Last night Felicity and Charles came over for movies. We not only got a bit of a late start but we also inadvertently wound up having a Godzilla movie marathon.

We started out with Godzilla vs the Sea Monster (dir. Jun Fukuda, 1966). This was the seventh film in the series, where a giant lobster named Ebirah plays a rousing game of soccer with the king of the monsters. The Americanized version featured in an episode of MST3K, but the original Japanese cut isn't so terrible. I admit to having a soft spot for this one and its weird, go-go, Batman-esque theme music by composer Masuru Sato.

Next up was Mothra vs. Godzilla (dir. Ishiro Honda, 1964), the fourth movie of the franchise and arguably the best of the series. Felicity has a tremendously soft spot for Mothra. Her dream job when she grows up is to be the giant moth god of Infant Island. I wish her luck at accomplishing her lifelong goal. This movie had a fantastic score by Akira Ifukube, with the Godzilla theme at its menacing best and one of the finest songs written for Mothra's tiny princesses, the Shobijin.

I also think that we should all go as characters from this film for Halloween. I call dibs on Kumayama the businessman, Felicity had a liking for Junka's outfits, and Charles would be perfect as the Mothra Chieftain if he sprayed his hair and beard white. There are no faults with this plan!

Last up for the night was an attempt to bridge the two previous films with the fifth in the series, Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (dir. Ishiro Honda, 1964). We watched this one a couple weeks ago, and Chuck and I watched the commentary track featuring the super-excited David Kalat. Felicity had fallen asleep the first time we watched it though and, wouldn't you know, she did again last night. So we'll just have to watch the second half of Ghidorah again! That's okay, because Charles finds the monster battle to be uproariously funny for some reason. It's a good movie and I personally have not minded repeated viewings. I only insist on this one because it leads more or less directly into the next film, Astro Monster, which we'll watch at some point. Ifukube's music for this one sounds fairly similar to Mothra, which makes sense given that he scored the two films at the same time. The difference here is that Ghidorah's score is much more repetitive and therefore less interesting than Mothra's, though the Shobijin get a nice new song.

We hadn't intended to begin any sort of Godzilla marathon, it just kind of happened. Last Monday we watched Godzilla Raids Again (dir. Motoyoshi Oda, 1955), the first in the long line of sequels, and the mood for more has kind of stuck. It's decent but seems like a slightly rushed sequel, with maybe too much footage of model airplanes shooting missiles at a mountain. The Americanized version, called Gigantis, is undoubtedly one of the worst mashups with a non-stop voiceover narrative and unnecessary clumps of noisy pseudoscience garbage added in for good measure. The American version is only good for featuring George Takai's voice in one of his first Hollywood jobs, a bit of dialogue about Anguirus being a "killer of the living," and the infamous "banana oil" dub. Raids Again features a pretty decent musical theme by Masuru Sato, a far different sound than what he would compose for Sea Monster eleven years later.

And yet, we still haven't sat down to watch the first film in the series, Godzilla, and the third film, King Kong vs. Godzilla. We will have to do that sometime, especially since the Japanese cut of the original film is a dang great movie and a good horror film to boot. It's scary in ways that the sequels have never really tried to match. The later films (and the Americanized version) don't try to terrify us with the realities of nuclear armageddon the way this one does.

Unfortunately I don't have all the movies so if we keep this up then I'm going to have to go buy more. I want them anyway so it's not all bad.