20th Century Boy wrote:What about Space Amoeba? Why is it included? (Not that I'm complaining.)
Because it was a part of the "Champion Film Festivals" that took place several times a year in Japan during this period.
Anyways, thanks to everyone for being patient. Work the past few weeks has been ridiculously insane. On to the quick review...
As already mentioned, this book is very good. In addition to tons of behind of the scenes stills, it focuses a lot on the "Champion" film festivals, something I've never really seen much information on. Apparently, there were Champion festivals for the spring/summer/fall/winter of each year throughout most of the 70s (1978 seems to be last year of the Champion Festivals). It has alot of publicity stills and interested Godzilla-related goods, color posters, and other Memorabilia associated with the films. To say Japanese kids who were Godzilla fans during this time period were extremely lucky and spoiled would be an understatement! As a child, I would have killed to see such cool items/memorablia for these films.
Here's a small page sample focusing on the 1971 Winter Champion Festival as well as some Godzilla manga from the time period:
I also liked how this book interviewed past cast and crew members of these films.
The highlights include interviews with some of the more memorable actors/characters of this era of G films, such as Hiroshi Ishikawa (Gengo, the nerdy cartoon artist from
GvsGigan, Mari Keiko and Tomoko Ai (both of whom have a little bit of MILF/GILF thing going for them, lol
), and Hiroyuki Kawase (who played everyone's favorite annoying kid characters from
GvsHedorah and again in
GvsMegalon). The main actress from Y
of: Space Amoeba is also interviewed.
That is one of the things that puts "
Champion Perfection" over the top of
Heisei Perfection, as this book seems focused on the numerous different crew members and actors/actresses as a whole who contributed to this time period's films, while
Heisei Perfection is mainly centered around one individual (unsurprisely).
In regards to the unmade projects, the book contains full scripts for
Godzilla vs Redmoon / Godzilla vs the Space Monsters / Revenge of King Ghidorah / Giant Monsters Converge on Okinawa: Showdown in Zanpamisaki. "Meh, nothing new that already don't know" were my first thoughts. For example,
Godzilla vs the Space Monsters (my personal favorite unmade project) had the usual synopsis involving Miko the alien Brain controlling KG/Gigan/Megalon as they square off against Godzilla/Anguirus/Maijun Tuol. I was initually disappointed in this section, as I hoped that some new, never before seen concept are would be present.
However, upon closer inspection of the
Revenge of King Ghidorah script (which is basically nearly identical to what became the eventual
GvsGigan), I saw this bombshell.
For those of you who can't read the katakana, the script shows that Godzilla/Mothra/Anguirus battling King Ghidorah/Gigan/Megalon.
Now, up until this book, I've already heard numerous times that Godzilla/Rodan/Varan vs KG/Gigan/Mogu (a new monster)...no where else had I read the above monster line up was considered for this film. In fact, as far as I can tell, this book makes zero mention of "Rodan/Varan/Mogu" in regards to
Revenge of King Ghidorah. Very fascinating indeed. I have a feeling that these unused scripts contain alot of interest tidbits that are just waiting to be translating. Damn, do I need to work on my kanji skills quickly!
Overall, one of the better books released this year (and this year has seen a ton of great books). A must have for those into collecting G-related books....
Some new, very interesting tidbits...
