With Guillermo Del Toro's big budget giant monsters vs giant robots film, PACIFIC RIM getting talked up at the moment, it was inevitable that the old 'Kaiju' films would be getting a re-release. This one from 1989 sees Gojira facing off against Biollante, a giant tentacled plant monster (?). This review comes from Shawn, who once again gives us the lowdown on this U.S blu-ray Offering. Check out the review after the jump...
The
first time I heard about GODZILLA VS. BIOLLANTE was in the
summer of 1992. I remember getting this pamphlet of model kits in the
mail and they had Biollante in it. It was a very impressive monster
and one you wouldn’t forget, but for some reason I couldn’t
recall what movie he was supposed to be in. It was a split second
later when I realized they must have made another Godzilla movie
after GODZILLA 1985 (aka THE RETURN OF GODZILLA).
I didn’t actually
end up seeing it until summer of 1995, when I walked into this local
video shop at the mall called, Saturday Matinee. God, I loved that
store. It’s been out of business now for decades. First row of
movies I walked down was where GODZILLA VS. BIOLLANTE was
stacked, and I almost shit myself when I saw it. This was the summer
I also remember vividly buying MOSQUITO (1995) and GUYVER
2: DARK HERO (1994).
Ah, the memories . .
.
When I was a kid I
used to like pretty much ALL the Godzilla movies, but now that I’m
grown, I only collect the “serious” ones. What I mean by that is
the ones where Toho turned him into a hero for the kids are the ones
I don’t care for. Thankfully that was only for a short time
during the first series of movies. GODZILLA VS. BIOLLANTE is
Godzilla portrayed as the force of nature he originally was, with no
apologies for the destruction he wrought and the lives we all know he
took under his feet, with the swing of his massive tail, with his
radioactive breath and during all those monster fights where he was
bested for a short time and crashed into buildings, or from those
rare moments when he unintentionally tripped into one.
What’s
the main attraction to any Godzilla movie, or any kaiju flick?
Watching the monsters demolish vast amounts of real estate and fight
each with their crazy death rays, or pseudopods, or
technological/biological armaments, etc, done on an almost biblical
scale, but for those who want to know the plot of BIOLLANTE,
okay, I’ll indulge you. It takes place pretty much right after the
events in GODZILLA 1985, and where the movie left Big G off
was having him trapped inside a volcano. In the interim some of his
cells are collected at one of the sites he previously rampaged
through, which eventually makes it into the hands of a Dr. Shiragami.
See, they all think Godzilla ain’t going to stay trapped for long,
so Shiragami creates a virus that feeds on radioactive energy, and in
theory this virus should kill G when it gets into his system.
But
that’s not all Shiragami has done with G’s cells. While
theoretically creating the King Of The Monster’s downfall,
he also decided to combine it’s cells with that of a plant, and to
top it all off he threw in the DNA of his daughter that died earlier
in the movie from an explosion in his old lab.
What
results is a giant tendrilled plant monster, with a huge red rose for
a head that resides in the lake next to Shiragami’s home.
Biollante, in my opinion, is the strangest monster Godzilla has ever
fought, and to date, the only plant monster one, too.
G’s
first confrontation with Biollante is one that ends in the plant
monster’s demise, but it eventually comes back, like the mythical
Phoenix, from it’s own ashes, in a new form, with all the teeth and
yawning mouth and bad attitude you can imagine.
This
is also the first movie where psychic, Miki Saegusa, is introduced,
and whose character runs through the entire second series movies Toho
created in 90s.
Echo
Bridge’s 1080p (1.85:1) transfer is not the most perfect, and I
didn’t expect it to be, after I learned how Toho treats their HD
masters of most of G’s films. Yes, it’s riddled with grainy
imperfection, but it also has moments of clarity and color, all of
which are better looking than any VHS I have ever owned.
When
it comes to movies that are in another language I always prefer any
dubbed version that exists to reading subtitles. That’s just how I
am. I only accept subtitles on a movie when it’s one I really need
to add to my collection and one where there’s simply no
dubbed version available. Case in point, I used to own, and will
probably own it, if it ever comes out on proper DVD and/or blu-ray,
the anime OVAs of UROTSUKIDOJI (1989), and I still own Shout
Factory’s superb DVD of GAMERA VS. BARUGON (1966). So, the
only language track I listened to on BIOLLANTE was the 1.0
mono English dub. I did, however, switch over from time to time to
the two Japanese tracks that are also included (5.1 DTS and 2.0 DTS),
just to see how they compared, and, unfortunately, for me, the audio
here was explosively better.
The
subtitle options for this are as follows: English: SDH (subtitles to
match the English audio), English: Complete Translation (new
translation from the original Japanese dialogue) and English: Screen
Text.
There
are only two extras included: ‘Behind The Design’ (2:58),
which is a brief narrated slide show of Biollante maquettes and the
Super-X2 models, and the ‘Making Of Godzilla Vs. Biollante’
(49:17). There are some movies I’m a big fan of but have no
interest in how they were made. Godzilla movies fall into this
category, so I have never seen any behind-the-scenes material
of any of the movies, but since this is a formal review, I had
to check out the extras here, and I have to say seeing Godzilla in
home video format is quite odd, if not, at times, downright comical.
Take for instance when he first surfaces from the volcano in the
movie, well through behind-the-scenes footage it looks like a guy in
a Godzilla suit having an epileptic fit.
It
was also stated that there was a lot of footage cut from this movie,
a few scenes of which are shown, and they don’t really add
anything, so I have to say the filmmakers probably knew what they
were doing when they trimmed the film down. It’s a fascinating look
into what it takes to film one of these movies, but seeing Godzilla
do his thing, without his customary slow motion stride and movie
tweaking, is just downright funny.
The
making-of doc and the maquette slide show are full frame, and there
are no trailers. .
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