WHATS THAT COMING OVER THE HILL?

I saw three massive monster movies over the summer. As a kid I would have pestered and pestered my parents for any toys that came out with the films, but I didn't this time!

First up, the Meg. I saw this on the big screen at the flicks. Its a movie about a megalodon surfacing in the modern day. If you go back to your dinosaur days as a kid, the megalodon is a giant shark. In the Meg its about 100 feet long and would have given Captain Brody a coronary!

There's not a lot I can say about the Meg except that I loved the shark. The humans were incidental. Watching it you can't help think of Jaws and Jurassic Park. I wonder if they considered the title Jurassic Jaws?

Still, the Meg does answer that basic question we all had as kids. What would it be like if a giant dinosaur shark came back. Forget Sharknado or Sharktopus. The Meg's got the teeth!

Second we have Rampage. I watched this on Pay to view You Tube. Again, its about massive creatures causing havoc and this time the American Kaiju are a gargantuan wolf, a mega-crocodile and a colossal Kong style gorilla. The city demolition scenes are excellent and felt truly satisfied with their wrecking skills. Again the human angle, although more developed than the Meg, was incidental for me, although Dwayne The Rock Johnson is almost a Kaiju himself!

Watching Rampage called to mind the two giant killer dogs that Bruce Banner's twisted Dad Nick Nolte breeds in the early modern slug at the Hulk fifteen years ago. Which begs the question, is the Hulk a kaiju? Anyway, I enjoyed Rampage a lot and would like to see the big three up against say, Cloverfield or dare I say it, Godzilla!

Last but not least but certainly the oldest, I watched Gorgo online. From 1961 it certainly is right back there with the King himself. coming just 5 years after Godzilla first lets rip. Gorgo is the Irish Godzilla, a Celtic Kaiju.

Set in coastal Ireland and ultimately London, its the tale of a giant monster caught at sea and taken to London to see the Queen. Like King Kong before him, Gorgo is chained up for all the world's paparazzi to snap, when one too many flash bulbs causes Gorgo to snap too. 

But little do the profiteers know that Gorgo is just a baby. His colossal mother, Ogra, is on her way and must surely have set the trend for massive moms searching for junior in monster movies. Think of Jurassic Park's T.Rex's and the MUTO's in the modern American Godzilla.

I liked Gorgo immensely. OK, the effects were a bit rubbery but the creature itself is well-conceived and its movements plausible. Clearly inspired by Godzilla, the changes to its physique were enough to make it its own monster: the large ears, the massive clawed feet and the armoured back.

The scene were Gorgo is driven across London on a Dorkin's Circus flatbad lorry [what is that?] is superbly done and passing through Piccadilly Circus makes for iconic cinema. Inevitably, like any good Kaiju in England, it takes lumps out of the biggest thing it can find and changes the time on Big Ben, a trope sort of set earlier that same release year by fellow bad boy Konga.

Gorgo's mum, Ogra, isn't in the film long or else it would have been called Ogra I suppose but at 200 feet tall she must be one of the biggest Kaiju around. Alas, she never turns up on monster scale charts but could give any of them a run for their honey. Along with her son, she did however get to be in Charlton's GORGO comics drawn by the titan of comicdom, Steve Ditko no less!

Have you seen any Kaiju this summer?

Now, where are my toy monsters!