Talkback: Frankenstein vs. Baragon (1965)

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Re: Talkback: Frankenstein vs. Baragon (1965)

Post by Spuro »

Lain Of The Wired wrote:How'd the little boy manage to get Frankensteins heart in his chest?
IIRC, it's implied that he ate the heart, which caused him to mutate.
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Re: Talkback: Frankenstein vs. Baragon (1965)

Post by edgaguirus »

Goes to show you need to watch what you eat.
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Re: Talkback: Frankenstein vs. Baragon (1965)

Post by GodzillaFan1990's »

Kaiju-King42 wrote:IIRC, it's implied that he ate the heart, which caused him to mutate.
Wait a minute? From what I recalled wasn't it that an nuclear test or something radiated Frankenstein's Monsters heart causing it to grow a new body? :?

Unless that was the english dub or something and this whole little boy ate the heart thing is the canon japanese dub...

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Re: Talkback: Frankenstein vs. Baragon (1965)

Post by Lain Of The Wired »

It definitely didn't grow the lil boy body.
They mention a lil boi running around the hospital ruins after the atomic bombs. I know I dont remember them saying he ate it though, either
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Re: Talkback: Frankenstein vs. Baragon (1965)

Post by GodzillaFan1990's »

Lain Of The Wired wrote:It definitely didn't grow the lil boy body.
They mention a lil boi running around the hospital ruins after the atomic bombs. I know I dont remember them saying he ate it though, either
I see. Well thanks for the update on that then.

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Re: Talkback: Frankenstein vs. Baragon (1965)

Post by eabaker »

Lain Of The Wired wrote:It definitely didn't grow the lil boy body.
They mention a lil boi running around the hospital ruins after the atomic bombs. I know I dont remember them saying he ate it though, either
I always assumed that the implication was that Frankenstein regenerated as an infant, and that was the little boy running around the hospital.

As I recall, the "child ate the heart" thing was part of a US press release, or somewhere in the coverage of the film (FM, maybe?), but I'm not sure. It's certainly not something that's established in either cut of the film.
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Re: Talkback: Frankenstein vs. Baragon (1965)

Post by Lain Of The Wired »

I guess the clues are there, they claim the boy is strangely Caucasian
He musta fell from the plane when the bomb was dropped :P
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Re: Talkback: Frankenstein vs. Baragon (1965)

Post by eabaker »

Lain Of The Wired wrote:I guess the clues are there, the claim the boy is strangely Caucasian
He musta fell from the plane when the bomb was dropped :P
They say that about Frankenstein himself. I think the makeup was intended to make Koji Furuhata look Caucasian.
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Re: Talkback: Frankenstein vs. Baragon (1965)

Post by edgaguirus »

From every source I've heard, it says the heart regenerated after the bomb.
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Re: Talkback: Frankenstein vs. Baragon (1965)

Post by Ivo-goji »

They showed clips from this film in the new documentary The Strange Life of Dr. Frankenstein. I'm glad it gets recognition for it's place in the novel's tremendous legacy.
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Re: Talkback: Frankenstein vs. Baragon (1965)

Post by edgaguirus »

Wonderful. Frankenstein is one of the longest lasting sci fi and horror characters. That the monster has inspired film makers world round is worthy of mention.
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Re: Talkback: Frankenstein vs. Baragon (1965)

Post by Godzillian »

Ivo-goji wrote:They showed clips from this film in the new documentary The Strange Life of Dr. Frankenstein. I'm glad it gets recognition for it's place in the novel's tremendous legacy.
Do they actually talk about it, or is it just mentioned in passing with some clips thrown into the intro and outro of the doc>
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Re: Talkback: Frankenstein vs. Baragon (1965)

Post by Ivo-goji »

The answer is yes.
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Re: Talkback: Frankenstein vs. Baragon (1965)

Post by Grievous »

I actually really like this one...

Its very strange but entertaining
& I want a dog sized Baragon as
a pet please.
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Re: Talkback: Frankenstein vs. Baragon (1965)

Post by GodzillavsRayquaza »

This movie’s really dang good. Builds up tension really well, Frankenstein is a good mix of pitiable and frightening, entertaining cast of characters (can’t go wrong with Nick Adams), and Baragon’s surprisingly menacing.
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Re: Talkback: Frankenstein vs. Baragon (1965)

Post by JAGzilla »

There's only been one post in this thread since 2018. Really? I mean, I guess a lot of us are probably in the same boat I've been in, where the movie hasn't seen a new release in like fifteen years, and paying $30 for a less-than-stellar DVD is unpalatable, so a good number of members here likely haven't seen it. So it's an understandable situation, but still sad.

Anyway, I finally bit the bullet and bought the DVD. Yeah, picture quality wasn't great and the sound went really quiet during the final battle, but it was worth it to finally see this film. It really is very good, one of Toho's best. Frankenstein himself was excellent. He could have had a bit more sense of weight in his movements, I guess, but that's small potatoes when his size was sold so well otherwise, at least for the time. He was very well integrated into shots with 'normal-sized' actors, and the sense of scale was done so well in the cage scenes early on that I found myself just buying it, not even registering that I was looking at special effects. The makeup looked very convincing, too. And then the actor gave a very believable performance, sympathetic yet intimidating when it was called for. He did a good impression of ignorant innocence in moments like the one where he's fascinated by the necklace, or when he gapes in wonder as the ship with all its colorful lanterns passes him by in Lake Biwa.

And I never realized that this movie actually had any connection to the original Frankenstein story. I'd been under the impression that Toho basically slapped the Frankenstein name onto their own mutant giant and called it a day. But no, this guy has the heart of the original monster, which I appreciated. The WWII opening sequence was very unique for this genre, and one of my favorite parts of the movie. Honestly, I'll bet an awesome movie could be made out of that idea alone, this daring mission to take the living heart of the Frankenstein monster from a mad scientist, smuggle it out of Germany during the final hours of the war in Europe, transport it halfway around the world in a U-boat and rendezvous under fire with a Japanese sub... like, come on, that's so cool. What could go wrong along the way, when you have this heart capable of cellular regeneration? I think I could contrive a few monster movie scenarios...

Baragon was a solid villain, cute and goofy-looking but still with a good feeling of danger and greed to him. There's not a whole lot to say about him, I guess; he served his purpose, a real, honest monster to contrast against Frankenstein's misunderstood humanity.
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Re: Talkback: Frankenstein vs. Baragon (1965)

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edgaguirus wrote: Tue Oct 23, 2018 12:44 pm Wonderful. Frankenstein is one of the longest lasting sci fi and horror characters. That the monster has inspired film makers world round is worthy of mention.
The three fictional characters that have made the most films are, in order:

*Sherlock Holmes
*Count Dracula
*the Frankenstein Monster

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Re: Talkback: Frankenstein vs. Baragon (1965)

Post by eabaker »

mikelcho wrote: Fri Jul 16, 2021 12:50 pm
edgaguirus wrote: Tue Oct 23, 2018 12:44 pm Wonderful. Frankenstein is one of the longest lasting sci fi and horror characters. That the monster has inspired film makers world round is worthy of mention.
The three fictional characters that have made the most films are, in order:

*Sherlock Holmes
*Count Dracula
*the Frankenstein Monster
Apparently this is not true if we count Santa Claus as a fictional character (independent of the real Saint Nicholas), in which case he easily takes the top spot.
Tokyo, a smoldering memorial to the unknown, an unknown which at this very moment still prevails and could at any time lash out with its terrible destruction anywhere else in the world.

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Re: Talkback: Frankenstein vs. Baragon (1965)

Post by mikelcho »

eabaker wrote: Fri Jul 16, 2021 3:47 pm
mikelcho wrote: Fri Jul 16, 2021 12:50 pm
edgaguirus wrote: Tue Oct 23, 2018 12:44 pm Wonderful. Frankenstein is one of the longest lasting sci fi and horror characters. That the monster has inspired film makers world round is worthy of mention.
The three fictional characters that have made the most films are, in order:

*Sherlock Holmes
*Count Dracula
*the Frankenstein Monster
Apparently this is not true if we count Santa Claus as a fictional character (independent of the real Saint Nicholas), in which case he easily takes the top spot.
These three characters I've listed have film lists that each number in the triple digits - and that's just theatrical films; that doesn't include TV series, made-for-TV films, TV specials, novels, short story collections, short story anthologies, children's books, comic book series, etc. I don't think the actual number of Santa Claus's theatrical films goes that high, to tell you the truth.

In fact, it's been said that more has been written about Sherlock Holmes than about any other subject in literary history except William Shakespeare and the Bible.

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Re: Talkback: Frankenstein vs. Baragon (1965)

Post by Terasawa »

This has been one of my favorite kaiju movies since I was eight, but lately my favorite aspect of this movie has been the very real (literally) chemistry between Adams and Kumi Mizuno. It adds quite a bit of depth to their otherwise thinly-drawn characters that you very rarely get in these films.
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