Here it is, folks! The commentary that August Ragone and I recorded at G-Fest XXII is now available to download. So basically, I wanted to do something special and different for my favorite movie, Toho’s 1965 epic creation: Godzilla vs. Monster Zero (Kaiju Daisenso). And during his last visit, well-known kaiju historian and author of Eiji Tsuburaya: Master of Monsters, August chatted with me about what we could do as a future collaboration. This is one of those crazy ideas we came up with and I am very glad that G-Fest accepted the panel. After a long day of prep and panelling at the convention, this was the last piece of the convention’s programming of the day. I was wiped out, but it was fantastic to sit down and talk about my favorite Godzilla film with my friend August.

Just a word of warning on the audio quality: I didn’t have the control I normally do; so the actual film audio is pretty loud. so you may have a little more trouble discerning between us and the film. Anyway, big thanks go out to August for agreeing to be part of this panel Hopefully it’s an entertaining listen!

And and one more word on the commentary itself. This was a much more laid back recording – I can pretty much guarantee that we’ll be revisiting Planet X with the Kaijucast crew in the future!

Just a heads up for this long-overdue posting, you won’t hear your Kaijucast Crew on this commentary. A lot of people have contacted us after hearing this commentary mentioned on the podcast so I thought it was a good idea to post it since it’s been available on some back road channels since March of last year. If you’ve ever heard me speak to the virtues of Classic Media’s Godzilla Raids Again commentary, you’ll know why I felt that the Godzilla vs. Megalon commentary needed to be shared. The voices you’ll hear are the same and the results are even better. And if you want to know more about why this commentary was never included on the official releases, you might want to listen to episode 92 and 107 of the Kaijucast.

Jeff, Bryan, Rachel and I sat down to record a commentary for what I’m saying (right now) is my favorite Godzilla film from the 1970s, Godzilla vs. Gigan (Chikyū Kogeki Meirei: Godzilla tai Gigan). In addition to everyone coming over before hand to watch the film together, I opted to read a few things instead of trying to rely on my faulty memory. I think the result is a pretty damned entertaining and informative 90 minutes.

Also, since I was unable to keep up with the score’s commentary, here is a…

Guide to Stock Music Used on GODZILLA VS. GIGAN

1.  The “Main Title” is actually edited together from three sources:

    a) THE BIG BOSS  – Cue M12T2 (title unknown)

    b) GODZILLA VS. THE THING – brief excerpt from “Destruction of the Hamikaze Hotel” (M20)

    c) BIRTH OF THE JAPANESE ISLANDS  – shortened edit of “Volcano” (M3)

2.  A LIFETIME OF BUSINESS SAVVY – THE TOUGHEST GUY AROUND (Japanese title, “Shokon Ichidai Tenka No Abarenbo”) – “The Meiji Restoration”(M4)

3.  DESTROY ALL MONSTERS – brief excerpt from “Monster Land” (M3)

4.  ATRAGON – “The Film That Was Sent” (M5)

5.  FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD – excerpt from “Main Title” (M1)

6.  THE BIG BOSS – Cue M15B (title unknown)

7.  ATRAGON – “The Submarine Returns to Port” (M11)

8.  DESTROY ALL MONSTERS – excerpt from “Monster Land” (M3)

9.  DESTROY ALL MONSTERS – excerpt from “Monster Land” (M3)

10. LATITUDE ZERO – “Mariku and Dr. Okada” (M21)

11. FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD – excerpt from “Search March” (M21)

12. FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD – “Encounter in the Rain” (M6)

13. DESTROY ALL MONSTERS – “SY-3 Sortie” (M20)

14. DESTROY ALL MONSTERS – “Escape From Monster Land” (M10)

15. ATRAGON – “The Film That Was Sent” (M5)

16. FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD – “The Whereabouts of the Wrist”(M19)

17. BATTLE IN OUTER SPACE – edit of “Opening” (M1)

18. BATTLE IN OUTER SPACE – “Main Title” (M2)

19. FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD – “The Whereabouts of the Wrist”(M19)

20. FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD – “Search in the Fog” (M26)

21. GHIDRAH THE THREE-HEADED MONSTER – “Discovery of the Meteor” (M6 – played twice)

22. DESTROY ALL MONSTERS – edit of “Fire Dragon Pursuit” (M28)

23. DESTROY ALL MONSTERS – “Major Battle at Fuji I” (M25)

24. GODZILLA VS. THE THING – edits together “Godzilla and Nagoya” (M14) and “Plan B: Electrocution” (M23)

25. GODZILLA VS. THE THING – excerpt from “Destruction of the Hamakaze Hotel” (M20)

26. GHIDRAH THE THREE-HEADED MONSTER – “Godzilla Attacks Radon” (M19)

27. GHIDRAH THE THREE-HEADED MONSTER – edits together “The Two Monsters Appear in Yokohama” (M11) and “The Fury of the Gravity Beam” (M15)

28. FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD – “The Strange Person in the Cage” (M11)

29. Not a stock cue – original pop song written for the film 

    (Vocal:Ishikawa Susumu Lyrics: Sekizawa Shinichi Music: Miyaguchi Danro)

30. EXPO ’70 Mitsubishi exhibit – extended edit of  “Storm” (M2)

31. EXPO ’70 Mitsubishi exhibit – extended edit of  “Volcano” (M3)

32. DESTROY ALL MONSTERS – “Ending” (M29)

33. Film version of “Main Title”, edited together from three sources:

    a) THE BIG BOSS  – Cue M12T2 (title unknown)

    b) GODZILLA VS. THE THING – brief excerpt from “Destruction of the  

       Hamikaze Hotel” (M20)

    c) EXPO ’70 Mitsubishi exhibit – shortened edit of “Volcano” (M3)

34. Godzilla March  (Vocal: Ishikawa Susumu/Lyrics: Sekizawa Shinichi Music:Miyaguchi Danro)

*If listeners really want me to detail what’s happening in the film when these cues happen, I will add that information after G-Fest.

Our new commentary has been recorded! It should be online this week… I’ll give you 28 guesses as to what it could be.

Let’s get this out of the way first. This is a DRUNKEN commentary and it is NOT CLEAN. That is to say, it’s explicit and not for the sensitive ears of our listeners that cannot handle f-bombs (in addition to a bunch of other bombs). Ok, now that we’ve said that…

That’s right….we’ve done it now, folks. We created a drinking game, sat down with some good old fashioned booze and watched the 1998 American abomination poorly titled Godzilla. Or as fans around the world call it, G.I.N.O. (which stands for Godzilla In Name Only). We had a blast recording this and, surprisingly didn’t get as wasted as I thought we would. Praise the Flying Spaghetti Monster for small wonders, right?

If you’ve lost your mind and want to play along, the drinking game’s rules are simple:
1. Every time someone messes up Nick Tatapolous’ name, DRINK!
2. Every time someone calls Nick “the worm guy”, DRINK!
3. Every time the french crew complains about America, DRINK! 
4. Every time the mayor and his aid give a thumbs up or down, DRINK! 
5. Every time the military misses Zilla and hits something else, DRINK!
6. When a Simpsons cast member appears on screen for the first time…DRINK!
7. Every time you see product placement….DRINK!  

The Kaijucast urges you to drink responsibly.

Oh, it has been so long. We have no excuse. But at least we have recorded our next commentary. I’ve teased it on the podcast, but we wanted to watch a terrible, terrible Godzilla film and drink and really just let loose. Our target? The 1998 American Godzilla from Tri-Star. Yeah… it was a bad call.

I just finished tweaking and uploading the fourth audio commentary. Thanks to a poll on Kaijucast.com, we selected the 1966 not-really-a-sequel-to-Frankenstein–Conquers–The–World kaiju epic, War Of The Gargantuas. We watched the American version of the film because it was both available on DVD and on Netflix (at least at the time of this posting). I had some serious post production to run on the audio tracks, so please forgive some of the quieter people – we’re still working out the best way to record these. Hopefully you enjoy listening almost as much as we did watching and commenting!

Major apologies for the delay in this update – apparently commentaries are a lot of work! On the plus side, I’ve been listening to a LOT of the commentaries that have been provided by Kaiju eiga historians such as Stuart Galbraith IV, Ed Godziszewski, August Ragone, Steve Ryfle and others in order to get a *much* stronger sense of the depth that these people will go to to make their presentations engaging and informative. I’m determined to make our next commentary something quite amazing – and that’s not going to be easy as the film basically serves as a bold footnote to more popular kaiju films. Thanks to a pol on the main Kaijucast page, our next commentary was voted on by the listeners and will be for the 1966 WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS! And it should be online by the middle of next month. Now if you’ll excuse us….. we’ve got a lot of work to do.

The 3rd commentary track is now available for download. This time we dive into the hideous depths of the 1971 Toho classic from the “showa” era, Godzilla vs. Hedorah – commonly known here in the United States as Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster. We were watching the international version of the film. Aside from myself (the controller) the commentators in this track were Jeff Dean, Dave Helfrey and Bryan Cook. There’s not a lot of dead air, but we I didn’t cover as much as I thought I was going to. While the movie is somewhat of a train wreck, it is a really fun ride. Hopefully you will have as much fun listening as we had recording!

This commentary is dedicated to the memory of James Bonney, who not only was a loyal kaiju fan, but a contributor and listener to the Kaijucast.

On a journey, ill;
my dream goes wandering
over withered fields.
–Death Haiku by Matsu Basho

We’ve chosen the next commentary track! Hopefully we’ll be adding another couple of Kaijucast regulars to the list of commentators. Expect to be thrilled and chilled and somewhat educated in September!

Our second commentary is online! This one is for the 1962 King Kong vs. Godzilla and we watched the Universal DVD release. Along with myself, I was joined by Heather Brask and Jeff Dean (my co-hosts from the Kaijucast) for this commentary. We chose this film because the Hollywood Theatre here in Portland is showing the film on April 24th and we wanted to make sure the commentary was ready by then. So, please download, listen and we hope you find it interesting!