Film Review: Dr. Giggles (1992)

Also known as: Doctor Giggles (alternative spelling)
Release Date: October 23rd, 1992
Directed by: Manny Coto
Written by: Manny Coto, Graeme Whifler
Music by: Brian May
Cast: Larry Drake, Holly Marie Combs, Cliff DeYoung, Glenn Quinn, Doug E. Doug

Largo Entertainment, JVC Entertainment Networks, Dark Horse Entertainment, Universal Pictures, 95 Minutes

Review:

“Sorry…the Doctor is in…sane” – tagline

I remember how hard the studio was marketing Dr. Giggles when it was coming out. Being that I was in 8th grade, at the time, I didn’t see it in the theater and just planned to wait for it to come out for rental on VHS like most horror movies when I was that age. However, it came and went and I never did rent it.

So nearly thirty years later, I finally checked it out.

To start, it’s not very good. But it’s also not terrible. It’s very middle of the road, predictable and doesn’t make a big enough mark to warrant a film series like so many other slashers with unique villains that came out over the ’80s and ’90s.

That’s not a knock against Larry Drake, who plays the title character. Drake is a multi-time Emmy Award winner and a talented actor in the right role. I’ve always liked him in movies where he’s the villain like the Darkman series or when he’s just simply in a horror movie like Dark Night of the Scarecrow.

Drake really got to shine as the focal point of this picture and he was superb at being creepy. His laugh was great and unique. His character also had a decent backstory, capped off by an incredibly well-crafted scene where the child Dr. Giggles emerges from the womb of his dead mother in the morgue. It’s actually the highlight of the film, if I’m being honest.

The rest of the cast is pretty bad, even if the movie has some notable people in it like a young Holly Marie Combs, Colin Quinn, who played Mark on Roseanne, and Cliff DeYoung, who I will always have a fondness for because of his role as the dad in The Flight of the Navigator. The movie also features Doug E. Doug before he’d become better known in Cool Runnings and Cosby.

Apart from those actors, the rest of the cast is abysmally bad and it drags the movie down, as it relies on throwaway caricatures and tropes for these characters.

This is a forgettable movie and that’s probably why people forgot about it immediately after its release in 1992.

Rating: 5/10

Film Review: The Double 0 Kid (1992)

Release Date: 1992 (Italy)
Directed by: Duncan McLachlan
Written by: Steven Paul, Stuart Paul, Andrea Buck, Duncan McLachlan
Music by: Misha Segal
Cast: Corey Haim, Nicole Eggert, John Rhys-Davies, Brigitte Nielsen, Wallace Shawn, Karen Black, Seth Green

Crystal Sky Worldwide, Prism Entertainment Corporation, 95 Minutes

Review:

While I liked Corey Haim when I was a kid, he did make a fuck ton of dreck, as time went on. This is, hands down, one of his worst films that I’ve ever seen.

What’s surprising about it, though, is that this is loaded with a good amount of known actors, all of whom I like. But none of them were really able to carry this movie and salvage the abysmally bad script.

Alongside Haim, there’s Nicole Eggert, who I was crushing on in the late ’80s/early ’90s, as well as John Rhys-Davies, Wallace Shawn, Brigitte Nielsen, Karen Black and Seth Green.

The story is about a really smart kid that dreams of being a spy. However, he basically plays the stoner trope without actually being a stoner because I guess this was made to be somewhat family friendly for the straight-to-video market.

It’s just terribly boring, terribly unfunny and is full of so many baffling, weird bits that you have to suspend disbelief to the point of breaking your brain or your television.

There’s some strange video game/virtual reality/simulator subplot that makes no fucking sense if you understand how those things work.

If this ever pops up as a suggestion on a streaming service, my only advice is to run… very fast.

Rating: 2/10

Film Review: Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

Release Date: August 30th, 1992 (UK – Edinburgh International Film Festival)
Directed by: James Foley
Written by: David Mahmet
Based on: Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mahmet
Music by: James Newton Howard
Cast: Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Alec Baldwin, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin, Kevin Spacey, Jonathan Pryce, Bruce Altman, Jude Ciccolella

GGR, Zupnik Cinema Group II, New Line Cinema, 100 Minutes

Review:

“You never open your mouth until you know what the shot is.” – Rocky Roma

As much as I like finance and business thrillers, as well as everyone in this incredible cast, I had never seen Glengarry Glen Ross until now.

Granted, I have seen most of the iconic scenes from the movie for years, as people have referenced and quoted this movie for decades now. I’ve probably seen the Alec Baldwin speech a dozen times whether it was sent to me via YouTube or clipped into something else I’ve watched. I almost know it verbatim but there’s much more to this movie than its most iconic, most quotable scene.

Narratively and visually, I’d consider this to be a neo-noir picture, as well as just being a great business flick. It has backstabbing, conniving and a crime plot but brings some mystery into the second half of the picture.

The neo-noir aesthetic is pretty clear with this film’s cinematography, especially in regards to the scenes shot at night or in the bar. Visually, it reminded me of the cinematography style of Robby Müller. Specifically, his work in The American Friend, Repo Man and Paris, Texas. The night scenes are full of high contrast between dark shadows and vivid lighting. The daytime office scenes, however, feel muted and a lot less lively, as if the office is a sort of colorless, boring hell.

The film’s plot surrounds the worst real estate office in a large company and how the four salesmen are pitted against one another for survival. The two who do the worst, will lose their jobs. With that, we see the worst parts of these men’s characters rise up from their apathy, as paranoia and survival instinct sets in over the course of two days.

The acting in this is absolutely stellar and it is completely a film driven by the astounding dialogue and masterful acting.

Having never seen this in its entirety, I didn’t know the ending. By the time I arrived there, it was like a real punch to the gut and I didn’t see the twist coming.

While many that are into business thrillers and movies about sales and finance are very aware of this picture, I feel like it’s grossly underappreciated amongst normies and general film buffs.

Rating: 8.5/10
Pairs well with: other business and finance movies of the ’80s and ’90s.

Film Review: Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992)

Release Date: November 15th, 1992 (Century City premiere)
Directed by: Chris Columbus
Written by: John Hughes 
Music by: John Williams
Cast: Macaulay Culkin, Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern, John Heard, Catherine O’Hara, Devin Ratray, Gerry Bamman, Hillary Wolf, Kieran Culkin, Tim Curry, Brenda Fricker, Eddie Bracken, Dana Ivey, Rob Schneider, Ally Sheedy (cameo), Donald Trump (cameo), Bob Eubanks (cameo), Rip Taylor (cameo), Jaye P. Morgan (cameo), Jimmie Walker (cameo)

Hughes Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox, 120 Minutes

Review:

“Hey. You guys give up? Have you had enough pain?” – Kevin McCallister

As I said in my review of the first Home Alone, I hadn’t seen that movie in-full in years. Well, I hadn’t seen this one since it came out. I’ve seen scenes on television over the years but I felt like a full watch was grossly overdue.

So while this isn’t as great as the original and while I don’t think that it was necessary, it’s still really endearing and a fun, holiday movie.

All the important cast members are back but if I’m being honest, it would’ve been nice just getting a cameo from Roberts Blossom after he saved Kevin and reunited with his estranged son in the first film.

That being said, it’s kind of unbelievable that Kevin would’ve been left behind by his family once again but you’ve got to kind of suspend disbelief and just go with it. I mean, it’s also unbelievable that this kid could live and survive in New York City on his own and that while there he’d run into the same burglars from the first film but I digress. This isn’t the type of story where you should be really thinking that hard.

My only real gripe about this film is that it’s too long. I don’t know why they had to go for a full two hours, as the just over ninety minute running time of the first movie was perfect. But I guess Kevin is in a much larger environment and that provided John Hughes the luxury of writing more gags.

Despite the new, grandiose setting, though, the film is really formulaic and just tries to repeat the main beats of the first movie. That doesn’t wreck it though, it just makes it a slightly inferior but still a pretty good copy of the masterpiece it’s trying to emulate.

I really liked the cast additions of Tim Curry and Rob Schneider in this one, though. They added a lot to the movie and their interactions with Kevin and then his parents were pretty good.

It was also great seeing Kevin put the burglars through the gauntlet once again and while this sequence isn’t as iconic as the original, it still provided some great slapstick comedic moments and I love seeing Culkin, Pesci and Stern play off of each other in these scenes.

All in all, the first film is perfect but this is a worthwhile sequel that doesn’t diminish the greatness of the original while giving you a few more hours to spend with these characters you love.

Rating: 8.75/10
Pairs well with: its predecessor and other John Hughes holiday movies.

Film Review: Malcolm X (1992)

Also known as: X (poster title)
Release Date: November 18th, 1992
Directed by: Spike Lee
Written by: Arnold Perl, Spike Lee
Based on: The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X, Alex Haley
Music by: Terence Blanchard
Cast: Denzel Washington, Angela Bassett, Albert Hall, Al Freeman Jr., Delroy Lindo, Spike Lee, Theresa Randle, Kate Vernon, Christopher Plummer, Lonette McKee, Giancarlo Esposito, Wendell Pierce, Roger Guenveur Smith, Debi Mazar, Karen Allen, Peter Boyle, David Patrick Kelly, Mary Alice, Nicholas Turturro, Michael Imperioli, John David Washington, Ossie Davis

Largo International, JVC Entertainment Networks, 40 Acres & A Mule Filmworks, Warner Bros., 202 Minutes

Review:

“[Witnessing Malcolm’s control over a mob] That’s too much power for one man to have.” – Captain Green

Every great director has their magnum opus and this is Spike Lee’s.

Malcolm X is pretty perfect from top-to-bottom and for a film that is nearly three and a half hours, it mostly moves at a really good pace. I thought that the first act was too drawn out but it takes up less than an hour of running time and the film really finds its groove once Malcolm goes to prison and first encounters the lessons and ideas around The Nation of Islam.

From that point forward, this is a truly exceptional motion picture that is bolstered by the legendary performance of Denzel Washington. In fact, despite him winning the Academy Award for Training Day, I would say that this is the best performance of his career.

Beyond Washington, everyone else in this film is superb from the smallest parts to the largest. There really isn’t a weak link in the entire cast and Lee did a phenomenal job in picking who he did for each role.

This also boasts the best cinematography out of all of Spike Lee’s movies. Sure, he has a stupendous eye and employs wonderful visuals in every film but this felt so genuine and rich. It was like a true time capsule back to the 1940s through 1960s and nothing about it felt staged or inauthentic.

Having read the book, years ago, I’ve always seen this as the most perfect interpretation of it. In fact, if anyone were to try and attempt a Malcolm X biopic in the future, I don’t know how they could really make anything better or even as close to great as this is. As far as I know, it’s never been attempted and frankly, it shouldn’t be.

Watching this, it was hard not having my mind try to compare the incidents and the social climate in the 1960s to today. A lot of people love quoting Malcom X and for good reason. However, I think that a lot of people who cite him don’t fully grasp the context and cherry pick what fits their narrative. I think it’s important to understand the man’s full journey and to see what he went through, what he learned and how he applied all of that to his actions and his message.

Unfortunately, Malcolm was gunned down in the prime of his life and we never got to see how he would’ve continue to evolve and how he would’ve worked together with other black leaders and leaders of all races in the following decades.

Malcolm’s death was an absolute tragedy but his life is certainly worth knowing and celebrating. With that, this film is really special in how it captured the man, his personal struggles and growth. Spike Lee and Denzel Washington made a biographical picture that is as good as they get.

Rating: 10/10
Pairs well with: Spike Lee’s other films of the late ’80s and into the ’90s.

Film Review: Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

Also known as: D (working title)
Release Date: November 10th, 1992 (Hollywood premiere)
Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola
Written by: James V. Hart
Based on: Dracula by Bram Stoker
Music by: Wojciech Kilar
Cast: Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Keanu Reeves, Anthony Hopkins, Richard E. Grant, Cary Elwes, Billy Campbell, Sadie Frost, Tom Waits, Monica Bellucci, Jay Robinson

Osiris Films, American Zoetrope, Columbia Pictures, 128 Minutes, 155 Minutes (original cut)

Review:

“Do you believe in destiny? That even the powers of time can be altered for a single purpose? That the luckiest man who walks on this earth is the one who finds… true love?” – Dracula

While I was never a massive fan of this Dracula adaptation, which I will get into, I’ve still always enjoyed it. It’s generally well acted and it looks incredible. I also have to say that it’s stood the test of time, as it doesn’t feel as dated as I thought it would and because many people still talk about it and refer to it as one of their favorite vampire films of all-time.

I think that Francis Ford Coppola did a good job in giving the famous novel some new life and helped to inject vampire movies back into the mainstream consciousness. However, it does fall short of the great 1994 Interview With A Vampire adaptation, as well as some of the other Dracula movies of the past.

This tossed away certain tropes, as Dracula no longer takes on the visual style of Bela Lugosi’s Dracula and instead, was reworked with inspiration taken from Catholicism. The hair is different, the costume is different and its sort of refreshing, allowing this movie to actually break the mold and exist as its own thing, as opposed to just another rehash of what Dracula movies had been for sixty years.

The film also uses characters from the book, who were mostly ignored in the countless other adaptations. In a lot of ways, this is very accurate to Stoker’s original work. However, it also has some major differences, which makes it more of Coppola’s Dracula than Stoker’s Dracula.

The biggest of these changes is Dracula’s origin, which now connects him to Vlad the Impaler, a historical ruler of Romania, who fought off and conquered the Turks. Additionally, we see how he becomes a vampire, where the original novel didn’t really answer that question.

Beyond that, this is much more about romance, as Mina has an attraction to Dracula and he allows her to choose him. In the novel, Dracula didn’t care about love and his goal was to move to England and drain it of blood. That being said, I do like this modification that Coppola made and it gives the story more nuance, context and purpose. Plus, these moments between Dracula and Mina were beautifully shot and well acted.

My biggest gripe with the film, which sucks to admit, was that Keanu Reeves was out of his depth. I know that it is popular to criticize his performance in this film but those criticisms aren’t wrong. His British accent is somehow off, feeling forced and unnatural. Also, every time he shares the screen with Gary Oldman, he is outshined by a very wide margin. I guess Christian Slater was originally cast as Jonathan Harker and man, what a different and probably much better movie this could have been, especially when considering Slater and Winona Ryder’s chemistry in Heathers.

A strong positive for me, is that Coppola insisted on using old school effects techniques, as opposed to relying on newly developing CGI technology. The effects shots are really neat and give them film a sort of authenticity that CGI just can’t replicate, even now, nearly thirty years later.

The practical monster effects, the costumes, the hair, the makeup, all of that stuff is phenomenal and it has all held up so well.

I also like that this wasn’t filmed on location and that Coppola did just about everything indoors on massive soundstages. It gives the film a great, classically cinematic look and it reminds me of Hammer’s vampire films, as well as the old Universal Monsters pictures.

Lastly, the score is fucking perfection. Wojciech Kilar created one of the most iconic horror scores of all-time. The main theme of the film is even better, as it has become just as iconic as this film, if not, more so. I wish Kilar did more American movies over the course of his career but between this and his score from The Ninth Gate, he’s one of my favorite composers that I discovered in the ’90s.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a better film than I remembered it being. I still can’t say that it’s on my Mount Rushmore of Dracula adaptations but it’s one of the most unique and coolest versions of the story.

Rating: 8/10
Pairs well with: Interview With A Vampire, as well as other vampire films from the late ’80s through mid-’90s.

Film Review: Bad Lieutenant (1992)

Release Date: May 14th, 1992 (Cannes)
Directed by: Abel Ferrara
Written by: Zoe Lund, Paul Calderon, Abel Ferrara
Music by: Joe Delia
Cast: Harvey Keitel, Victor Argo, Paul Calderón, Leonard Thomas, Robin Burrows, Frankie Thorn, Victoria Bastel, Paul Hipp, Vincent Laresca

Bad Lt. Productions, Aries Films, LIVE Entertainment, 96 Minutes, 91 Minutes (R-rated)

Review:

“Vampires are lucky, they can feed on others. We gotta eat away at ourselves. We gotta eat our legs to get the energy to walk. We gotta come, so we can go. We gotta suck ourselves off. We gotta eat away at ourselves til there’s nothing left but appetite. We give, and give and give crazy. Cause a gift that makes sense ain’t worth it. Jesus said seventy times seven. No one will ever understand why, why you did it. They’ll just forget about you tomorrow, but you gotta do it.” – Zoe

I’ve heard pretty good things about this movie for years but I had never seen it. Sadly, I was really disappointed with it.

It’s a movie about a shitty, completely unlikable character. While that doesn’t mean that a story has to be bad, the problem is that he’s mostly surrounded by other shitty people and the few good ones are in such miserable situations that there really is no silver lining in this film.

Sure, it reflects the really dark parts about life but it doesn’t leave you with much to care about or anything to hope for. There’s nothing that grabs on to you and you’re just taken on a journey with a total piece of shit in the final days of his pathetic life.

I get it, you’re not supposed to like the guy but just making a movie about an unlikable character isn’t a good story. While he does appear to want to do something positive in regards to the nun who was raped, who isn’t seeking justice, I’m left feeling like he’s not really wanting to do it for her or for justice even. He just wants to take his anger and problems out on scumbags that deserve no mercy for their crime.

Apart from the shitty story and shitty characters, the movie is at least fairly well acted and competently shot.

It looks good, as it captures the grittiness of New York.

However, solid cinematography work can’t save a movie that’s just a turd to begin with.

When comparing this to other crime films of the era, movies like Goodfellas and Donnie Brasco are also full of mostly shitty people. However, those movies found a way to make you care about those crappy humans. They had charisma, charm and there was a suave coolness about them.

In Bad Lieutenant, Harvey Keitel is so unlikable and off-putting that it just broke the movie for me. I usually love Keitel but I sat through this whole movie hoping he’d get killed by the end. So I guess when that moment came, I wasn’t disappointed.

Rating: 4/10
Pairs well with: other Abel Ferrara films.

Film Review: Leap of Faith (1992)

Release Date: December 15th, 1992 (Dallas premiere)
Directed by: Richard Pearce
Written by: Janus Cercone
Music by: Cliff Eidelman
Cast: Steve Martin, Debra Winger, Lolita Davidovich, Liam Neeson, Lukas Haas, Meat Loaf, Philip Seymour Hoffman, M. C. Gainey, Delores Hall, Troy Evans

Paramount Pictures, 108 Minutes, 95 Minutes (Ontario cut)

Review:

“Look, I run a show here. It’s a lot of smoke and noise and it’s strictly for the suckers. I’ve been pulling one kind of scam or another since I was your age, and if there’s one thing I know it’s how to spot the genuine article because that’s what you’ve got to watch out for. Not the cops, you can always get around the cops. But the one thing you can never, ever get around is the genuine article, and you, kid, are the genuine article.” – Jonas

I saw this movie once a really long time ago but I really liked it and had been meaning to revisit it at some point. It’s just one of those films that slipped down the memory hole. But when I reviewed My Blue Heaven, I discovered that I hadn’t yet reviewed any of Steve Martin’s work, which was surprising due to how much I love the guy. So when I went down the list of his films, this one immediately popped out as one I needed to revisit as soon as possible.

I’m really glad that I did, as it’s held up pretty well and I’m honestly not sure why this isn’t considered one of Steve Martin’s best from the general critical consensus.

This is a film that really shows Martin’s dramatic range while still allowing him to be comedic. But this is a more serious picture than his most popular ones. Just being a few years removed from Parenthood, however, Martin was able to kind of build off of that film’s more serious tone and deliver another well-balanced performance that is both campy and real.

In this, he plays a professional conman that is running around America as a faith healer. He tries to justify his massive con by pointing out that his work, despite its dishonesty, does in fact help people because he makes them believe it. But ultimately, the story and the people he encounters on this stop of his journey, make him see himself and his work differently.

Martin is surrounded by a solid, very capable cast made up of Debra Winger, Liam Neeson, M. C. Gainey, Meat Loaf, a very young Philip Seymour Hoffman and an even younger Lukas Haas. But everyone in this film brings it. Plus, seeing the relationship blossom between Neeson’s Sheriff character, who wants to expose Martin’s preacher as a fraud, and Debra Winger, Martin’s trusted assistant, is really well orchestrated and executed.

The film lets you know that Steve Martin’s Jonas Nightingale is a pretty scummy guy from the get go but it still allows him to win you over and lure you in regardless of how he capitalizes off of very poor people’s naivety. You still fall for the guy even knowing the con and once you actually get to know him, you understand that his life has been pretty shitty too. It doesn’t excuse his poor life decisions but it allows you to understand where they came from and hope that he somehow finds a better path because he does touch people and could actually do some good in the world.

In its simplest form, this is a movie about redemption and I love redemption stories. It’s far from the greatest redemption story ever told but it is still a very enjoyable one that features a complex and charismatic character that you kind of want to root for in spite of his selfish, predatory nature.

Rating: 7.25/10
Pairs well with: other Steve Martin comedies with a high emphasis on drama.

Film Review: Candyman (1992)

Also known as: Clive Barker’s Candyman (complete title)
Release Date: September 11th, 1992 (Toronto International Film Festival)
Directed by: Bernard Rose
Written by: Bernard Rose
Based on: The Forbidden by Clive Barker
Music by: Philip Glass
Cast: Virginia Madsen, Tony Todd, Xander Berkeley, Kasi Lemmons, Ted Raimi, Vanessa Estelle Williams

Candyman Films, PolyGram Filmed Entertainment, Propaganda Films, 99 Minutes

Review:

“They will say that I have shed innocent blood. What’s blood for if not for shedding? With my hook for a hand, I’ll split you from your groin to your gullet. I came for you.” – Candyman

This movie is adored by some within the horror community but it’s just never really resonated with me. The weird thing, is that I love Tony Todd in just about everything he does and this certainly is his most iconic role. However, the film just kind of falls flat and it’s hard to care about much within it but I’ll explain.

To start, the film does lure you into a dreamlike state, almost immediately, by the enchanting, interesting and unique score by Philip Glass. However, even though I like the score, I don’t specifically like it for this film, as it gives it a weird tone and for me, at least, it doesn’t quite fit.

That’s also not to say that it’s not somewhat effective, as it does put your brain in a strange place. But that strange place sort of wrecks the film. Just because something is effective doesn’t mean that its effect is a good creative choice.

I have several issues with the film beyond this.

Firstly, the score doesn’t really help the pacing of the film, which moves slower than a drunk snail crossing over a maple syrup spill. In fact, it makes the film seem slower, as it tries to constantly enchant you and put you to sleep.

Secondly, it never really clearly defines who or what the monster is. You also don’t really understand what his powers are. Almost every time you see him, he appears to have the ability to teleport. Yet, at the end of the film, when he’s stuck in a giant pile of burning trash, he doesn’t teleport out, he just burns to death.

Thirdly, the ending is bizarre and doesn’t make a lot of sense. Does Virginia Madsen actually take the Candyman’s place as the monster? The ending implies such but this isn’t anything that’s ever revisited in the sequels. Granted, I haven’t seen the third one but I’m pretty sure it’s left unanswered and continuity doesn’t mean jack shit with these movies.

Fourthly, the film is just full of a lot of random, baffling shit. Like why was there a giant mountain of garbage in the first place? How did days go by and no one heard the missing baby in the next door apartment? What baby doesn’t cry every fifteen minutes? When Virginia Madsen calls for Candyman, she just gets drunk and goes to bed, why didn’t he appear instantaneously to butcher her and her friend like he did the girl in the beginning? This movie has more holes in its plot than a hobo has in his underwear.

However, there are some positives in this movie, like the performances from Madsen and Todd. They’re really good despite the picture feeling like a house of cards waiting to collapse in on itself.

Additionally, this flick does a superb job of making duality a theme throughout the picture. There’s the duality between white and black people in Chicago, the duality of there being a supernatural Candyman and a real world drug dealer who adopted the Candyman persona, there’s also the duality of the dream world and reality, as you’re never quite sure what’s actually happening at certain points.

There are a lot of layers to the movie but the problem is that none of them are as clearly stated as they need to be and they sort of get lost in the overall production being lackluster, the pace being too relaxed and the general dreamlike presentation.

The point is, this film should be more effective in regards to its social and political commentary. I don’t know if the director just didn’t want to hit people over the head with it but sometimes a story can benefit from that. The biggest issue with it is that Candyman, as a character, needed to be more defined and clearly tied to the themes of the film. At least the first sequel gives you his origin and clues you in to who he is, why he is and how this is all supposed to make sense in a clearer way.

Overall, this is a movie I’ve always wanted to like but I’m just kind of meh about it. From memory, I like the second one better but I’m going to re-watch it soon and then do a proper review of it.

Rating: 6/10
Pairs well with: the other films in the series, as well as Wes Craven’s The People Under the Stairs.

Film Review: Godzilla and Mothra: The Battle For Earth (1992)

Also known as: Godzilla vs. Mothra (alternative title)
Release Date: December 12th, 1992 (Japan)
Directed by: Takao Okawara
Written by: Kazuki Ōmori
Music by: Akira Ifukube
Cast: Tetsuya Bessho, Satomi Kobayashi, Takehiro Murata, Megumi Odaka, Akiji Kobayashi, Akira Takarada

Toho Co. Ltd., 102 Minutes

Review:

“There isn’t a job that is too tough for me, except, the one time I was married to a real stubborn woman.” – Takuya Fujita

I kind of forgot how much I enjoy this entry into the Heisei era of Godzilla.

It’s a pretty solid picture, all around, minus some cheesiness. But that cheesiness is mostly from the human actors, as the kaiju interactions and battles are some top notch stuff.

Also, since I hadn’t seen this one in quite awhile, I forgot that it’s actually Godzilla versus both monsters in the end.

While this is the first time that Godzilla and Mothra meet in the Heisei era, it is the first time that Battra has ever appeared. For those who might not know, Battra is essentially the Yang to Mothra’s Yin. He’s a darker and, at face value, an evil looking version of Mothra. The two monsters do battle throughout the film but by the end, Battra and Mothra decide that it would be better to combine their efforts to fight Godzilla, who in this continuity, is still a real threat and not the friendly, kid loving monster he became later in the Shōwa era pictures.

The rubber suits and animatronics in this chapter are amazing. While I find the previous film, Godzilla vs. Biollante, to be more impressive overall, this looks like a pristine and well crafted production, top to bottom. It’s certainly one of the best kaiju films of its era from a technical standpoint.

This also has one of my favorite final battles because the location looks unique, the monsters look great and the action itself is well choreographed.

If you’ve ever wanted to see a giant, neon Ferris wheel dropped on Godzilla, than this is the movie for you.

Rating: 8.5/10
Pairs well with: the other Heisei era Godzilla films, as well as Mothra vs. Godzilla from 1964.