My name is Aaron Allen; I'm a horror movie blogger and podcaster and-all-around-dork for genre cinema. I operate The Zed Word: Zombie Blog, a site devoted to my love of zombies, and Monster Chiller Horror Theatre, a blog about silly, sexy, surreal, and shocking horror movies. But above all, my love of horror stems from one thing: a deep-seated love of monsters. Giant monsters! City-destroying, colossal, rubber-suited giant monsters battling for Earth and space against Super Robots and bizarre aliens from the furthest reaches of the universe! It hasn't been until recently, however, that I've realized how deep my love affair with monsters runs. Looking back, monster movies have been a pervasive part of my life. With that in mind, I've planned this blog to document my exploration of kaiju nostalgia as well as record my thoughts on giant monster movies that I'm rediscovering as an adult and even enjoying for the first time.'
Before I loved zombies, I had a passion for Giant Monster movies, or as the Japanese call them, daikaiju eiga. I recall whole summer afternoons watching any giant monster movie we could find on VHS. One of my earliest cinematic memories is of crying at the death of King Kong in the 1976 remake. I cheered on the goofy and kitschy exploits of Godzilla in his later child-friendly films. I even built small cities out of Lego and crushed them before me. Mwhaahahahah! Now as an adult, I do considerably less Lego building, but I appreciate daikaiju films in a new way. On the one hand, I appreciate them for their cheesy qualities. Many are fun and silly looking B-movies. On the other hand, I appreciate them for their occasional allegorical poignancy and craftsmanship. More than ever, I celebrate their devotion to costuming, miniatures, and puppetry. In a world where so many special effects are CGI, there's something very satisfying about seeing a physical creature destroy physical sets, even if a CGI creature could theoretically do more.
So where did this interest in giant monster movies come from? First, it came from a love of monsters in general. Like many weird kids, I spent my school days doodling monsters in the margins of my notebooks and assignments. With the time to day dream, any blank space on the page could be a fertile land of ferocious beasts. My wild imagination was fueled by a steady stream of monster entertainment that started before I could walk or talk. What began as a very young attachment to the fuzzy monsters of The Muppets and Mercer Meyer's monster art in books like One Monster After Another turned into a fascination with more elaborate puppet creatures in movies like The Dark Crystal, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Star Wars, which I always preferred over the humanoid monsters of the Universal horror films.
This love of monstrous creatures evolved into a brief period of dino-fever when I discovered the majesty and terror of dinosaurs. Stop-motion dinosaur movies and animatronic dinosaur exhibits at places like Science World in Vancouver immersed me in an educational and thrilling world of prehistoric biology that combined science and entertainment. I was ten years old when Jurassic Park came out, and it was the apex of my interest in dinosaurs.
At the same time, I was also heavily into robots, which was probably why I loved animatronic puppets so much. Transformers toys were a particular favorite of mine. Like dinosaurs, Transformers were giant and could cause untold destruction, but they could do almost anything. The storytelling options were limitless.
Although I had all these separate genre interests, I soon found a genre that combined my love of wild monsters, the dinosaur's epic scale and legendary quality, and the awesome power of Sci-fi Super Robots. I'm talking daikaiju films, baby! Now that I'm returning to the genre with an adult interest, I'm rediscovering the joys of my childhood but also finding whole movie series that I never saw before, including the unfairly neglected Gamera franchise.
I hope you'll enjoy my reviews. We'll have movies about giant atomic monsters, prehistoric beasts, outer space terrors, colossal insects, and terrible mistakes of science. Cities will be destroyed! Monsters will battle! ALL MONSTERS WILL BLOG!
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