DC's

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‘Oscar Nearly’s Fragile July is a photo album in words, recalled mental snapshots of a seemingly endless summer when, aged ten or eleven, they haunted their own suburban house on the edge of an unnamed town, in orbit around their parents, sometimes accompanied by their friend Marcus.

‘Originally written for performance as part of a collaborative art installation event, the book length prose poem is in short, intense, fragments, each self-consciously honing in on a specific incident or place, interspersed with occasional photographs that do not always seem to match the descriptions in the text. There is a similar gentle slippage of memory or construction between parts of the work, where actions produce differing narratives. Behind it all, the sound of the motorway, an ambient background drone.

‘There are layers of memory here. Later on in the book the speaker tells us that ‘It was the summer I started trying to hold onto things. I mean in my mind.’ They didn’t take notes, just concentrated and ‘paid attention to things with a kind of energy and pressure’. It seems to me they are also undertaking this deliberate act of attention in relation to the memories they retain, but are also totally aware of contemporary interpretations and understanding overlaid on said memories.

‘The contemporary narrator is, of course, always present in the text which considers the past. If you pay attention, the book contains omens and signs of what came next – something the reader is not privvy to except being informed that ‘It was the summer before a number of events forced me to move to a smaller house on the other side of the country.’ Notice, the ‘me’ there, not the expected familial us.

‘So we have a long childhood summer, background noise, small omens and a gradual accumulation of events seen through an interpretative web spun from later events, often only hinted at here. Sometimes, however, they are immediately strange. Scarecrows hold bizarre signs – WHERE ARE THE CHILDREN? and HAVE YOU SEEN MUM AND DAD – whilst the narrator’s father is in recovery from drinking and expends energy digging a pit. There is a room in the speaker’s memory where there cannot be one if they believe their recall or photos of the outside of the house, there are dead birds decomposing on the roads, and strange processions of insects carrying their dead.

‘Although presented as cool reportage there are moments of violent action. Toys are destroyed in their father’s fits of anger; Marcus hits his friend in the stomach, calls them a weasel fuck and runs off from their ‘secret place’ behind the coal bunker; and one poem mentions that it is set before their father threw a bowl of spaghetti at them. Perhaps the strangest part of the book is an obsessive list of the songs the neighbours played at one of their loud parties that summer, which spills over several pages, then simply stops.’ — Rupert Loydell

 

Oscar Nearly Site
poltergeist journal of literary and cultural studies
Oscar Nearly @ instagram
Tom Hart’s Bones by Oscar Nearly
Buy ‘Fragile July’

 

Oscar Nearly Fragile July
Broken Sleep Books

‘Fragile July by Oscar Nearly is a prose-poem of obsessive reconstruction, circling a single childhood summer in which the ordinary textures of suburbia, garden games, disposable-camera snapshots, pop songs, and family rituals begin to feel charged with threat. Built from repetition, incremental shifts, and documentary attention to objects and photographs, the text tests how memory hardens into narrative, how evidence both clarifies and corrupts, and how dread can arrive retrospectively as a structure imposed on the past. Its atmosphere is uncanny rather than overtly surreal, with domestic scenes tightening around pits, locked spaces, missing rooms, and half-seen figures at windows, while the book’s origin in performance and installation gives its visual material a parallel weight, making image and recollection contend for authority.’ — BSB

‘Memory is as wilful as weather in Oscar Nearly’s Fragile July, a beautiful, beguiling remembrance of a childhood summer and the storms that circled it. This book swept me up and away.’ — Derek McCormack

Excerpts

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ELECTROPOLIS: Ten Dreams from Bethnal House | Trailer

 

 

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‘Sotère Torregian, a self-identified French surrealist, perhaps the only such macédoine extant in North America today, grew up in “No Man’s Land with lots of machine gun bullets flying all over the place,” a place known also as Newark, New Jersey, where he was born in 1941. He lived in a multilingual home where he learned French, Italian, Greek, and Arabic, among other languages. Identifying at an early age with the Africanized Mediterranean, he learned English with difficulty. He received instruction in handwriting and manners at St. Anne’s School in Newark, where he was expelled for kicking a nun.

‘Over the years of his youth he invented himself as a poet, attending readings at New York’s Café Le Metro with Paul Blackburn, Joseph Ceravolo, and David Shapiro and publishing his first poems with Art and Literature (Isere, France), Paris Review, and Ted Berrigan’s magazine “C.” He left the East Coast for California in the late 1960s and taught in the nascent African-American Studies program at Stanford.

‘While attending public schools, Torregian experienced his first taste of racism and the uncomfortable disassociation this can cause. White kids often attacked him because of his mixed African ancestry, while blacks, confused by his identification with Mediterranean cultural traditions, targeted him for trying to pass as white. He took refuge in the library to escape these displays of ethnic hostility. Compelled by his alienation from North American racial roles and performative expectations, he pursued through careful study the traditions and stories bestowed on him at home. But despite his studious nature, he “failed” at poetry, so he says, “for not writing in iambic pentameter. [As happened to] Rimbaud, my teachers claimed I was a dunce.”

‘Perhaps an astrological accident in the house of Cancer preserved Torregian for the muses, despite his teacher’s claim of early poetic failure. Sharing a birthday with one of the great poets of the Negritude movement—Aimé Césaire—Torregian early on identified with the Martinique native. Through such associations, Torregian imagines an interpenetrating world of forms, where personal identification registers across ethnic and racial lines to correspond more intriguingly with dispositions of the soul. His identification with the French surrealist poets also led him toward a path where personal vision, intellectual pursuit, and international movements of art crossed personal boundaries to create a broad and influential current of artistic activity. As this was inflected through Torregian’s imagination, he was able to enter a community of fellow authors, and such imaginative, if hermetic, participation prepared him for his introduction, in the 1960s, to the New York School of poets.

‘In those days many poets congregated at the café Le Metro coffee house on the Lower East Side. There, Torregian met Paul Blackburn and Ted Berrigan, who, he says, taught him more than anybody else. “Ted one day was walking with me,” he recalls, “and he said, ‘Sotère, you’re a great poet but you have one problem: you’re too serious. I love your work, but you’re too serious.’” According to Torregian, “this changed everything. The French,” he continued, “were talking about the pain of love. Ted said, ‘You’ve got to get out of that. Put some laughter in your writing.’ The absurd became more important.”’ — Dale Smith

 

Sotère Torregian @ The Poetry Foundation
Way with Words
Sotere Torregian @ Facebook
Sotère Torregian @ Armenian Poetry Project
Buy ‘Fragmentae’

 

Sotère Torregian Fragmentae
Wave Books

‘Published in the form of a facsimile manuscript, this collection of poems and ephemera by Sotère Torregian invites the reader into the experience of a multiyear correspondence. Employing a variety of languages, scripts, and forms, the diverse materials compose a work that moves deftly across time. Contained in envelopes and presented to reflect the chronology of the making process, Torregian’s poems are interspersed with collages, newspaper clippings, and drawings. An exciting reminder of the material possibilities of poetry, Fragmentae presents an unfolding dialogue that stirs us toward a unique and generous experience of reading.’ — Wave Books

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SOTERE TORREGIAN | 26 MAY 2010

 

 

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‘A good art critic can be hard to find. That’s certainly true of Bruce Hainley, one of the most big-brained, stylish and principled practitioners of the discipline to emerge – and, it appears, withdraw – over the last three decades. In the previous collection of his writings, the (also) small-press Pep Talk 5: Bruce Hainley Pep Talk (2011), its editor notes that said volume was her idea, not his, desirous as she was to have a clutch of the American critic/poet’s writings in one pocketable place. Correctomundo, which is being published by a German gallery, concludes with Hainley’s acknowledgement that gallery owner ‘Yvo Cho asked for this book and without him it would not exist’. Related, perhaps: interviewed in Bruce Hainley Pep Talk, Hainley notes that he pivoted towards academia because he didn’t want to support himself writing about art he didn’t like. As time has gone on, Hainley has apparently found less and less art to like and the artworld that surrounds it increasingly dismal. His output, unless I’m missing something, has shrunk, while not infrequently focusing on figures who are elusive or at least tricky themselves: see his last book-length statement, 2014’s vivacious experimental monograph for Semiotext(e), Under the Sign of [sic]: Sturtevant’s Volte-Face.

‘But now there’s Correctomundo, a suite of 15 scattered essays from the last quarter-century, evidence of Hainley’s aslant, rangy take on what might broadly pass as art crit, or crowbar the discipline open. The opener, ‘In a Year of 13 Moons’ (2024), orbits around the eponymous Rainer Werner Fassbinder movie in a dense, prosodic, allusion scattering way that feels written for the handful of people who’ll get it. 2016’s ‘Dear Vince,’ (assumedly American sculptor Vincent Fecteau) is an epistle-as-essay that floats towards the latter’s art practice on a cloud of shared references, from interior design to gay bars to, perhaps more formally, ‘the sleazy potential of tubes and holes’. So no, you’re not going to miss that Hainley has long literalised Susan Sontag’s call for an erotics of art: he regularly views art through the prismatic of the male body, twisting artistic practices kaleidoscopically. ‘Urine Sample’ (2002) is a quietly polemical essay about Andy Warhol’s Oxidation paintings (1977–78) that, neatly interspersing sections from the artist’s Diaries, pushes back on sombre October-style readings of Warhol’s art as death-fixated to focus on flowing life, to read piss as the vital body in absentia (‘urine is rich in DNA’), gold transmuted: ‘Warhol spent his whole life figuring out how to represent it, the body there and not there, his own, others. Gang bang vs. come on the Ultrasuede’.

‘Yet consider this a peephole glimpse, because Hainley’s writing doesn’t really lend itself to extraction. It at once effervesces and asks to be taken in slowly, sometimes even decoded. Sentences depend strongly on those around them and on the conspiratorial, refusing-to-pander way his essays flow. (So, look some up online.) The creators he hymns in Correctomundo have that resistant integrity too, whether quietly, as in Maureen Gallace’s beautifully stubborn landscapes and obscurant facades of houses, or loudly, in an elegy for the writer Gary Indiana. That slipperiness makes sense, because Hainley is that rare art scribe who often appears not to be looking up at his subjects but across at them: the critic, so Oscar Wilde had it, as artist.’ — Martin Herbert

 

CTMS Studio
GARY INDIANA (1950–2024) BY BRUCE HAINLEY
Bruce Hainley’s 2004 Artforum Top Ten
Book: ‘UNDER THE SIGN OF [ SIC]: STURTEVANT’S VOLTE-FACE’
Buy ‘Correctomundo’

 

Bruce Hainley Correctomundo. Selected Writings 2001-2026
Clementin Seedorf

‘Finally the collection we have been drooling for ! The book brings together fifteen of Bruce Hainley’s luminous essays on artists including André Cadere, Julie Becker, Trisha Donnelly, Vincent Fecteau, Gary Indiana, Monica Majoli, David Hammons, and Andy Warhol, among others. To mark the release of the book, an exhibition opened at Clementin Seedorf in Cologne, featuring works and ephemera by artists on whom Hainley has written, alongside works by Devin T. Mays and Christine Pichini. And the cover is a caress.’ — After8

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Sturtevant – Ephemera from the collection of Bruce Hainley

 

 

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‘Powerful, transgressive, and obscene, Mansour’s stories spin an elaborate dance between death and sex, disemboweling the patriarchy (and every other authority figure) in the process. These stories, though written decades ago, are still beautifully unsettling today. This is the path surrealist prose could have taken, if it hadn’t balked.’ –- Brian Evenson

‘Vividly translated by C. Francis Fischer, Joyce Mansour’s prose is erotic, funny, scary, intensive, and grotesque, sometimes all at once. It follows the inclinations of a mind operating in utter inventiveness. Every sentence is unpredictable, every image startling. This must be why there has been such an explosion of interest in her work–as in the work of fellow woman surrealist Leonora Carrington. In extreme times, we need extreme measures, convulsive beauty.’ — Johannes Göransson

‘The new English translation published by City Lights Books of one of her idiosyncratic masterpieces, Satisfied Sarcophagi, once again rightfully draws our rapt attention not only to the often quieter and less recognized place of women amongst the surrealist canon, but also to the writer who I place at the apex of that pantheon. . . . the quintessential literary provocateur and the most daring of all surrealist authors: Joyce Mansour.’ –- Donald Brackett

‘Only recently did English find out that Joyce Mansour was one of the 20th century’s most uncanny and transformative poets, and now comes the revelation that she was also quite the raconteur. Her narrations feel both enigmatic and fated–each word, each image, lashed to the next by libidinous and mortal sinew. C. Francis Fisher’s translation is limpid and fragrant, like a vapor rising over a cauldron of boiling blood. I suspect this collection will soon be recognized as a classic of Modernist fiction–in the Surrealist tradition and beyond. May it be read widely.’ — Kit Schluter

 

Joyce Mansour @ Wikipedia
“Yet Another Dagger Pulsing Under the Rain”: Why We Need Joyce Mansour—and Surrealism
Translating Desire: The Erotic-Macabre Poetry of Joyce Mansour
Excessive Bodies, Shifting Subjects and Voice
Buy ‘Satisfied Sarcophagi’

 

Joyce Mansour Satisfied Sarcophagi: Collected Short Stories
City Lights

‘Mansour portrays a universe of constant transformation and constant violence, weaving an eroticized surrealist texture from unsettling areas of the psyche, replete with Sadean excess, incestuous relations, and her usual complement of bodily fluids. In “Mary, or the Honor of Serving,” the protagonist endures a series of grotesque events, deciding to remain with her murderous lover rather than escape to a banal bourgeois life. “Cancer” depicts a boy’s obsession with an old woman’s hump, which threatens to subsume her. “The Tip” and “Infinitely . . . on the Lawn” explore oedipal struggles, the one featuring a gender-switching protagonist caught between the family maid and his mother, the other a woman and her mother sharing the same lover. Other stories like “Dolman the Evil” and “Sunday Shakes” concern demonic beings of uncertain origin. With Satisfied Sarcophagi–brought into English by noted Mansour translator C. Francis Fisher–Joyce Mansour rightly claims her place as a take-no-prisoners bad-girl progenitor of a growing body of women’s writing known in the 21st century as “fantastic/erotic horror.”’ — City Lights

Excerpt

from Corridors of Madness

Once on firm land, I turned to the right. I could have followed the edge of the red carpet toward the exit door, but I thought absent-mindedly of your teeth. I did not notice the progressive worsening of the decorative mural. I thought of your dentition, the real one, not the one that steeps in water at your lecturer’s desk. I imagined your damaged canines, dressed in porcelain like the Marquise of Saxe, held together by metal threads; spinning, ceremonial, without visible supports or good gums, they were dancing before my eyes and preventing me from getting my bearings. You had lost several teeth recently. Abutment teeth. Others take their shoes off quietly in the shadows of your palace like concierges in their dressing rooms. And still, even without your removable ceremonial teeth (in case of boredom one can take out a fragment without touching the rest) made with magnetized neon and well-oiled rubber, you are by far the most seductive professor.

A placard covered with beautiful writing indicated the direction toward the Room of Capillary Executions. A stitch in my side, at once both moral and physical, made me open the door without hesitation, risking your anger, dear Doctor Jan, who does not like to wait and knows how to show it. I was in absolute need of calm.

“Reason cannot always be controlled by intuition,” I thought as I entered a vast room without a visible ceiling; lumpy clouds flew so low they grazed the eyebrows (I quickly learned the rhythm and, as such, how to avoid them: a clever combination of head movements like those of a Balinese dancer mixed with one watching a tennis match) and lying spread out along the wall like poppies in a priest’s garden, twelve Waffen-SS officers in night uniforms awaited death in a joyless and frustrated silence.

“Shampoo and style,” I said to the pretty receptionist aerating her thighs on her perch. “I don’t have any chairs open at the moment,” she susurrated, gesturing to the SS with her bust and chin. “These gentlemen have priority.” She was not very amiable, but her garters blossomed gracefully on the reddish tiles of her flesh . . .

“We have priority, miss. Even in death we have priority,” said a condemned man with the softness of a muscle that gives way under the pressure of effort. I did not listen. Why resist the storm? My hair could wait. The Germans, melted into a shapeless mass, fearful and clumsy, seemed to have only one stripe on all their pajamas combined: the singularity fell like an empty hour when hope deflates. I put on my sunglasses and, in order to escape all voluptuousness, to banish any shiver of late pity, I gathered additions and multiplications, do-nots and decals. I practiced yoga, inhaled cereal through the nose, notches in the wall, and Venetian dreams.

“I was sterilized by Hitler.” A round of gunfire meant that I missed the rest of the story; the one-eyed Waffen-SS (was he like that before the volley? I will never know how old the wound was) fell at my feel foaming like a camel.

“That’s enough. To hell with flirtation.” I am no longer interested at all in the receptionist’s thighs. She clapped her knees to tell me the interview was over; I returned to the hallway at the exact spot where I left it. Soup time. (“Soup, soup, beautiful soup.”) Unconsciously at first, then more and more allured, moved, overtaken by these events, I followed the little shadow girl, who ran naked on the walls and ceiling (visible and invisible) and, incidentally, on the floor in the hallway, which, ending in a cylindrical cell, spun around itself like a fairground torpedo. The little shadow woman, chubby from the start, was thinning out: her fat, absorbed by osmosis, seemed to feed the walls and the block work of the Strong Room (a sign informed the visitor of the place’s name but not its purpose) and turned more and more quickly, spastically, with shrill little laughs and sighs of dead leaves. I left stealthily, taking care not to be snatched by unbridled tall walls.

“You . . . what do they do in the Strong Room?” I asked the man squatting behind the door.

“Make lady jam,” he told me, without taking his eyes off the newspaper.

“But . . . you. . . ?” He looked at me carefully: “Is it so obvious?”

“What?”

“Every day for twenty years I have tried to enter that room. To see. I need to know what’s at the end of the hallway. Maybe I am reckless. At first, I would dress up. I cheated. I slid between them, those who enter and do not leave. They helped me. I never succeeded but I always tried, without really believing it always; I am not a mark. No. I am trying. That’s all.”

Jan was waiting for me below. “Well, still alive?” he muttered, working on the car. I was surprised to find he did not interrupt my story: “Judging from this tale, my dear, the institution that we are leaving this instant is a madhouse.” He was laughing.

All things considered, I prefer the Sorbonne.

Extra

Joyce MANSOUR – La femme surréaliste

 

 

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Adem Berbic @ instagram
‘The Question of Blanchot in Beckett’s Three Dialogues and The Unnamable’ by Adem Berbic
Ssnake Press
Velika. Bicikla
Buy ‘Two Stories’

 

Adem Berbic Two Stories
Ssnake Press

‘This debut fiction publication from Adem Berbic follows Nunu and David, two men living out different but related nightmares. Nunu desperately wanders the streets of London, trying to procure crack, heroin and cheap cider. David, meanwhile, is sunk in a solipsism so deep he turns the world around him into a repetitive domestic hell. But we are not merely watching it happen. Berbic’s propulsive prose implicates itself and the reader at every turn, evoking a deep and barely nameless dread.’ — Ssnake Press

Excerpt

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BREATH – interactive audio-visual installation

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Adem Berbic, Look up. I guess you probably already have. Well, it’s both, isn’t it? There are the things you’re deliberately doing and the things that are hiding in you and from you and see your language skills as a safe place/way to escape. I think you have to let what you have no linguistic or conceptual control over have an equal amount of power. But that’s just me. Wow, to me that sentence doesn’t sound remotely like ‘Closer’. Fear of imitation is almost always nothing but fear. If the London ‘RT’ screening happens, which is looking good at the moment, there’ll be a screening on Halloween night and a second matinee screening the next day on Day of the Dead. At an art space. Cement coming if it gets cemented. I’ve never been very interested in Chabrol, so I don’t know. ** Sarah Palmer, You saw the Lafayette show! Do you live in Paris or were you passing through? Thanks! Best day to you. ** DonW, Hey. Well, up in here in the big P, it’s finally really nice out today, and they say that’ll stick around, so fingers crossed and hydrate repletely until then. Lake, castle … whoop. ** _Black_Acrylic, It sure seems to be so on that name coopting. Dude, that’s such great news about your body’s hanging in there. That must be such a relief. Great, Ben. And, yes, forward motion time. ** i🌙, Happy birthday! Wow, that is a big birthday, but, you know what, nothing really changes other than various things of interest becoming legal. Very cool. It’s a good step, trust me. You can still give off jailbait vibes for a few years if you want to. Hm, don’t know Ines Armand. I’ll check around. Thanks for the writing peek. For some reason my browser is making them very blurry, but I’ll try to get around that or use Chrome or something. I look forward to it. Haven’t read your writing in so long. ** Steeqhen, Big hugs about the rough days. That Phoebe Bridgers album seems to be the album du jour. I’ll try it. I’ve never listened to her for whatever reason. ** Carsten, A good city has some nice reminders of nature scattered amidst its layout. I’m sure there are pitfalls in my approach. But it’s not like I hoard what I’m thinking. Or not usually, I guess. I still run what I’m thinking by friends and so on, but in a calm, inquisitive way. I’ve only ever been in fights when bullies used to beat me up in elementary school. Might be a reason why I’m not drawn to physical outbursts. Interesting about the sacred aspect. The sacred and I don’t have much of a relationship, so that interpretation is a learning experience. ** laura w., The artist says he found the bird dead, but can artists be trusted? Good question? More Phoebe Bridgers. Like I said, I’ve never heard her that I know of. I tend to resist things that are getting very buzzed about like her new album, but I should bite the bullet because I am curious. I quite liked the very early Alex G stuff when it was lo-fi and put out on a tiny label, but not since he cleaned up his sound at all. It has cooled down here today, so I feel like the week starts now. Oh, cozy music … probably a certain strain of artful 90s indie rock — Pavement, Sebadoh, Polvo, Codeine, Superchunk, and so on. Those bands tend to plaster a welcome smile on my face. ** Regina, How is film school being for you? Are you getting the skills and support and comrades you need and want? How will the second year be different from the first? That is very exciting about your upcoming short film! Is it all written and mentally figured out? I hate summer. With a passion, even. Cannot stand it. As for winter though, bring it on! ** Diesel Clementine, Hi! I don’t read French, so no, not too much on the French graphic novel front. I do like the work of Sylvain Bordesoules, who’s the artist who’s doing the upcoming ‘God Jr.’ graphic novel. I’ve never been to a sauna here. I did go to the famous Therme Vals in Switzerland, and it was incredible. But here, no. I think I like being clothed. I’m so sorry to not get in touch. All this stuff has suddenly come up in the last couple of days, and it’s eating my time and attention. If I miss seeing you, it’s 100% my loss. ** Jay, Oh, good! My favorite is ‘Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster’, but I couldn’t find any clips or anything from it, so I couldn’t include it sadly. ‘Shin Godzilla’, wow, I’ll look for that. That sounds incredible. It has cooled down here, so I’m inherently good, I think. Wonderful about the dream piano pieces. I of course don’t know those works by name, but maybe I’ll track them down and stream them and replace the pianists’ fingers with yours. You sound good! ** HaRpEr //, Hey. Like I told Adem, if the screenings happen they’ll be on Halloween night and the next afternoon. I’ll let you know. So far so good. Nolan doesn’t have remotely enough juice to do something fun like that. Not to mention his complete lack of a sense of humor. Past or present tense … yeah, that’s another important decision. Tricky, but that choice really does change the prose. Your thinking re: that is spot on. ** Uday, There are posters all over Paris right now with Simone Weil’s face on them, but I haven’t looked close enough to know what they’re about. I guess an exhibition of her stuff or something. Great news about your friend’s top surgery! A friend of mine had bottom surgery about eight months ago, and it went well, but she’s still healing and dealing consequentially. ** Steve, Charlotte Gainsbourg enunciates her tales in an utterly sincere way, so I can only assume they’re true. That DJ Laserdisc album title is a lot to live up to. ** Okay. Today I give you five books I read of late and loved, including two by people who grace this very blog. As usual, highly recommended that you give said books a shot. See you tomorrow.

 

‘From an early age, Honda was fascinated by the power of cinema. The son of a Buddhist monk, Honda was born on May 7, 1911, in Asahi, a small agricultural village in Yamagata Prefecture, high in the mountains of Tohoku. But it wasn’t until his family moved to Tokyo, while Honda was still in grade school, that he experienced the fast-modernizing Japan of the Meiji era. At a school assembly, he saw his first motion picture, a silent American western (likely one of the Universal Bluebird photoplays, which were extremely popular in Japan from 1916 to 1919), and by the third and fourth grade he was frequenting cinemas to see ninja shorts starring Matsunosuke Onoe and films imported from the West. During a screening of F. W. Murnau’s classic The Last Laugh (1924), an older brother explained to young Honda that films were made by a kantoku (director) who oversaw the action. This realization proved inspiring, and later, when it was time to attend university, Honda reneged on a family commitment to enroll in dental school and instead joined Nihon University’s fledgling film program, which led to an apprenticeship at P.C.L., the studio that would eventually become Toho.

‘It was the success of his early, non-horror pictures that ultimately landed Honda the Godzilla assignment. The monster epic was indeed a major career risk for all involved; if the film had turned out poorly, and if it had flopped at the box office, then Honda, Tsuburaya, and producer Tomoyuki Tanaka, who had come up with the idea, would have answered to the studio brass that had spent a then-astronomical budget of about 275,000 U.S. dollars on the production. But Godzilla was a major domestic hit, and also the first foreign film to receive widespread distribution in the U.S., albeit in altered form, as Godzilla, King of the Monsters, with Raymond Burr cleverly spliced into the drama. Toho rushed the sequel Godzilla Raids Again (1955) into production, but due to a scheduling conflict Honda did not direct it; in fact, it would be several years before he became Japan’s most prolific director of sci-fi and monster films.

‘Honda was increasingly called upon to direct Toho’s popular genre pictures. Among these are Rodan, wherein the director instills the story of a prehistoric flying monster terrorizing Japan with tragedy and a sense of awe; The Mysterians (1957), Honda and Tsuburaya’s alien-invasion salute to the 1953 War of the Worlds; and The H-Man (1958), in which fishermen exposed to an H-bomb test (a nod to the fate that in 1954 befell the crew of the Japanese tuna trawler the Lucky Dragon No. 5, a tragedy that had also served as a key inspiration for Godzilla) turn into nuclear goblins that terrorize Tokyo. Through it all, Honda became known as a director with a subtle way of coaxing performances from actors, and one who never raised his voice on set. He rarely coached performers or gave specific direction, but he could be demonstrative when necessary: during the filming of Godzilla, while shooting the famous scene where the monster appears over a mountain, Honda became impatient with newcomer Akira Takarada’s half-hearted effort to rescue the ingenue (Momoko Kochi) from danger. Honda picked up the actress in his arms and ran down the hill, saying, “This is how you save someone!” He was not a visual stylist, leaning on his art directors and directors of photography (particularly Hajime Koizumi, who shot most of Honda’s sci-fi and other films from the late fifties to the late sixties) to help define the look of his films; instead, Honda concentrated on finding the most effective dramatic means of expressing the movies’ often socially conscious themes. As Japan joined the United Nations and established itself as a peaceful, economically resurgent country, Honda’s genre films became more optimistic. In Battle in Outer Space (1959), Gorath (1962) and Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964, among the best Godzilla sequels), Honda highlighted the need for cooperation among nations to solve challenges facing the planet.

‘After the enormous box-office success of Mothra (1961), Honda would work almost exclusively on kaiju pictures for the remainder of his career; though he would harbor disappointment and resentment at being so pigeonholed, he remained loyal to Toho and would not protest. Some of Honda and Tsuburaya’s most entertaining films came in the decade following Mothra. King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962), which cleverly spoofed Japanese television programming, was a major sensation and remains the best-attended Toho Godzilla film in Japan. Atragon (1963) melded the mystery of a lost continent with an antiwar theme, expressing misgivings over imperial Japan’s legacy. And Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964) saw Godzilla convert from villain to hero when confronted with its ultimate nemesis, the flying, lightning-spitting space dragon of the title.

‘Honda’s value to Toho lay not only in the domestic box-office returns but also the money his films netted in foreign sales to the U.S., Europe, and other territories. Beginning in the midsixties, Toho began partnering with American producers to help cover production costs, casting fading or second-tier American stars in leading roles, giving Honda’s productions increased international potential. Honda had a good rapport with Nick Adams, who starred in Invasion of Astro-Monster (1965), in which Godzilla and Rodan fend off alien invaders and their monster minion, King Ghidorah; and Frankenstein Conquers the World (also 1965), wherein the Hiroshima bomb gives rise to a giant, mutant Frankenstein monster that battles a giant reptile in the Japanese mountains. But some of Honda’s international coproductions were fraught with tensions. Honda reportedly had trouble reining in a rebellious Russ Tamblyn on the set of the wild-and-woolly Frankenstein sequel The War of the Gargantuas (1966); Rhodes Reason, Honda’s leading man in King Kong Escapes (1967), would later dismiss the director as a “hack”; and Latitude Zero (1969), an undersea sci-fi adventure incorporating Honda’s pro-science, pro-peace ideals, saw him directing Joseph Cotten, Cesar Romero, Richard Jaeckel, and others from an English-language script, but the production nearly collapsed when the American producers defaulted on their half of the costs.

‘By the end of the sixties, the Japanese movie industry was contracting, largely on account of the dominant popularity of television programming. Film budgets shrank; permanent contracts with actors, directors, and crew members were ended; and the Godzilla series was eventually relegated to kiddie matinee releases. By the time Honda made All Monsters Attack (1969), just a year after delivering the spectacular fan favorite Destroy All Monsters, budgetary limitations meant he was forced to utilize large amounts of monster footage recycled from previous films (nevertheless, All Monsters Attack is a mini-masterpiece of children’s entertainment). After the death of Eiji Tsuburaya in 1970, Toho restructured its special-effects staff, and the quality of their work would noticeably decline. No longer able to make films with the same production values as before, Honda notified Toho of his retirement. He dabbled in occasional television directing on Tsuburaya Productions’ The Return of Ultraman (1971–72) and other effects-laden shows, before returning to direct his final feature, Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975), one of the stronger Godzilla films of that decade. And that might have been it for Honda if not for a chance meeting on the golf course with his old friend Akira Kurosawa in the late seventies. Kurosawa would pull Honda out of retirement to become his right-hand man, acting as a second-unit director as well as a confidant, fixer, and occasional substitute director. Together they worked on Kurosawa’s last five features: Kagemusha (1980), Ran (1985), Dreams (1990), Rhapsody in August (1991), and Madadayo (1993). Honda died in 1993 of lung cancer, and Kurosawa, deeply saddened by the loss, would read the eulogy at his funeral.

‘Honda’s films were distributed around the world more widely than those of any other Japanese filmmaker prior to Hayao Miyazaki. In addition to having been embedded in popular culture for decades—Brad Pitt, for one, has credited The War of the Gargantuas with sparking his love of cinema as a child—his movies have also proved influential for their craft: John Carpenter has gone so far as to call Honda “one of my personal cinematic gods.” Yet only relatively recently, with the 2004 art-house release of the director’s cut of Godzilla across the U.S., did Honda begin to receive recognition befitting his achievements. Today, nearly all of Honda’s genre films are available on home video in the U.S. as they were intended to be seen: in their original director’s cuts, in Japanese with English subtitles. (In Japan, newfound interest his Honda’s nongenre films has also arisen in recent years, though to date these remain unreleased outside Japan.)

‘With unparalleled deftness, Honda wove undeniably serious messages into unabashedly populist entertainments; in this, he can be seen as somewhat ahead of his time. He described his personal philosophy as “humanism,” and sought to convey, through his films, positive messages of cooperation and understanding. And though he never won prestigious awards, he was proud of his works’ endurance. “It was definitely my pleasure that I was able to make something that people can remember,” Honda said later in life. “If I had not made Godzilla or The Mysterians . . . it wouldn’t be the same. There is nothing like the happiness I get from those [movies].”’ — Steve Ryfle

 

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Stills

 

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Further

Ishirô Honda @ IMDB
Godzilla’s Conscience: The Monstrous Humanism of Ishiro Honda
Ishiro Honda: The master behind Godzilla
Readings: Ishiro Honda: A Life in Film, from Godzilla to Kurosawa
‘Godzilla’ Director Honda Ishiro Describes Seeing Hiroshima Firsthand
7 REVELATIONS ABOUT THE CO-CREATOR OF GODZILLA
Anti-war message inspired Godzilla director Ishiro Honda
Populism as High Art: Getting to the Heart of Ishiro Honda
ISHIRÔ HONDA @ MUBI
What Lies Beyond Godzilla?
Ishiro Honda — Godzilla, gratefulness, and greatness
Obituary: Ishiro Honda
Unknown Stories of Director Honda
Interviews with Ishiro Honda’s Biographers
Ishiro Honda’s ‘Monstrous’ Career

 

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Extra

Lecture: Directing Godzilla: The Life of Filmmaker Ishiro Honda

 

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Interview

 

David Milner: I was very sorry to hear about the recent death of Shinichi Sekizawa. What was your professional relationship with him like? (Mr. Sekizawa wrote the screenplays for MOTHRA (1961), GODZILLA VS. MONSTER ZERO (1965), GODZILLA VS. GIGAN (1972), and many of the other science fiction movies that have been produced by the Toho Company Ltd.)

Ishiro Honda: The system that was in place back in the 1950s and 1960s was different from the one that is in place today. During the 1950s and 1960s, the planning department would accept ideas from any of Toho’s employees. THE H-MAN (1958) is a typical example. The idea for that film came from an almost completely unknown actor. MOTHRA is another typical example. The members of the planning department went around gathering ideas from everyone who worked for Toho. Then, four novelists were commissioned to write a story about a big moth and two tiny fairies. Those four people wrote the story, which appeared in the Asahi Shimbun, and shortly afterward Mr. Sekizawa wrote a script that was based on the story. I advised him only on the cinematographic aspects of the story. (The Asahi Shimbun is one of Japan’s most widely read newspapers.)

DM: How would you say Takeshi Kimura’s style was different from Mr. Sekizawa’s? (Mr. Kimura wrote the screenplays for THE MYSTERIANS (1957), GORATH (1962), DESTROY ALL MONSTERS (1968), and a number of Toho’s other science fiction movies.)

IH: Their styles were were very different. If the story were very positive, or even childish, it would go to Mr. Sekizawa. If it were negative, or involved politics, it would go to Mr. Kimura. I really can’t compare the two styles because they’re so different.

DM: GODZILLA – KING OF THE MONSTERS has a semi-documentary feel to it. Was it your intention to have it turn out that way?

IH: The intention of not only the screenwriter, but also the entire production staff, was to focus on how people would react if a creature such as Godzilla really did appear. What would the politicians do? How about the scientists? How would the military handle the situation? Given this, it was inevitable that the film would seem at least somewhat like a documentary. (GODZILLA – KING OF THE MONSTERS was written by Takao Murata and Mr. Honda.)

DM: I have heard that you switched the roles of Akira Takarada and Akihiko Hirata before shooting began on the movie. Is this true? (Mr. Hirata plays Dr. Daisuke Serizawa, the inventor of the oxygen destroyer. Mr. Takarada plays Hideto Ogata, the South Seas Steamship Co. employee who is in love with Emiko Yamane.)

IH: I can hardly remember, but I suspect that it was merely a rumor that Mr. Takarada would be playing the scientist.

DM: There was speculation recently that Ghidrah was meant to symbolize China’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. Is this true?

IH: I doubt it. Ghidrah was merely meant to be a modern interpretation of the eight-headed snake of Japanese myth.

Mr. Sekizawa wrote the screenplay for GHIDRAH – THE THREE-HEADED MONSTER, and he always avoided involving politics in his work.

DM: The entirely animated alternate version of the scene in which Ghidrah first appears in GHIDRAH – THE THREE-HEADED MONSTER is preferred by some to the one that is in the film. Do you know why the one that is in the movie was chosen over the alternate?

IH: I did not choose it, so I can’t answer your question. It was chosen by special effects director Eiji Tsuburaya, whom I trusted so much after we worked on GODZILLA – KING OF THE MONSTERS together that I allowed him to select which special effects footage would be used and which would not. I have never even seen the alternate version. (Mr. Tsuburaya directed the special effects for not only the first seven Godzilla films, but also RODAN (1956), MOTHRA, KING KONG ESCAPES (1967), and many of Toho’s other science fiction movies.)

DM: Why didn’t you direct GODZILLA VS. THE SEA MONSTER (1966) or SON OF GODZILLA (1967)?

IH: There were two reasons. One was scheduling conflicts. The other was Toho’s concern that people would feel monster films had to be directed by me.

DM: Are those the reasons why you also did not direct GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN (1955)? (It was directed by Motoyoshi Oda.)

IH: Yes. That’s correct.

I frankly was having a hard time humanizing Godzilla the way Toho wanted anyway. I was even hesitant to let Mothra act as a mediator between Godzilla and Rodan in GHIDRAH – THE THREE-HEADED MONSTER. It certainly would have been difficult for me to direct SON OF GODZILLA. (It was directed by Jun Fukuda, who also directed GODZILLA VS. THE SEA MONSTER, GODZILLA VS. GIGAN, GODZILLA VS. MEGALON (1973), and GODZILLA VS. MECHAGODZILLA (1974).)

DM: An original idea for DESTROY ALL MONSTERS that did not make it to the final version of the movie was that the monsters were supposed to not only be studied on Ogasawara Island, but also bred and cross-bred there. What other ideas for the film were rejected?

IH: The original idea was to show all of the monsters. We then started thinking about undersea farming. Eventually, we came up with the idea of an island on which all of the monsters had been collected for scientific study. You see, we imagined that undersea farming would be required to feed all of the monsters. I very much wanted to explore that idea, but because of financial constraints, I was not allowed to do so. Only the idea of an island of monsters survived.

DM: Did financial constraints also prompt the inclusion of stock footage in GODZILLA’S REVENGE (1969)?

IH: At that time, the production budgets were getting smaller and smaller, so it’s likely that they did.

DM: Did Mr. Tsuburaya take part in the production of GODZILLA’S REVENGE?

IH: By that time, his assistants, Teisho Arikawa and Teruyoshi Nakano, were sufficiently experienced to be able to handle the special effects on their own. The thinking at Toho was, “Let them do the actual work.” However, Mr. Tsuburaya was given credit out of respect. (His health was failing at the time. He died at the beginning of 1970. Mr. Nakano directed the special effects for GODZILLA VS. THE SMOG MONSTER (1971), TERROR OF MECHAGODZILLA, GODZILLA 1985 (1984), and a number of Toho’s other science fiction movies. Mr. Arikawa directed the special effects for SON OF GODZILLA, DESTROY ALL MONSTERS, and YOG – MONSTER FROM SPACE (1970).)

DM: I’d heard that you directed the special effects footage for that film. Is this not true?

IH: I directed almost all of it. The two reasons why I did were the limited size of the production budget and time constraints. In addition, the movie was shot in a very small studio, so it was decided not to separate the filming of the special effects and the standard footage as was usually done.

DM: How was that different from working with regular actors?

IH: It was very different. As you know, Godzilla really is a costume that is about 1.8 meters tall. If he were to be filmed as a regular actor would be, he would just appear to be a man in a costume. So, you have to use different camera angles and positions, and you also have to move the camera differently.

DM: What do you think of the most recent Godzilla movies? (They include GODZILLA VS. BIOLLANTE (1989), GODZILLA VS. GHIDRAH (1991), and GODZILLA VS. MOTHRA (1992).)

IH: That’s a very difficult question to answer. I don’t really have a positive or negative opinion about them. The special effects technically are very sophisticated, but the films lack imagination. It seems as if all Toho is trying to do is show things being destroyed. I don’t fault the members of the production department, though, because I know that that is what Toho’s executives are demanding.

DM: Do you feel that the offense some Americans felt when they saw the sequence in GODZILLA VS. GHIDRAH which shows the Godzillasaurus attacking a number of American soldiers was justified? (In GODZILLA VS. GHIDRAH, Godzilla is seen both as Godzilla and as the tyrannosaurus rex-like dinosaur he was before he was mutated by radiation.)

IH: Kazuki Omori went a little too far. He doesn’t blame the soldiers, but I feel that he goes too far. (Mr. Omori wrote and directed GODZILLA VS. BIOLLANTE and GODZILLA VS. GHIDRAH, and wrote but did not direct GODZILLA VS. MOTHRA.)

DM: I have heard that VARAN – THE UNBELIEVABLE (1958) was produced at the request of an American television studio. Is this true?

IH: I can’t remember which studio requested it, but yes, it was requested by an American television studio.

DM: Who made the decision to shoot the movie in black and white?

IH: Toho decided to shoot the film in black and white because all television shows were in that format at the time.

By the way, after we had shot five or six scenes in the standard 35mm format required for television, Toho decided to show the movie in theaters as well as on television. We at first planned to simply re-shoot the scenes in the wider cinemascope format used in theaters, but we were in a rush. So, we just cropped the existing film to fit the cinemascope format.

DM: Which of the films that you directed are your favorites?

IH: I should ask you that question!

I have to say GODZILLA – KING OF THE MONSTERS, but the continuity of the scenes in the movie seems a little amateurish to me these days. Another of my favorites is THE MYSTERIANS. I remember it as being an attempt to portray a very new, and surprising, world. GORATH (1962), too, comes to mind.

DM: Are you unhappy with the way any of the films you directed turned out?

IH: The people who worked in the production department would decide which director to assign to a movie, and their decisions usually were good ones. This was true of their decisions regarding actors and cameramen as well. So, I really haven’t any that I do not enjoy.

DM: Do you feel that you were fortunate to have Akira Ifukube scoring your films? (Mr. Ifukube, one of Japan’s most respected classical composers, scored GODZILLA – KING OF THE MONSTERS, DESTROY ALL MONSTERS, TERROR OF MECHAGODZILLA, and so on.)

IH: Yes. I feel that I was very fortunate in that regard. Mr. Ifukube always seemed to have a profound understanding for the movie on which he was working.

DM: Is it true that he created the roar of Godzilla that was used in GODZILLA – KING OF THE MONSTERS?

IH: Yes. He did. He had a very hard time selecting a sound for Godzilla’s roar. He even grieved over it! Seeing him in that state showed me that he was very seriously thinking about the film, and that made me think that it just might be a successful one.

DM: I have heard that you worked as a still photographer before going into films. Is this true?

IH: No. I was a documentary director for a while, but I never was a still photographer.

DM: With which actors did you especially enjoy working?

IH: The best actress was Kumi Mizuno. She always seemed genuine. Whenever she worked on a movie, she would just step right into her role. All of the other better actors were like that as well. (Ms. Mizuno is best known as Miss Namikawa, the woman from Planet X in GODZILLA VS. MONSTER ZERO, and Dayo, the native girl from Infant Island in GODZILLA VS. THE SEA MONSTER.)

I recently saw GODZILLA VS. MOTHRA, and I noticed that the younger actors in the film were not thoroughly involved in it.

DM: Would you say that the actors with whom you worked during the 1950s and 1960s were generally better than those who have appeared in Toho’s more recent science fiction movies?

IH: Yes.

DM: Can you think of a reason why that might be?

IH: Times are just different.

DM: How did you like working with Nick Adams? (Mr. Adams plays Glenn, the American astronaut, in GODZILLA VS. MONSTER ZERO, and Dr. James Bowen, the radiation specialist, in FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD (1965).)

IH: He was a very passionate actor who had some very good ideas. There should have been two or three more films produced with Mr. Adams whether they were monster movies or not.

DM: I have heard that very little improvisation was allowed during production for financial reasons. Is this true?

IH: Yes, that is true, but sometimes an actor would find it difficult to say a certain line. Whenever that happened, I would change or delete the line.

DM: Did that happen very often?

IH: It happened during the production of virtually every film that I directed.

DM: Did you work on any movies that did not end up being produced?

IH: There were a few, but they weren’t science fiction films.

One that was being planned was THE FISHERMEN. It was going to be a semi-documentary about fishermen living in Okinawa. I wrote a synopsis, but Toho canceled the project. The story, which mainly was about the younger generation wanting to leave Okinawa for the big city, eventually got out, and was produced as a documentary by another studio.

Another canceled project was a Japanese version of THOSE MAGNIFICENT MEN IN THEIR FLYING MACHINES. Mr. Tsuburaya also had planned to work on such a movie. I interviewed many of the pioneers of Japanese aviation, and a script was completed. I’m not sure if the project was canceled for financial reasons, or if it was canceled simply because Toho decided against producing the film.

A third movie I originally was going to work on was a Japanese version of GHOST. A dead soldier comes back to Japan from a foreign war. He wanders around…

This is highly classified information!

DM: Do you feel that there should not have been any sequels to GODZILLA – KING OF THE MONSTERS produced?

IH: Godzilla was a product of the times. There previously had been no monster like him. So, people were frightened, and shocked, by him. Now, when Godzilla appears in a city, most of the buildings are even taller than he is!

The image of what a monster is shouldn’t stay the same. It should be different so that people will be shocked and surprised, just as they were by GODZILLA – KING OF THE MONSTERS in 1954. Something new, and strange, must be created.

DM: Were you surprised by the international success of your films?

IH: I am always amazed by the enthusiasm of the fans in the United States!

DM: Godzilla was created in reaction to the development of nuclear weapons. Since nuclear war is no longer as great a threat as it once was, many fans feel that Godzilla should now instead be used to address environmental concerns. Do you agree with this?

IH: Yes. I agree.

DM: TriStar Pictures is planning to produce a Godzilla movie in the United States next year. How do you feel about this?

IH: The film will probably be much more interesting than the Godzilla movies that are being produced in Japan. I’m glad.

 

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23 of Ishiro Honda’s 77 films

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Godzilla (1954)
‘Director Ishiro Honda gathered his crew and gave them an ultimatum. He was about to put his career at risk, and he would only work with those who approached his current project—a movie about a radiation-spewing prehistoric reptile that destroys Tokyo—with the utmost seriousness, as he himself did. “He told them . . . ‘Read the script. If you are not convinced, please let me know immediately and leave the project,’” Kimi Honda, the director’s wife, recalled years later. “He only wanted those who had the absolute confidence to work with him on this film.”

‘It was the spring of 1954, and Honda was readying to direct Godzilla. As the first movie of its kind produced in Japan—and one of the most expensive movies made in the country to date—it was an audacious project for the filmmaker, for Toho Studios, and for a domestic film industry that had been left devastated and demoralized after World War II but was now resurgent. During the fifties and sixties, the masters of postwar Japanese film (Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi, Masaki Kobayashi, Mikio Naruse, Nagisa Oshima, Kon Ichikawa, and many others) would produce a bumper crop of exemplary, enduring cinema, acclaimed at home and abroad. Concurrently, a generation of studio-contracted directors would crank out commercial program pictures for the domestic market—dramas, comedies, period pictures, gangster pictures, and musicals—with efficiency and hit-making skill. Honda was among the latter group, but he would forge a unique path as Japan’s foremost director of kaiju eiga, or giant-monster movies. While the works of Kurosawa et al. were limited to art-house distribution abroad, Honda’s films played to mainstream moviegoing audiences in the U.S. and across the West, and they have subsequently become ensconced in the pop-culture pantheon. Honda’s influence is undeniable: as one of the creators of the modern disaster film, he helped set the template for countless blockbusters to follow, and a wide array of filmmakers—including John Carpenter, Martin Scorsese, Tim Burton, and Guillermo del Toro—have expressed their admiration for his work. Yet the full scale of his achievements has only recently begun to be appreciated.’ — The Criterion Collection

Excerpt

Watch the film here

 

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Godzilla Raids Again (1955)
‘Toho Studios followed the enormous success of the original Godzilla with this sequel as a straight-ahead monsters-on-the-loose drama. An underrated standout among the Showa Godzilla films, Godzilla Raids Again introduces the monster-versus-monster format that would dominate the remainder of the series, pitting Godzilla against the ferocious, spiny Anguirus as the kaiju wreak havoc in the streets of Osaka in a series of elaborate set pieces that succeed in upping the ante for destruction.’ — The Criterion Collection

Trailer

Excerpt

 

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Half Human (1955)
‘HALF HUMAN had something of an infamous reputation that sort of made it something of a legend in circles regarding Toho’s tokusatsu films. Toho Company pulled it from circulation sometime in the 80s I believe so the only way you can actually watch it is bootleg copies or somewhere online. The reason for this self imposed ban has been allegedly due to its depiction of native tribes in a less then savory manner.

‘Does the film live up to its controversy and decades long “legendary” status? Well, yes and mostly no. The controversial aspects surrounding the natives are pretty much true to what you’ve heard. Every native except the main native woman are shown to be dirty, seemingly deformed and all around just really badly mannered people who probably fit most checklists for old stereotypes of native people. So with regards to its controversy it certainly is obvious to see why it has such a notorious reputation, with regards to the rest of the movie it sort of just falls into a rather “meh” category.’ — Dr_Mafoony

Watch the film here

 

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w/ Terry O. Morse Godzilla: King of the Monsters! (1956)
‘yeah let’s just take a cathartic work of national grief and guilt and re-edit/dub it so none of that pain or soul registers, remove any and all mention of nuclear fallout and instead include an american protagonist bumbling around because i guess treating the japanese characters as people we should care about is asking too much. americans are so dumb. few know this.’ — josh lewis

Trailer

 

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Rodan (1956)
‘In the Japanese mining village of Kitamatsu, miners ares starting to disappear deep inside shaft number 8. Some of the men sent to investigate are killed but one who has managed to escape brings back a tale of a giant insect. Soon, the giant prehistoric insects are attacking the village. Not long after, something traveling faster than the speed of sound is found flying in the sky. It is Rodan, a giant flying prehistoric reptile that has come to life. It spreads terror throughout Japan and is seemingly invincible to any weapon they may throw at it.’ — garykmcd

Trailer

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The Mysterians (1957)
‘The Mysterians come from an exploded planet and aren’t the friendliest aliens: they start forest fires and landslides, and send up a galumphing robot monster. They ask for three kilometres of Japan, but really want the whole earth; most ghastly of all, they kidnap women to propagate their kind. Still, we humans aren’t very nice in return, and it’s not long before this lively sci-fi extravaganza from Inoshiro Godzilla Honda has turned into an out-and-out war film, with tanks and ray guns trundling and blasting away in the midst of lavish but variable special effects.’ — Time Out

Trailer

 

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Varan The Unbelievable (1962)
‘When a rare species of butterfly is found in a mysterious valley in Japan, a pair of entomologists go to investigate and find more. However, when they get there they find an uncharted lake and as they are observing it they are caught in a landslide and killed. A reporter named Yuriko, the sister of one of the men decides to go to the area to find out what exactly happened. She is accompanied by another entomologist named Kenji and a reporter named Horiguchi. When they get to the village where the men were last seen alive they find out about a legend regarding a giant monster. They soon find out that it is not a legend and the monster named Varan is very much alive. Soon Varan leaves the valley where he has lived for millions of years and is heading for Tokyo.’ — letterboxd

Varan | The Monster Nobody Cared About

 

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Battle in Outer Space (1959)
‘Ishirō Honda steps his game up considerably for this loose sequel to The Mysterians. While not a kaiju film outright, its connection to the lore earned itself a spot on my rankings. Battle in Outer Space takes the globalist themes explored in The Mysterians to new heights, with all the nations of the world banding together to send our own brave astronauts into space to deal with an alien menace. It has some of the most intricate miniature work we’ve seen yet from Toho, and comes off far more convincing and exciting than other space exploration films releasing at the time. Perhaps a pulpy B-movie is all this really is, but the timeless message of unity rings true even to this day. Ishirō Honda, like fellow dreamer Gene Roddenberry, clearly had high hopes for where the planet was headed. Let us not disappoint them.’ — Minion Max

Trailer

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Mothra (1961)
‘One of the most iconic Japanese kaiju, Mothra has appeared in over a dozen feature films. Presented here is her debut, a gloriously vibrant piece of filmmaking that forever changed how kaiju eiga would be produced in Japan. Following reports of human life on Infant Island, the supposedly deserted site of atomic bomb tests, an international expedition to the heavily-radiated island discovers a native tribe and tiny twin female fairies called “Shobijin” who guard a sacred egg. The overzealous expedition leader kidnaps the Shobijin to exhibit in a Tokyo stage show but soon they summon their protector, hatching the egg and releasing a giant caterpillar. When Mothra arrives in Japan and transforms into her final form, the nation and its people face their destruction. Psychedelically colourful, with an intelligent, benevolent protector as its lead kaiju, Mothra was radically different to every other monster movie that had come before it, and it remains a classic of the genre to this day.’ — AMP

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King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962)
‘Honda’s first outing with Kong isn’t a solo feature. Instead, it’s King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962), a film that’s exactly what it says on the tin and so much more. King Kong vs. Godzilla focuses on the exploits of Osamu Sakurai (Tadao Takashima), a naïve worker for the shady Pacific Pharmaceuticals. The company has been struggling as of late, so in a bizarre, last-ditch attempt at boosting interest in their product, they’ve decided to send Osamu and his friend Kinsaburo Furue (Yû Fujiki) to the mysterious Faro Island in hopes of bringing back a massive monster. Why? To boost sales of Pacific Pharmaceuticals’ drugs, of course!

‘There’s an undeniable heavy satirical bent to the proceedings, with Pacific Pharmaceuticals acting increasingly evil as the film goes on. While Osamu and Kinsaburo are sympathetic, the same cannot be said of Mr. Tako (Ichirō Arishima), their boss and the film’s de-facto evil businessman. How evil is he? Well, when Godzilla unfreezes from an iceberg and begins campaigning right for Japan, Mr. Tako bemoans how this will take publicity away from Pacific Pharmaceuticals. Oh, and he parades around the second act of the film wearing a tan suit with a red armband. A saint he is not.’ — Daily Dead

Trailer

Watch the film here

 

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Matango (Attack of the Mushroom People) (1963)
‘Five vacationers and two crewmen become stranded on a tropical island near the equator. The island has little edible food for them to use as they try to live in a fungus covered hulk while repairing Kessei’s yacht. Eventually they struggle over the food rations which were left behind by the former crew. Soon they discover something unfriendly there…’ — letterboxd

Trailer

Watch the film here

 

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Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964)
‘Godzilla faces off against the benevolent insect monster-god Mothra in this clash of the titans, a crossover battle between two of Toho Studios’ most popular monsters—the last in which Godzilla would figure as a malevolent villain rather than a fearsome hero. Mothra vs. Godzilla marks a creative high point in the Godzilla series, with pointed social commentary from director Ishiro Honda, a masterful score by Akira Ifukube, and astonishing special-effects work by Eiji Tsuburaya.’ — The Criterion Collection

Excerpt

Excerpt

 

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Dogora (1964)
‘Another great sci-fi tokusatsu from Ishirō Honda and the gang. Usually, I’d say that Eiji Tsuburaya’s effects are the star of the show in these things. Dogora, however, has some pretty interesting characters, particularly Mark Jackson and Inspector Komai, who feel like they fell out of a 60s era James Bond film. I would love to see more films with these characters. The whole diamond heist subplot was almost as engaging as the giant space jellyfish stuff. Oh, and that space jellyfish looks great by the way. There’s some scenes that look straight Lovecraftian, with tentacles reaching down from an otherworldly sky. Great stuff.’ — Tears-in-Rain

Trailer

 

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Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964)
‘After laying waste to an alien civilization on Venus, the three-headed, lightning-emitting space monster Ghidorah brings its insatiable thirst for destruction to Earth, where fierce foes Godzilla, Rodan, and Mothra must join forces in order to deal with the unprecedented threat. An electrifying screen debut for Godzilla’s archenemy Ghidorah, this film also marks a turning point for the series, as the first time the King of the Monsters acts to protect the planet.’ — TCC

Trailer

Watch the film here

 

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Frankenstein Conquers the World (1966)
‘A brilliant concept (the nazis confiscate Frankenstein’s heart and give it to the Japanese right before the bombing of Hiroshima) is given mundane treatment (this seems long at 90 mins) and the Frankenstein monster himself never really makes an impression. I saw the ending with the giant squid fight which is so crazy it becomes the best scene by default.’ — MUBI

Trailer

Excerpt

 

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Invasion of Astro-Monster (1965)
‘Aliens from Planet X make an irresistible offer to the people of Earth: let them borrow Godzilla and Rodan to help defeat King Ghidorah, and in return they will provide a cure for all known human disease. But the aliens’ duplicity is soon revealed, as they deploy all three monsters in their quest to conquer Earth. This retro romp, featuring American star Nick Adams, stands as a high point in the Showa Godzilla series.’ — The Criterion Collection

Excerpt

Carnage count

 

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The War of the Gargantuas (1966)
‘Gaira, a humanoid sea beast spawned from the discarded cells of Frankenstein’s monster, attacks the shores of Tokyo. While the Japanese military prepares to take action, Gaira’s Gargantua brother, Sanda, descends from the mountains to defend his kin. A battle between good and evil ensues, leaving brothers divided and a city in ruins.’ — letterboxd

Watch the film here

 

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King Kong Escapes (1967)
‘King Kong is brought in by the evil Dr. Who to dig for Element X in a mine when the robot Mechani-Kong is unable to do the task. This leads to the machine and the real Kong engaging in a tremendous battle atop Tokyo Tower.’ — letterboxd

Trailer

Watch the film here

 

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Destroy All Monsters (1968)
‘A romping Japanese monster rally, the 20th production in this vein from Toho studios, who have energetically devastated Japan on film virtually every year since 1954. Their output is graphic and witty, with a weird gladiatorial style which has emerged under the guidance of Honda since his first Godzilla. In some ways these features are more like sporting events than fantasies, with a radio commentary (‘It’s Godzilla leading the attack’) as the monsters of this world rally to protect it from extraterrestrial invasion.’ — Time Out

Trailer

Watch the film here

 

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All Monsters Attack (1969)
‘Director Ishiro Honda returned again for the first Godzilla movie expressly for children. Economizing by reusing effects shots from other films in the series, All Monsters Attack tells the story of Ichiro, a lonely latchkey kid who finds solace in his dreams of befriending Minilla, the titular progeny of Son of Godzilla, whose parent is also often absent. In this thoughtful, human-scale story, boy and monster learn together what it means to grow up.’ — TCC

Trailer

 

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Space Amoeba (1970)
‘From the empty caverns of space to the darkest depths of the sea, this new species knows only destruction and chaos! Space Amoeba is the last non-Godzilla film to be directed by Ishiro Honda and scored by Akira Ifukube. Shot on location in Guam, the film uses many of the actors featured in Destroy All Monsters. Alien space creatures hitch a ride on an unmanned space probe and head for Earth. Crash landing on an inhabited island, the parasitic forms take over and enlarge three local creatures, a squid (Gezora), a crab (Ganimes) and a snapping turtle (Kamoebas, who made a brief appearance in Godzilla”: Tokyo SOS). The parasitic chain-reaction has been set in motion…beware!’ — Cayman

Trailer

Excerpt

 

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Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975)
‘In Godzilla’s last gasp of the Showa era, aliens retrieve Mechagodzilla’s remains and rebuild it with the aid of an unhinged biologist (a scenery-chewing Akihiko Hirata), in hopes of defeating Godzilla for possession of planet Earth. This film marked the return of director Ishiro Honda, who had retired years earlier, disheartened by the increasingly kid-friendly approach of the series. For this final entry, Honda steers the King of the Monsters back into grim territory, interweaving an alien-invasion plot with a tale of tragic romance.’ — The Criterion Collection

Watch the film here

 

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w/ Takao Okawara Godzilla vs Destoroyah (1995)
‘Godzilla, its body burning, lays siege to Hong Kong. It’s discovered that the King of the Monsters is on the verge of a meltdown. If Godzilla reaches a critical temperature, the resulting detonation will breach straight to the Earth’s core and have a cataclysmic result. Meanwhile, a mysterious race of crustacean-like beings are spotted across Japan. Recent studies have been done on a process called Micro Oxygen, a method of increasing the size of something as a possible solution to help with food shortages. However, this new creature seems to have a more ancient history, being born from the Oxygen Destroyer itself that killed the original Godzilla in 1954.’ — Soho Kingdom

Excerpt

Behind the scenes

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Sam F, Hey! Haha, nice Nicolas Cage anecdote, and so easy to visualise. I know the Pyramid, so I think I know the corner you mean. Thanks, man. Hope all’s good with the book’s birth and everything. ** Adem Berbic, Excellent! Everyone, Courtesy of Adem Berbic, here’s a scan of Laure’s Collected Writings. Grab. Okay, understood on that hunt, interesting. Um, something I often do, if I’m writing something in 1st person for instance, is at some point when it’s reasonably in early shape, I’ll go through at least part of it and switch it into 3rd person. At best that kind of reclarifies the text and lets me see where there are things that are unnecessary or understated and so on, and then I’ll work on the text in 3rd person for a while and then switch it back to 1st person and see what happens. Usually, doing that, as labor intensive as it is, really helps the prose go to places and avoid things it hadn’t been doing and needs to. If that makes sense. Oh, we might have finally gotten an ‘RT’ screening in London. We’ll see, but at the moment it looks pretty good. ** Sarah Palmer, Hi! There was a survey show of Marcon’s work here in Paris recently, but I don’t remember those dog works. I might’ve missed them. Thank you. I’ll see if I can find those series. ** Carsten, Yeah, the heat must getting to me. It is a lot easier to avoid family gatherings now that I live many thousands of miles away from them. I’ve never been an aggressive person. I just don’t work that way. Something or someone has to really infuriate me for me to enunciate my anger in an assaultive way. I think that’s only happened a handful or less times in my life. I prefer to work out what the problem is mentally. Don’t know why. I just don’t think I could ever live not in a big city. I need constant, shifting stimulation and new people around with the potential to know. The muse thing makes sense, plus the fact that her work is quite fragmentary. ** Jeff J, Hi, Jeff! Great to see you, pal. Nice about LA. And you were there for Scott’s reading. I was feeling envy when I saw that was happening. No problem, that ‘blowing off’ thing is so standard among film programmers. Not always, obviously, but in so many cases their etiquette is for the birds. The new script is finished. We’re on the producer hunt. We’re speaking to a possibility on that front on Friday. Early on, and I’m just hoping we get lucky this time. Sure, let’s Zoom. I’m going to Norway for an ‘RT’ screening at month’s end, but I should be around otherwise. ** _Black_Acrylic, Nice G&G work. I like them, of course, but I do feel like they’ve gotten pretty predictable in the last ten years or so, but then they’re getting up there, age-wise. ** John Christopher, Hi. Oh, man, I so know what you’re going through, and, not being in a novel-writing state myself, it sounds like cocaine feels. In the good way. I love everything Blanchot wrote, but I do love his novels most of all. ‘Alpha’, no, but I remember hearing a lot about it. I’ll look for it. The only new movie I’ve seen lately is ‘Ice Cream Man’ which is ridiculous but I kind of really enjoyed it anyway. My friend Zac is obsessed with dinosaurs, and I think we’re going to go see ‘The End of Oak Street’, which I hope will be at least minimally fun. ** Regina, Hi, Regina! Oh, wow, yes, the ‘PGL’ tattoo. Unforgettable. Cool to see you! Thanks for cracking the blog’s lock. I did read that about the ‘Frisk’ movie, but I really don’t like that movie, so it isn’t wildly good news to me. Thank you about my books. How are you? What else are you doing? What’s going on? ** Steve, I would be a little surprised if some artist hasn’t, although it seems like that would go viral, and I don’t know it. Gainsbourg house tour: Those house itself is very strange, very cramped and all the walls are painted black. You’re accompanied by a recorded audio tour by Charlotte Gainsbourg who talks about growing up there. Her stories are sweet and funny, but also get quite dark. Like you end up in his bedroom, and she describes finding his dead body in the bed and what it looked like, and how she and her sister got in bed with the dead body and stayed there for days, and how they didn’t want to body to be taken away so they had an embalmer come in and embalm him so they could stay in the bed with the dead body longer. So, yeah, it’s an interesting experience. I don’t know that film, but great luck with the interview. ** laura w., I think you’re right about the pet bird thing, but not sure enough to urge you to investigate. Finding ‘Alix’s Journal’ in English here in Paris is going to be hard, I suspect, but I’m going to try. Bon voyage to the albatross. Congrats! No, I haven’t read ‘Scorpions’. Let me know how it is. ** Diesel Clementine, Hi. Sorry, yesterday got way from me. I’ll write to you shortly. What is ‘BD’? I’m blanking. Happy you’re making the best of here. ** HaRpEr //, Hi. Jacques Roubaud is wonderful. His novels ‘The Great Fire of London’ and ‘The Loop’ are both great. ‘The Book’, amazing thing, project, ambition, etc. Very cool you’re reading it. ** Uday, Not ‘Hunger’, but something dark in a similar mode. Remind me what school you’re at and where you are. I’m not remembering at the moment. My bad. Not being aesthetically aligned with the average grad student is promising in and of itself. Except for the potential loneliness of course. ** Right. Today you’re being given the opportunity to see and think about dated, analogue monsters as visualised by the Japanese monster authority Ishirô Honda if you like. See you tomorrow.