Time of my Life - S.S.S.S.'s Showing of Godzilla vs. Gigan

"Life all comes down to a few moments. This is one of them."
-Bud Fox, "Wall Street" (1987)




Where should this begin? Ok, let’s start with what’s happened in between this film and GMK. The Plaza Theatre has shown two kaiju films since GMK in January of 2009. These include DAM and the original Rodan. While my failure to attend these events have lead people to say rather negative things about moi, I always kept positive when a new kaiju film was being shown. Thankfully, I attended this Spook Show. Albeit, it is ironically the last Spook Show till October due to the Silver Scream Spook Show cast being subject to a new TV series with Adult Swim helping (defiantly going to be better than "Children’s Hospital" - which I saw one of the wall paintings which AS ads ask you to "find this", Atlanta kicks ass). I would also like to mention that we also went by "The Vortex", a burger joint I once saw on "Man vs. Food". I wanted to go there, but once I left the theater only one thing was on my mind: Godzilla. Anyway, let’s go into the event.

I got there about 30 minutes before the show started. With there being the lack of a dealer, the first place of interest I went to was (aside from the box office) the Silver Scream Spook Show table. Not as elaborate as it previously was. However, it was still cool. Evidently thanks to some tricky stuff, in the end I got a Fang Club card, a button, an XL shirt, the Plaza Atlanta Godzilla vs. Gigan poster, and a bunch of the programs. While waiting, I talked a little to Daniel Wickwire of Kaiju Movie Review before having to take more photos and such for this very report.

The Scream Show itself rocked. As normal, it began with the birthday serenade. After wards, the actual program. I lucky caught all of it on camera and captured it better then what I did with the GMK Spook Show (especially considering I was sitting closer to the back of this showing). Alas, after a 10 minute wait to see the film on behalf of people who were parked in a Publix parking lot needing to get their cars moved to a different location, the film began (thank god for the 10 minute wait, I got some stuff done). It was cool to the old Cinema Shares print of "Godzilla vs. Gigan", only entitled "Godzilla on Monster Island".

However, I did not sit through out the whole film to watch. My mother, god bless her soul and her slick talking ways, got a deal in which allowed me to go inside for a short time the Godzilla suit used for the Spook Show. I like the dang thing. The head reminds me of the Banpresto 12" figure that was sculpted by Yuji Sakai. So, while not being allowed to put my whole body in (they have to put boxes in the suit so it will stand while no one is in/around the suit), I did get to feel from the waste up what it feels like - to an extent - to be Nakajima or Satsuma, or Kitagawa. It’s stuff like that which helps you gain appreciation for the art. I felt this feeling once before - in engineering class making wooden bridges. Gives you a deeper appreciation. Now, from what I heard, the only reserve the guy who owned the suit had about me even feeling the inside is the fact that a lot of people get nicked because of the metal skeleton that is inside of the suit, which is basically just memory foam (like in beds).

I got back into the film when we see the corncob scene. The film was just very fun and even though sitting farther back then I did at the GMK screening, the print was still something to be amazed about, especially that though the print had a lot of damage, the increased definition compared to my Anchor Bay VHS copy of the film is pretty awesome. Looking at each little detail in the models and suits and such. Very cool, despite a layer of purple coloring on the print (which in the end isn’t that bad and actually makes the viewing more interesting).


Afterwards, I talked to some people, my mother took some more photos of me, and Dan started filming material for his coverage of this film (which I forgot to do out of the sheer excitement of my attendance). One thing I need to thank Dan for though is giving me his Gamera 3 poster. He offered it to me some time ago and I accepted it. He knows it is in good hands. The poster is actually a limited piece which went along the Sega Gamera 3 figures. To add on to it’s value, it was autographed by Tiffany Grant - who played Nagamine in the US dubs of "Gamera: Guardian of the Universe" and "Gamera 3: Incomplete Struggle".

In the end, it was a fun time and really, this report doesn’t do justice to what happened. It was awesome. In the meantime, be watching KMR for an interview of me done by good friend Dan Wickwire!