The best neighborhoods are ones in which the neighbors know each other by name. They wave to each other as they drive by. They stop and chat when they take their daily walks. They exchange recipes and gossip.
Happy Birthday to:
Markus Bennett
Shurrie Ingersoll
The ocean is vast and deep. While it is unlikely that there are unknown leviathans lurking beneath the ways, it is also possible that there could be and we’d simply never find them.
Happy Birthday to:
The giant unseen
Giant monsters do not stomp on cities because they hate human beings. They stomp on cities because they love to stomp on cities. The distinction is important. They love human beings. Without human beings there are no cities on which to stomp.
Happy Birthday to:
Jason Grant
Randy Lowery
Celeste Olds
Luciano Paulo Giehl
King Mantis stands about twenty feet tall. That makes the critter that it is sitting upon … much, much larger.
GORGO is the name of the baby monster in the movie. The mother’s name is Ogra. She’s the one that stomps all over London in her search for her missing child. The moral of the story – mother monsters are not to be trifled with. I learned this lesson well. I leave baby monsters alone.
When I was a kid I wanted to be a giant monster. I wasn’t a dumb kid. I knew that I couldn’t actually become a giant monster. Not only was I generally the wrong species I knew enough about the square cube law to understand that really giant monsters were impossible. I could, however, grow up to be a giant monster actor. That was a job that a human being could have.
Except.
Most movies of the movies that I saw that featured giant monsters (at least the type that required humans to wear monster suits) seemed to be made in Japan. Only a very few got made in English speaking countries. And none in America.
So I had to pursue other career opportunities.
GORGO was one of the few giant monster movies made in an English speaking country that used a human actor to play the monster. Mick Dillon had that role. He seems to have mostly worked as a stunt double and wasn’t very tall – he played jockeys in more than one movie. Cheers Mick!
The original Milpitas Monster didn’t kill anyone. It primarily ate garbage. It did threaten the lives of a few people but it didn’t eat anyone. Silly monster. Humans are delicious.
THE MILPITAS MONSTER premiered on May 21st, 1976. The film tells the story of a giant monster, born from the local landfill (garbage dump), who terrorizes a small city in Northern California. It’s the best giant monster movie made by a high school class that I’ve ever seen. No, I haven’t seen any others. It still has its charms. And I do enjoy the concept regardless of how well some of it was executed.
I’ve done a couple of different versions of this critter before – here and here. I will probably do a few more in the years to come.
New day. New sights. New smells. New winds. New dirt beneath the roots.
Coming through. Coming through. Sorry if I step on something you worked hard to build.
