, it checks off the box of all the monsters, lots of monster stuff happening on screen. But then it figures out something very interesting to do with the rest of the picture. And in that, it has a lot in common, I think, with a rather different kaiju movie, a rather different Godzilla movie that we previously covered on Weird House. That's 1971's Godzilla vs. Heteron.

which I would say is not as memorable from a character standpoint. I think this movie has more heart, but that one definitely had a lot of style, and a hip message at the core of it, while also giving us monsters. Yes. Hedera is, I think, a better movie from the point of view of just weird imagery and having lots of...

crazy visual flair and stuff that stands out like that. But All Monsters Attack has, it has a soul and Hedera, I don't know, maybe. All right. Well, when we were thinking about elevator pitches for this one, I instantly thought the never ending story, but with Kaiju. Oof. Yeah. Yeah.

And it really does remind me quite a bit of the 1984 film adaptation of Michael Enda's 1979 novel, The NeverEnding Story. I love both of these, by the way. I know Michael Enda did not like the film adaptation, but I have room in my heart for both of them. But in the film adaptation of The NeverEnding Story, we have a kind of lonely child in the city with a disrupted home life who finds courage in the realm of fantasy.

And in the film, at any rate, he eventually unleashes a luck dragon on his bullies.

In this film, we have a lonely latchkey kid in late 60s Japan living in a heavily industrialized area, and he finds courage through his dream jaunts to Monster Island. Instead of actually summoning a kaiju to defeat his bullies and bank robbers, he home-alones them, as Lister Male suggested. Yeah, he lays traps, essentially, and gets them to fall through holes in the floor. Yeah. All

All right, well, let's go ahead and listen to the trailer audio on this one. This is the English dub trailer, which I think works best for the podcast format here, though this is not the cut of the film I ended up watching. Usually I'm all for the English dub on a film like this. It lets me focus more on the monsters and, you know, and the human performances are generally less important in a picture like this. But HBO Max only offered subtitles, so I watched it as if I were viewing a Kurosawa film. ♪

Where is the island? Computer, go on. Yes, yes. Can you take a jet? Take a jet to get there? Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome aboard Pan American Flight 1, direct to Monster Island. We'll be flying at 35,000 feet and will arrive on schedule. We hope you have a pleasant flight. Thank you.

Are you Monster Island? Over. Monster Island? Over. We are ready to land. Godzilla and Kamakura. Godzilla and Kamakura.

All right. Sounds like a party, huh? I mean, if I hadn't already watched it, I would. By the way, speaking of advertising for this film, I haven't confirmed this, but the internet alleges that the tagline was, See prehistoric monsters crawl out of the hidden depths of the earth and take revenge against the living.

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Alright, if you're wondering where you can watch this picture, well, as of this recording, you can watch it on HBO Max, but all streaming is subject to change, especially HBO Max as of late. So watch it while you can there, I guess. But it's also available on Blu-ray from the Criterion Collection on their just

absolutely worshipful Godzilla of the Showa era films, 1954 through 1975. I've looked at the physical packaging for this at Atlanta's own Videodrome. They have them for rent there, of course. And the packaging is just splendid. It has all this amazing new artwork in it, these very flashy, colorful illustrations of Godzilla and the monsters that he battles. I may have to pick that up one day. Oh, it's great. It's a nice package.

Alright, well let's get into the people here involved in this film. So, as we noted already, Ishiro Honda is the director, lived 1911 through 1993, legendary Toho film director, who of course helmed 54's Godzilla, the movie that started it all, and he directed 44 pictures in total, 8 of those Godzilla films, culminating in 75's Terror of Mechagodzilla.

But he also directed Rodan, The Mysterians, The Human Vapor, Matango, which, by the way, if you're out there enjoying the current Mushroom Zombie horror series on television, well, you need to go back and watch Matango. I'm not sure if they were the first Mushroom Zombie type picture, but they have to be one of the first. Maybe we should do Matango on the show.

We probably should. Yeah. Okay. But, oh, other films he did include Frankenstein vs. Baragon, The War of the Gargantuas, Space Amoeba, and more. He was a friend of director Akira Kurosawa and served as director, counselor, or chief assistant director on Kurosawa's 1985 epic, Rhyme.

His name continues to appear in the credits on Godzilla movies and in other homages. He also directed 1963's Atragon, which we previously covered on Weird House. And of course, as we mentioned, we also covered 71's Godzilla vs. Hedera, which he did not direct, but still Godzilla pictures.

Hondo is a masterful director and you can you can just feel his storytelling confidence even when he's working with what appear to be extremely limiting constraints on like his budget and what he could do with the movie. You just see him like kind of just accepting it and plowing straight through and making the best movie he could. Absolutely.

Now, getting into some of the other connections, I guess it's one of the situations when you start looking at the people involved in certainly Toho pictures, you see like the Japanese studio system of the day in place. So a lot of these were frequent Toho actors or frequent Honda collaborators. So the screenplay here was by Shinichi Sekizawa, who lived 1920 through 1992.

a frequent collaborator with Honda and scribe of many Godzilla movies, beginning with 1962's King Kong vs. Godzilla, and he also wrote Adragon, which we previously covered. Or he was one of the writers on it. I forget how that shook out. Anyway, getting into the actors here, of course we have to call out Haruo Nakajima, who plays Godzilla. He is the man in the suit. He lived 1929 through 2017. He played Godzilla in 12 consecutive films,

He was also in Mothra and the War of the Gargantuas, as well as Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai in a bit role and not as a giant monster. He's generally considered a legend and the rubber monster suit actor par excellence. Was he ever a pro wrestler? Like, how did he get all those moves down? I don't think he had a wrestling background. He just.

But, you know, I think like a lot of these, well, the way these different monster actors end up in the suits that often come to end up to find them, like sometimes it's a case where they're like, you know, a studied physical performer. Other times they're like they're the willing person. They're the person that was around that was like, yes, I will do this. And it became their thing.

And certainly, Nakajima became one of the most legendary rubber suit, I mean, certainly the most legendary kaiju actor of all time. Now, when it comes to Manila, the little Godzilla creature, Godzilla's son,

This performance is by Little Man Machin, whose real name was Maseo Fukuzawa, who lived 1921 through 2000. He played Minola in three films, Son of Godzilla, Destroy All Monsters, and All Monsters Attack, which we previously noted.

And he followed this up with a couple of kaiju projects, Ultraman Story from 84, Ultra Q, the movie from 1990. He also played the juvenile version of the title kaiju in the North Korean kaiju movie Pulgasari from 1985. Wow. His final film was the 1991 tokusatsu film, Micadroid Robo Kill Beneath Disco Club Layla.

I haven't seen it, but you may have seen the cover art. It's kind of like some dark soldier with red eyes on it. This is not one I've seen, but I think some people really dig it. But anyway, this was a diminutive suit actor who, according to Godzilla Wiki, I looked at Godzilla Wiki in addition to the normal databases on this one because they generally just have excellent information about Godzilla pictures. They say that he worked prior to this as a mini-wrestler.

But I couldn't find out really anything about that, like where he wrestled, who he wrestled for, or what his name was. I'm guessing he was Little Man when he wrestled. But, I mean, there were...

There were some Japanese mini wrestlers, but I think even the ones that I'm aware of, they worked outside of Japan frequently. So I don't know how much of a scene there was for this in Japanese wrestling during this time period. He played a couple of dwarf roles in the early 60s, including the Toshiro Mifune Sinbad movie. Or, well, I'm not sure if it's actually a Sinbad movie, but it was released in the West as The Lost World of Sinbad.

I've never seen that one. Now, a note on Manila here. He's not to be confused with Godzuki, the juvenile flying kaiju from the Hanna-Barbera cartoon, the Godzilla Power Hour from 78. I know a lot of you out there know exactly what I'm talking about. Also, he's not to be confused with Godzilla Jr., who debuted in Toho's 1993 film Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla 2 and appeared in two pictures after that.

Both Godzuki and Godzilla Jr. have baby dragon vibes, while Manila here, he's more, I don't know, how would you describe him? He's kind of like baby turtle without a shell, right? Yeah, baby turtle, baby frog, kind of like quadrupedal tadpole. I'm not sure. Yeah, very reminiscent, though, of a human toddler.

not only in his appearance, but also in the way he moves around. Yes. I mean, I think they were really trying to play up that baby angle to make Manila as cute as possible. That was the directive. Yes.

Now, we mentioned that there is a human child at the center of this picture. The child is the character Ichiro Miki, or just Ichiro. I don't even know if this is a case where they really say his last name in the picture, but was played by Tomonori Yazaki-san.

Dates Unknown, he was a Japanese child actor. This was his first film followed by mostly TV roles, some Ultraman, some Kamen Rider through around 73 or 74. His other film is the 1972 monster flick, Daigoro vs. Goliath. I've read that there have been attempts to sort of find...

this actor as an adult and, you know, get his, his take on what filming this movie was like. But I don't think any of those, those searches were ever fruitful. So I'm, I'm not sure, you know, what became of him, but I lived a private life after his child acting days were behind him. Leave Ichiro alone. Let him live his life.

Now, there's another character of note in the picture. So again, Ichiro is a latchkey kid, so his parents work a lot. He's left to go home and look after himself. And his...

We meet this friend of his, this man who lives in the same apartment complex that is a toy maker or toy designer, an inventor of sorts, right? Yeah. At one point, he's building something he calls a, quote, kiddie computer in the subtitles on the version I saw. But it's like a computer that shows live footage of a moon landing. Yeah. In great quality. In color. Yeah. Yeah.

But yeah, so I don't know what's going on there. But yeah, he's a toy maker and he is he's essentially Ichiro's friend. Like he's a friend and he looks after Ichiro sometimes when his when his parents are both working and can't come home. Yeah, this character's name is Shinpei Inami, played by the actor Hideo Amamoto, who lived 1926 through 2003. And this is a

Sometimes these various Toho actors are actors that you just kind of see in other Toho films, and there's kind of like, you know, just an ensemble of Toho actors. But there's a very good chance folks out there have seen Amamoto before because he has very distinctive looks.

tall, thin Japanese character actor with kind of gaunt features that are maybe not accentuated much in this picture because he's just playing a normal human and nothing, you know, he's not an assassin or anything. But he worked in a number of notable films. His work includes Kurosawa's Yojimbo from 61, Kwaidan from 64, Sword of Doom and Matango from 66. He was also in Message for Space and Atragon, so two

films that we previously covered though I think those were smaller roles in those pictures he was also in International Secret Police Key of Keys from 65 which is known to many western moviegoers as the movie that What's Up Tiger Lily the Woody Allen picture was a dub of that was a picture where they took a Japanese film and dubbed over it with like new comedic dialogue I've never seen it but that's the basic pitch I think

I've never seen it either. Anyway, Amamoto was in a string of Godzilla and Kaiju movies, as well as 1996's Echo Echo Azurak 2, Birth of the Wizard, and 1987's Mighty Jack. Was that featured on Mystery Science Theater? It was, yes. Mighty Jack.

Well, he's very good in this role. It calls on him to be the kindly, understanding adult in an uncaring world. Yes. Let's see. I'm going to skip a bit in the cast here. We do see Ichiro's father a little bit. He's played by Kenji Sahara, who was born in 1932 and is presumably still alive. He's a Japanese actor who has the distinction of being in the most Godzilla films, or at least...

was at one point. He was in 13 of them, which I think puts him, what, one over the man in the suit, in addition to numerous other Toho pictures. He was in the first Godzilla movie as a newspaper reporter and a party guy on a boat. And his last Godzilla film was 2004's Final Wars. And it looks like he was last active around 2011.

And then finally, the music in this one is by Kunio Miyauchi, who lived 1932 through 2006. Japanese Toho composer whose first big score was The Human Vapor in 1960. He followed this up with such films and TV shows as Mighty Jack, Ultraman, Godzilla vs. Gigan. And his stock music was used in 2022's Shin Ultraman.

Which I haven't seen yet, but apparently, Joe, it gives Ultraman the Shin Godzilla treatment. Oh, well...

Or at least that's what the title and the posters seem to imply. Oh, I've looked this up before, but I always forget what it is that the title Shin Godzilla means. And I think the deal is that Shin is a word that has multiple meanings, like it could be interpreted to mean the word God or it could be interpreted to mean something like original or pure God.

Is that right? That sounds familiar. I haven't looked into it recently, but I remember reading about it when Shin Godzilla first came out. It's kind of like taking on its own meaning to me. Like you put Shin on the beginning of something and I'm expecting it to have like a lot of scenes of bureaucracy dealing with an outrageous event. So like I think you could apply it to anything. Shin Godzilla, Shin King Kong. I don't know. Shin Matango. You could really go crazy with it.

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All for less money than I spend on deep tanning lotion while sunbathing off the Amalfi Coast. You know what that sounds like? A plan. Get started at GoDaddy.com. Terms apply. There are places on earth where science and mystery collide, and Skinwalker Ranch is one of the most fascinating examples. In the newest season of the History Channel's The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch, the

The team, made up of experienced scientists and engineers, is literally digging into the unknown to get to the bottom of a mysterious material discovered inside the mesa. This goes far beyond folklore. We're talking actual physical evidence that defies everything we know about geology, physics, maybe even reality itself.

If you're drawn to the edges of scientific discovery beyond the world of what we think we know, this season is going to fascinate you. Just how deep does the truth lie? Find out on The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch. New season premieres tomorrow at 8, 7 central, only on the History Channel. Today's episode is brought to you by USPS.

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All right, you ready to look at some stuff about the plot? Let's do it. Well, of course we start with that beautiful Toho logo. I know I've said this on the show before, but it makes me feel so good. Every time I see the Toho logo, really something in my chest just relaxes. There's something about how it looks like there's light shining through glass on it, that it feels like I am in the waiting room waiting.

At an office for a professional that I trust, you know, like, I don't know if I'm going to a doctor in this scenario or what. I'm going to a Toho picture and I trust that I'm going to be taken care of. You're in good hands. Yeah.

Now, how to describe the score that plays with the opening credits? The music throughout this movie is generally rather strange in a way that I liked. It's got this opening jazz tune that makes me think a little bit of the Pink Panther, but after many cups of coffee. And then once the singing starts, it gets really weird. Yeah.

Yeah, I guess the vibe is kind of hip and fun, at least until you start reading the subtitles for the opening theme song. Oh, we'll get to that in a second. But also, I love how the opening credits are full of monster fight clips. And there was one I genuinely laughed out loud. So it's showing Godzilla fighting with one of the spider monsters. I think that's the monster they fight originally in Son of Godzilla. And they show the fight again in this movie.

And so it's showing this big spider and then there is just a freeze frame on the spider spraying spider juice out of its mouth. Yeah. Again, this is a movie that knows the kids out there want monsters. They know people come to Godzilla to see monsters and they're going to start delivering right away. And I enjoy how the spider has a Sam Elliott mustache.

Yeah, it's very furry. It's a disturbingly furry spider. It's a bristly spider. It's got like pink crystals for eyes and Sam Elliott upper lip. Just because they're using stock footage from old films, though, doesn't mean they're not going to go ahead and use footage from later on in the picture, which I always feel like is a little cheap in a movie. You know, I don't want to see the trailer is probably already ruined enough. I don't need the film itself ruining itself enough.

Uh, because we do see like this really sick judo throw from Godzilla where he drops a monster right on its head. And of course, this is a scene from later on in the film. It's essentially like the finishing move Godzilla uses. That's so good. It's a triple dip. It's from another movie already. And then they show it to you twice in this movie. So you could see they were, they were trying to pad out the runtime, I think. Uh, then again, I don't know. They would have had a credit sequence anyway. Maybe they just might as well. They're like, Oh, let's show that fight again in the credits. Why not?

I totally accept your criticism of that as a move, but a lot of movies we have loved have done that. Thrilling Bloody Sword showed you the entire movie during the opening credits. They absolutely did. Yeah. Sometimes you can pin it on Western distributors of movies from Europe or Asia. And clearly it's just like, well, let's keep them interested so they don't leave the theater or drive away from the drive-in. But yeah, this is the original vision for the picture, so you can't blame it on anybody else.

Oh, but let's come back to it. So it's singing the song through the opening credits and they play it again later on. What is the deal with the lyrics here? They're intriguing. An energetic female vocalist that, according to the subtitles, is basically saying, don't be afraid of monsters, kids. Monsters are actually themselves shocked by the real threat, industrial pollution. A theme that would become central to the later film Godzilla vs. Hetero, which is the one we previously covered on Weird House before, is

Hedera is just a wicked pollution monster who like powers up by huffing smokestacks. Yeah. In that movie, it's like the central theme and the threat at the center of the film is the physical embodiment of that real world threat.

In this movie, I was thinking about this. I guess it kind of helps to ground the film in a world where the monsters have lost their power. Much later in the picture, the monsters, the kaiju, are compared to gods. And if we were to take that and run with it back to the beginning of the picture here,

This is like we're living in the twilight of the gods. This is a world that has lost its faith. The grownups have lost their faith anyway. And the only people who really have faith in the gods, aka big rubber monsters, are the children.

Yeah, I think that's exactly right. Like, but a theme of this song, apart from the thing about the pollution, yeah, is explicitly about the monsters being weakened somehow. Like one part says, says the monsters are crying. Why is earth such a hard place to live? That's the lyric. Yeah.

And then another part is, I'm paraphrasing for this part, but it's like, wham, bam, crash. You can smash everything, but still, it's not easy being a monster. See, this is, again, why they probably had to have a whole bunch of monster footage at the beginning of the picture. You can't have this be the first thing kids watch. They're going to lose all hope.

But anyway, as the credits finish out, we see some setting. It's the industrial, I think this is supposed to be Kawasaki, but it's an industrial area of Japan with a lot of, I don't know, oil refineries and factories and just smokestacks pouring smog everywhere. A barren world populated only by smoke and factories and trucks.

But amidst this unforgiving landscape, we see a couple of sweet kids. Ichiro, our main kid, he's walking along holding hands with his friend Sachiko. And they are there. I guess they're trying to make their way home after school through this infernal landscape of soot and asthma. Yeah.

It reminds me once again of last week's picture, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, where we start off in a very industrial British city. And we're supposed to be Manchester, I think is Manchester. And the only thing that really calls out like any kind of like spirit of fun or rebellion or anything like that is the streaker.

In this film, it's the children. Everything is kind of gross and grimy and busy, but these children are just a basket of joy, holding their hands, crying.

against all the grime behind them. And I have to say, I really love these kids, especially Ichiro, played by Yozaki here. He's just so good. Just a really solid kid's performance. Like, there's a lot of energy and authenticity to it that you don't always see in a child actor. Yeah, this is a cute kid. I was a little confused as to why some reviewers...

had in the past written stuff that they considered Ichiro annoying. But I think maybe I knew I was reading something that made me understand a little better. I think it's possible that part of the reaction to this character was

was that some people were hearing a particular dub of the film where his lines were dubbed by an adult who did this really nasal whiny voice for all of his speaking parts. And I can't be sure, but I think that dub exists. And I think that is not the version I saw. So I don't know if that is the reason for sure, but that would partially explain it because I thought Ichiro was great. Yeah.

That is a great, great point. And that's probably the reason. It reminds me of a film like, say, House by the Cemetery. Yes. Is Bob the kid in that? Bob, yes. Bob the demon child with an adult voice. Right, yeah. He's clearly dubbed by a grown woman. And it creates a weird energy in the film. Like, you...

You kind of there's an uncanniness to him that and there's a certain amount of uncanniness is supposed to be there. And then there's this added layer of the uncanny. And in a picture like this, yeah, Ichiro is not supposed to be uncanny. He's not supposed to be weird. And you get the wrong dub on there and it's going to totally change the feeling you get. Exactly. So I think that may very well be what's going on.

But so we follow Ichiro around and a lot of the early parts of the movie are just sort of establishing his daily life and his struggles. And maybe we could talk a little bit about elements from each of these things that are established.

So one theme of the movie is bullying. Ichiro is consistently bullied by a gang of bigger kids who are led by this sadist bully king named Gabara. So we see them knock Ichiro over on purpose as they run by and they taunt him and they call him weak and they make him feel helpless.

And you really feel for Ichiro. Like there's a, you know, these moments where the camera just lingers on his face as he looks frustrated and sad and, and knows that he can't really fight back.

Yeah. Yeah. And he's a good kid and he just doesn't want to make anything worse. He doesn't want to escalate things. Then you've got another theme. So bullying is one. Another theme is Ichiro's love of the kaiju. I wonder what you thought about this. Does the movie take place in a world, basically in the real world where monsters don't exist, but the children are familiar with the existing Godzilla movies or

Or does it take place in a world where the events of the previous Godzilla movies are known of as real events that have previously happened in the world? I couldn't tell which, but I think maybe it's the former, like he's literally seen the films. I think so. If I had to choose one, I would go in that direction. Yeah.

Just because basically, I mean, no particular thing leads me to think that. Though there is a part where we see a kaiju action figure or doll. Yeah. But I think we saw one in Hedera as well. Yes, we did. So that alone is not an indicator. But I think overall, I get the feeling that, yeah, this is a world in which the monsters are only on TV and in the minds of children. Yeah.

Ichiro is having monster pareidolia, like a car goes by and he's like, oh, that car, the screeching, it sounds just like Manila. It goes key, key, key. I don't think I ever heard Manila make a key, key, key sound. Unless that's supposed to be the donkey sound. Maybe we're getting into that whole situation where we're not sure what

Uh, what, or not, or it just, it varies what sound an animal makes based on the language, uh, in which you're describing it. So maybe donkeys go kiki in Japanese. Yeah, maybe I couldn't say. Okay. So that's another theme. Uh, Ichiro, he gets bullied. He loves the monsters, but also, uh, the theme of this movie is loneliness. And I think it, it tackles that in a pretty head on way. Ichiro's family here is, is working class, uh,

And both of his parents work long hours to make ends meet. And he is often home alone after school fending for himself. So we see a scene where he's walking by the train tracks in this old, you know, busted industrial landscape and a train starts going by.

And the conductor in the front of the train or the engineer, I guess, whatever, the guy in the front of the train is his dad. And his dad calls out, oh, hey, Ichiro, I'm working tonight. Be good till your mom gets home. And then actually after this, we stick with Ichiro's father for a little bit. We see him take a smoke break with his coworker. And we we learn that the father wants to save up enough money that they can move away from the smog, move out to the country or to a place where the air is clean.

So you see that he's working long hours to, I guess, try to get his family to this better place. But then also in the scene, we learn from his coworker who's reading a newspaper that there are a couple of bank robbers on the loose fleeing police with a suitcase full of money.

And these are Chekhov's bank robbers. They will show up later. But we learned that they took 50 million yen. And you can just see Ichiro's father dreaming about what he could do with money like that. Now, we come back to bullying. There's another bullying scene where Ichiro and Sachiko are walking around and Ichiro finds a vacuum tube in the grass, I guess, because this is an area that used to be like an electronics factory.

And he finds it, and then the bullies come up on him, and they take away his vacuum tube, and they call him a baby, and they mock him to his face. And for some reason, I found something very heart-wrenching about the theft of Ichiro's vacuum tube. I think it's because...

He found it. And this kind of hit me in a strong way because I have memories of being a little kid and finding a treasure of some kind, just lying out on the ground somewhere. That's a powerfully nostalgic kind of memory. And I have one specific memory of something like this happening to me.

And I was out at some event, I think, and I found a loose spool of tape from an audio cassette and I was like holding it and letting it blow in the wind. And then an older kid took it away from me and threw it over the edge of a bridge. Yeah.

Um, and that, yeah, that, that really stuck with me. So I, so anyway, I felt the vacuum tube scene very hard. Yeah. This felt like a very authentic moment in this picture. Like, cause I think we can all, we all have memories like that where we find some sort of weird bit of discarded technology or, or just straight garbage. Uh, but it's fascinating and we want to, want to keep it. And, uh, and then also the childhood insult of, of him being a baby. Like I, uh, I definitely, um,

I don't have memories of this myself, but I've seen that watching my son grow up. Like there was a period where to call someone a baby was the biggest insult to the point where he would call the cat a baby if he was mad at the cat. Sick burn. Yeah, like it's clearly, you know, it's clearly hurting Ichiro, but...

to hear this. But then there's also this kind of innocence to it. Like these kids are so young, even their cruelty is

Yeah. Yeah.

And it's clear that, you know, he's welcome hanging out in this guy's shop and they're friendly and Shinpei is a good, you know, nurturing influence on this kid.

But it's also funny because he makes this computer. He expects Ichiro to be all impressed. But what Ichiro says is, ah, the moon's okay, but there's somewhere else I'd rather go. Monster Island. And then he just starts listing all the monsters. And I was like, oh, this also made me, this seems authentic. Don't kids love to list all the monsters or list all the whatevers?

Oh, God, they do. And I'm not going to be a hypocrite. I'm also going to admit I love to list the monsters and I've never grown out of that. But yeah, like my son will definitely list all the Pokemon, all the Dungeons and Dragons, dragon varieties. And I think that's great. I love it, too. I love a good monster list.

But I think we see one of the reasons that Ichiro is so infatuated with the monster is he talks about how they're all stronger than Gabara, his bully. And he's like, you know, they don't have to worry about bullies. They can do what they want. They're free because they're strong.

And then eventually we see Ichiro go back home and there's kind of a lonely snack scene where he, you know, his mom left out a snack for him. He has that. He watches some TV and he watches like the news where he learns about the bank robbers stealing the 50 million yen. He switches, I think, to a soap opera where the people are like saying, oh, I love you. And then he there's a really funny moment where he I can't remember the.

The phrase he says in Japanese, but the translation is he just goes, yuck. But then it segues to him playing around with this like toy radio he's put together that he dreams like of calling Monster Island, which segues into a dream of him visiting Monster Island.

And this is going to be one of the major themes for the rest of the movie is the, these recurring visits in dreams to monster Island, where all the monsters live, where we're going to see a lot of fights between monsters. Much of this is going to be footage from other movies, but I think some original stuff too, um,

And this is where Ichiro meets Manila, the son of Godzilla. And they become friends because they have a lot in common, it turns out. Manila is also being bullied by a monster on Monster Island. And that monster has the same name as Ichiro's bully. They're both called Gabara. Oh, by the way, he initially dream travels to Monster Island, but...

Via direct flight, which I thought was a marvelous dream sequence. Yes. I love how in these scenes with Manila, he's also, as he's like, hey, I hear you know Godzilla. Do you think you could introduce me to him? Because I'd love to climb on his back. Yeah.

And Manila's like, well, you know, I'll see what I... Manila talks in this, by the way. Manila says, well, I'll see what I can do. But, you know, Godzilla, he doesn't like me around all the time because he gets on to me for not being strong enough, for not standing up for myself enough. And, of course, that, again, mirrors the situation with Ichiro. Oh, yeah, that's right, because we actually do see a scene where Ichiro's father says, you know, he...

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There are places on Earth where science and mystery collide, and Skinwalker Ranch is one of the most fascinating examples.

In the newest season of the History Channel's The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch, the team, made up of experienced scientists and engineers, is literally digging into the unknown to get to the bottom of a mysterious material discovered inside the mesa. This goes far beyond folklore. We're talking actual physical evidence that defies everything we know about geology, physics, maybe even reality itself.

If you're drawn to the edges of scientific discovery beyond the world of what we think we know, this season is going to fascinate you. Just how deep does the truth lie? Find out on The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch. New season premieres tomorrow at 8, 7 central, only on the History Channel. Today's episode is brought to you by USPS.

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So we're going to get some slams, some smackdowns on the island. I think we see Godzilla fighting Ebira, I think. The Ebira Horror of the Deep, the shrimp crayfish monster. We see various fights take place. And in a way, Ichiro kind of watches and learns from them. But he also learns from watching Son of Godzilla morph up and try to fight against Gabara.

Uh, the, like, he like grows and he, and they fight and Gabara always wins at first, but you kind of like pick up some clues along the way about how he might beat him later on. Now Gabara is pretty interesting. He's, he's again, our main Kaiju antagonist and he is original to this picture. So many of the other Kaiju we encounter are, are just clips from other scenes or maybe reused, uh,

puppets even in the films that they originally appeared in. But Gabara exists for this picture. This is his first picture where we see this costume. And I think he's pretty great. I've read that he's supposed to resemble a mutated frog or toad, but he winds up with more feline features somehow. He kind of looks like a green panther. He's like a lizard cat. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think these feelings of like cat similarities are also accentuated by he's green and scaly, but he has the shock of orange hair on the top of his head amid these various horns like this, this row of horns down the down his head as well. And I feel like the orange hair, the green skin, it kind of gives him a cartoon leprechaun look.

You know what I mean? Yep. Yep. Though I've, of course, that's not what they were going for here. I've read that what they were originally aiming for with this design was more of a something that alluded to the Japanese Oni, you know, kind of an ogre figure. And if you go to the Wikizilla page for this monster, you can actually see some of the preliminary sketches, the way they envisioned this creature. And yeah, I can definitely see a sense of the Oni here before it's realized in the suit.

Oh, that almost kind of makes sense with... So, Gabara being like this bully who just waylays Ichiro while he's on the way home from school, like sits by the roadside and attacks him as he goes past. He's kind of like a bandit in a way, and that... I think there's...

classically a little bit of overlap between the concepts of some Oni and like banditry ideas. Yeah, yeah. And I think also there are often ideas of lightning with the Oni. And indeed, Gabara here has an electricity attack that he uses. But he doesn't have a breath weapon. I thought that was interesting. He doesn't seem to have a projectile weapon.

which I think is an interesting choice because a lot of times in these movies you see some sort of like a ranged specialist kaiju, and that's generally the, that's a weak point for Godzilla or for Gamera, whoever's facing such a kaiju, even though Godzilla, of course, has an amazing breath weapon that he can use at range.

Now, for all of the kind of like sweet elements of this movie, there are also some things that ring kind of weird. One of them is when we're seeing Godzilla training son of Godzilla here, training Manila how to use his radiation breath. He does it by like stomping on his tail. He's like, when I step on your tail, that makes you really shoot the radiation. And until then, he can only kind of like blow these like rings of radiation that don't really do anything.

Yeah, so I guess Godzilla's lesson here is that you must feel pain and give in to your anger. He's basically giving him the dark side of the force feel. Strike me down with all of your hate. Your journey towards Monster Island will be complete.

So, again, there may be a generational divide on the message here, the parenting message of Godzilla. But, I mean, it's amusing in the picture. Yes. I mean, there are several things. There's also a real-world thing where, you know, there's a very nice message about giving Ichiro confidence to stand up to his bullies. But I don't know if the exact way that he does that in the end is the best. Yeah.

I think he kind of like fights them, but then he also at their goading, like pulls a mean prank on a guy who's just trying to paint a sign and gets him covered in paint. I don't know. Oh, yeah. And this was what the bullies were trying to get him to do earlier in the picture. They're like, hey, see that guy painting the sign on the top of the ladder? You should go blow the horn on his motorcycle. So he falls off the ladder and.

And he's like, of course, I'm not going to do that. I'm a good kid. And they make fun of him. And then later he's like, I'm a brave kid now. Watch me go make that man fall off the ladder. And he does. So I think that something's a little confused there, but there's another major plot line. I don't think I'm going to go into great detail on unless there's anything about it you wanted to hit, Rob, but a major part of the real world plot, apart from what what's happening in the dreams of Monster Island is.

is the developing story about the bank robbers with the 50 million yen who are hiding out in a nearby factory. I think it's near the place where Ichiro found the vacuum tube. And

And ultimately he is kidnapped by these bank robbers because we know each row loves to like find and pick up treasures. And one of the treasures he finds and picks up is a driver's license dropped by one of the robbers. And now, now he knows who they are. So they have to kidnap him. And then ultimately he has to outsmart them with tricks and traps. And after the robbers are caught, there's this very interesting scene where it's almost like the movie is telling us the moral of the story and

And, uh, the, like the press hail little Ichiro is a hero and Ichiro gives credit for his heroism to Manila, to the monster from the Godzilla movies. And, uh, and there, so there's this exchange where the toy maker, his friend Shinpei is hanging out there near all of the, the, the reporters. And he explains to them, he says, he means Manila, the monster. I think I understand he's like a higher power, uh,

And one of the reporters asks for clarification. He says, a higher power? And Shinpei says, that's right. Adults believe in gods. So why can't children have their own gods too, like Manila? And it's kind of a funny line, but oh, something stirred in me there.

I absolutely agree. Yeah, this is one of my favorite parts of the picture, really, because I think it's rather insightful and accurate. And I think it's a theme that we've maybe touched on to some degree in our discussion of Godzilla and Weird House before. But here it's directly brought up in the picture. This idea that toy monsters and ultimately monster media in general, these are icons that connect children in the natural world to the powerful realm of super beings.

in this film localized on Monster Island, which one can easily compare to the various sacred mountains of various cultures around the world. So the monsters are strength and courage. They are the absolute personification or expression of emotion. And they have considerable power over the grown-up human world while not being a part of that world. And of course, we see a sequence in this where the humans come in jet planes to conquer Monster Island and Godzilla has to fight them off.

and destroy some jet fighters, that sort of thing. I think that was maybe a scene from a previous picture. I'm not sure. It could kind of feel like filler. And again, checking off the boxes of what a monster movie should give you. But it also, I think, works in this sort of vision of like, what is...

what is the energy of the kaiju and why is it so attractive to children? It's like, it is big body energy incarnate, you know, and it is the expression of these emotions that there may be only beginning to understand at certain ages. I think that's all correct. And there was another angle in which I was thinking about this. Maybe this is too much of a reach, but

It made me think about this is almost kind of painting a picture of a world highlighting the difference between like the gods of children and the gods of adults, which is where many adults might literally believe that the gods exist, but don't take their lessons and their meaning to heart.

Meanwhile, you can have children who can treat known fictional entities like the monsters of Godzilla like gods. And even though they don't literally believe they exist, they do take their meaning to heart. And so it's almost like a question of adults taking their gods literally but not seriously and children taking their gods seriously but not literally. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it brings me back to another thing I think we've discussed in the show before, like this space for mythology in our modern viewpoint. Like, I don't think the world needs to be just truth and fiction, that it needs to be just the real and the unreal, you know, the difference between skeptical and fundamentalist viewpoints. Like, I feel like there needs to be a room for mythology.

And under that, like a very loose version of mythology in which you have room for actual myths that have cultural resonance, but also fictional things, things like Godzilla, things like Star Wars or any any bit of media or imagination that ends up becoming meaningful to somebody. Yes, I think we should take Ichiro's attitude to heart, right, because he can find

absolutely raw core meaningfulness in his, in his mythology without it being in fact true that Manila is a physical monster that exists in the world. Yeah. Though coming back to my question from earlier, I still don't know for sure whether the film is saying that he's just a character in a movie in the world of the film or whether he was real. It's not quite clear, but assuming it's the, the, the former that it's a character in a movie.

Yeah, yeah. I like the ambiguity, though. I think in a way it works well with this kind of children's viewpoint of the world, a world in which, yeah, I mean, maybe they are real. Maybe they are. It doesn't matter at the end because they're real to him. So this was a really fun one. I'm glad we did this one. I always have a certain amount of hesitation with kaiju movies just because

You don't want to spend a lot of time on one that is just a monster suit film. Like there are so many, there are a lot of great monster suit films, but they got to have something else going on in them to really be, to really be worth talking about. And this film definitely had, had other things going for it besides some awesome monster battles. Oh, I take that back. I wouldn't say the monster battles are awesome in this picture. Don't watch this one just for the monster battles, but it provides a nice balance of things. Hmm.

Well, I agree, but I don't know. I might feel different. Maybe I'm just more gung-ho about any great big monster beatdown. I didn't feel like Godzilla was ever in real danger in this one. I always knew he had this one handled. But it wasn't just Godzilla's battle. It was also Godzilla's son's battle. So there's a different dynamic going on here.

All right. Well, we're going to go ahead and close this one out, but we'd love to hear from everyone out there. If you have thoughts on all monsters attack, if you have other favorite kaiju movies that you would like to suggest for the future on Weird House Cinema or just discuss in general, you know, we read listener mail on usually on our listener mail episodes on Mondays in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. So we're happy to discuss all of that there.

A reminder that we're primarily a science podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Monster Fact or Artifact episode on Wednesdays. And then on Friday, we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. And if you want to see a list of all the films we've done before, we can go to a couple of places. I blog about all these movies at Samutamusic.com. It's just a personal blog that I maintain. It's just mostly Weird House stuff these days.

And then if you go to Letterboxd.com, that's L-E-T-T-E-R-B-O-X-D.com, that's a cool website where you can chronicle your own cinematic explorations and make lists and so forth and add reviews. We have an account there. Our account is Weird House. And we have a list there that has all the movies that we've discussed in order. And occasionally you'll get a glimpse ahead at what is about to come up for us.

Huge thanks to our audio producer, JJ Posway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stufftoblowyourmind.com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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