Kamen Rider X!

This Blu Ray sure looks great, doesn't it?

833 The Sensational Sister Street Fighter of 1974!

The first of "four" movies starring Etsuko Shihomi, it is quite good and action-packed.

~X~”Devil Doll” live at The Belly Up in Solana Beach 12-19-2022

                      Since I have already watched and reviewed Devil Doll, here's something that is awesome and slightly connected.

701. The awesome X From Outer Space! 1967 review

                 What a great movie this is!  It is unique, even amongst Japanese monster movies.

X - I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts (Official Audio)

         Usually this post is a trailer for Sven's movie tomorrow night, but it is already here, and today is a holiday.

Xenorama #75 is go!

After a bit of a break, we are back with the newest issue of Xenorama!  Issue 75 will feature many kaiju movies that AIP released to television (and one they released to the movie theaters)!  We cover movies from Attack of the Mushroom People to Yongary, Monster from the Deep!  There is a lot in between there as well, science fiction, friendly aliens, deadly ninja, and deadly space amoebas. AIP should be thanked for bringing such a wide variety of movies and shows over here- not just Japanese ones, but British and Italian movies as well!  Not to mention all the cool cartoons!  Sure, not every movie was a winner, but they were almost always worth a look at least once.  When you saw the AIP logo, you knew you were in for an interesting time!

X - The New World (Official Audio)

               I have not posted nearly enough X music on this blog, I see.  Here is another of their great songs, from what is in my top three X LPs.

444. A Kamen Rider Double Feature review!

                Here are two great Kamen Rider movies from the 70s.  Talk about heroes and monsters, these two movies have them in spades!

X - Ruby Church (Official Music Video)

         

X - Breathless (David Letterman 1983)

                   

DEVIL DOLL - (1964) Trailer

                                

I have never seen this movie, and as dolls like this are creepy to start with, I have no real desire to see it.  Perhaps it will work well.  I was gonna put a performance of "Devil Doll" by X, but there was no good video for it.  So here you go.

X - 4th of July

  

A certain genius friend of mine mentioned listening to this song yesterday.  I will admit to not knowing much X music after Billy Zoom left the band.  His stunning guitar work was such an important part of the sound of the band I couldn't imagine how they would sound without him.  This song was written by Dave Alvin of the Blasters fame.  It's no knock on either Alvin or Tony Gilkyson (former guitarist of Lone Justice), they were great, but Zoom was the guitar sound of the band.  He returned to the band in 1998. 

Big Book of Japanese Giant Monster Movies

Things have been quiet here for a while, and that's a story for the next post.  However, I have gotten two new books from John LeMay.  This is his newest book, or rather ebook, as the case may be.  It's really a lot of fun, full of great information and it's well written to boot.  It covers most of the fantastic cinema from Japan in the Showa era, and a few other Asian movies.  Nearly all of them include giant monsters, but there are a few movies he covers that don't have them in there.  I doubt anyone is going to take him to task about those movies being included in the book.

Kamen Rider X - Setup and X Kick

Oh, there's a reason for this- I just got the Malayasian DVD set of this (all 35 episodes on two discs) and am enjoying it quite a bit, even with the somewhat dodgy English subs. Out of the first five shows this is the one I've seen least, so I am looking forward to it.

X From Outer Space Credits

Here are the international English credits to this fun movie. It has the oddest international dub I've ever heard. I'm sure it's not a William Ross production, as the voices are so weird and most of them rarely fit the actors. I mean, they just don't sound right.

Orion Home Video - Monster Movie Previews (1989)

I remember vividly when these four movies were released on VHS by Orion. I'd seen all of them before on TV, but they had pretty much disappeared by the mid-80s, thanks to damn infomercials. Ugh, I still hate those things. They were fullscreen versions, and all had the AIP/Titra/Titan dubbing that I had grown up seeing (yes, I know, GAPPA was the international dub, but you get the point) so "Save The Earth" is on the Smog Monster tape. These were also released on laser-disc, which was a blessing, since it allowed all of the dubs to be saved.

Kamen Rider X Opening Subbed

I'll admit it, I love this show. I had the opening on here a while ago, but it's gone now, so here it is, subtitled in English this time. it's too bad they've only got the first six episodes done, but one shouldn't complain too much, if at all, since they do it for free.

The X From Outer Space

a real song about Guilala. why have I never heard of this band "Ten Cent Rentals"? it's a nifty little song, and it's actually about the movie. awesome.

X marks the Monster of the Week

just watched Monster X: Attack the G-8 Summit (2008) which I enjoyed (and would have liked even more had it been about an hour long).

it marks the return of one of my favorite monsters, Guilala.  his early appearances in the movie are mostly stock footage from his first movie (the awesome X From Outer Space (1967), but they look pretty good, considering the age of that movie.

the new movie is not funny enough to be a flat out comedy, but much goofier than the original to be a straight monster movie.  it also sports some of the worst gaijin actors of all time, and useless and rather stupid subplots abound.

I think this is an enhanced shot of Guilala spitting a fireball.  I think in the original movie they were blue-ish, and it doesn't look very blue-ish here.

it's such an endearingly outrageous design for a monster, how can you not love it?  the new suit looks pretty good as well- good enough that the Ladders used Guilala for a major tv ad a few years ago.  and those were some funny spots, I gotta say.  the "out takes" spots are pretty funny as well.

at the end of the movie there's a nice lengthy battle with Guilala fighting Take-Majin.  it's not a serious fight, but it's pretty entertaining overall.  there are some familiar sound effects as Take-Majin shows up, and a definite nod to Ultraman for the end to the fight.

poor Guilala though.

X marks the Monster

I remember the first time I saw Guilala.  there was a picture of it in Famous Monsters of Filmland (from hereon referred to as "FM"), on the inside cover, or back, or inside back, I forget now, of it holding a boat aloft.  looked incredibly cool, that's for sure.  this is a great scene of it chasing a truck.

but as happened often back then, there was nothing ABOUT the movie in the accompanying blurb.  which really was frustrating at the time, I'll tell you what.

I think the next time I saw a picture or two was in Starlog's "Spaceships" book/magazine (one I still have.  boy, it took forever to find that link, and I didn't know Starlog had ceased print publication) which featured a picture of the cool "Atomic Astro Boat Gamma".  this is one of my favorite spaceships of the movies.

this Japanese movie by Shochiku Studios was populated by several gaijin, or non-Japanese "actors", many of whom appeared in a lot of other Japanese movies when they needed a token foreigner.

the star of this movie was the lovely Peggy Neal.  these images came from the trailer of the movie, so perhaps that's not the most flattering picture I could have picked.  doubtless some would want the shower scene, complete with synthetic water.

no, I don't know how they made that!

Peggy starred in two Japanese genre movies, this and the fun "Terror Beneath the Sea".  these days she seems to have vanished.  I would love to see or hear an interview with her.  it's hard to gauge her acting ability, since she's dubbed into English.  the R2 DVD has this very odd English dub, and the version we saw as kids was dubbed by Titra.

I finally saw the movie, I think in about 1980 or so, when Channel 4 was having movie themed weeks toward the middle of the year.  I loved it, thought it was well worth the wait.