MEOWTHRA!

Imagine my surprise when my TV-watching enjoyment (that juicy Scientology series) was disrupted by an ad for a new Lego movie. Some sort of sendup of Japanese creature-feature flicks, only the monster was a hideous creature called. . .

MEOWTHRA!

  

Right. So the monster in this strange-looking film is a cute little brown tabby named Meowthra, presumably a take on the immortal Mothra. I'll tell you something, cute as this cat is, he is not a PATCH on my Bentley. 

Bentley appeared on the famous Pictures of Cats website which originates in the UK, where cats are king. As a matter of fact, I sent them a gif and they made this charming triptych from it. You should check out this site if you're cattish at all.

http://pictures-of-cats.org/can-a-cat-lose-the-ability-to-purr.html

Still pictures will never do my Bentley justice, for his face is sweet and expressive and kind of mournful. His eyes are big and sad, perhaps because he lives with abandonment issues. He was a stray when he came to us, savaged by a dog and left for dead. Does my companion animal need a companion animal, perhaps?

And I love it when he sleeps funny.

Creature from the Haunted Sea (trailer)

(Movie theme) "Oh there's a creature
From the haunted sea,
And he doesn't
Like you, and he doesn't like me
He bounces up and down in the water
(boing, boing, guitar riff)
And doesn't really do what he oughter"

"TROG!!"

(These will look teeny if you're watching this on your phone. Best to click "watch on YouTube" at the bottom. )

Mutant sheep: the ultimate bad monster movie trailer

Every day when I get up in the morning, I think, ahhhh. Today I will find yet another cheesy monster movie trailer from the 1970s. There seem to be several million of them on the internet now. The thing is, I've heard that a lot of these were never released theatrically, and home video didn't really exist back then, so. . . ? I won't probe too deeply into that mystery.

Some of these are funny, some downright disgusting. This one is simply weird. I like weird, so long as it does not stray so far into the bizarre that one's normal orientation in reality is completely destroyed.

I think horror movies play with this, the sense that things are turning upside-down and there isn't a goddamn thing we can do to stop it or even slow it down. If you look at a human lifetime and try to add up how many ACTUAL moments of horror we experience, I think you'd find that oh fuck. Just watch the trailer.

The Mighty Gorga Trailer

It's a bird. It's a plane. IT'S AN ATOMIC TURTLE!

Gamera is a giant monster or daikaiju originating from a series of Japanese tokusatsu films of the same name. He first appeared in Daiei Film's 1965 film Gamera, which was initially produced to rival the success of Toho's Godzilla, however, Gamera has gained fame and notoriety as a Japanese icon in his own right. The character has appeared in other media such as comic books and video games

Gamera has the general configuration of a turtle, albeit a tremendously large one that is capable of walking on two legs and flying. He does occasionally walk quadrupedally in his first three films.

Gamera demonstrates the ability to manipulate objects with his forefeet. He possesses a pronounced sagittal crest on top of his head and his mouth is filled with teeth, which is unprecedented in turtles - with exceptions perhaps for the prehistoric turtles Proganochelys and Odontochelys - plus a pair of large tusks protruding upward from the lower jaws.

In the Shōwa era series, Gamera was a titanic, fire-breathing, prehistoric species of turtle who fed on petroleum-based material, presumably giving him the ability to breathe fire and fly by "jets" ignited when the monster retracts its legs – it can propel itself by spinning through the air with all four legs in and (shown in later films) can fly straight with just the rear legs drawn inside its shell.

- Wikipedia