I’ve been into this series since Bigfoot vs. the Illuminati and how can you not love movies with titles like Bigfoot vs. Krampus, Van Helsing, Xterminator and the AI Apocalypse, Bigfoot Goes to Hell and the upcoming Bigfoot vs. Megalodon 2? I nearly forgot Trump vs. the Illuminati!

As the last survivors of the human race try to rebuild society, they have to face off with Megalodon, which has been genetically engineered by the Third Reich, and as always, Aleister Crowley and his army of Archons.

On the good side, we have Van Helsing, Princess Kali, Dr. Jekyll and Bigfoot. Kali and Van Helsing — a clone of the original — have become something of a couple and debate recreating the human race if they ever stop fighting. Meanwhile, Crowley wants to lure Bigfoot to his side and sacrifice him to Satan.

Oh man. I just learned that there’s another movie in this series, Tickles the Clown.

Just a warning. You might see this and thing it looks like your kid’s favorite video game and think you can sit them in front of it. Unless you want your child to ask you some very strange questions about sexual slang, maybe you should find something else. Or I don’t know, let them watch it and learn all about future Nazis and space princesses that like to rough sex. I’m not the parent. I’m just some guy who likes CGI Bigfoot swearing at people.

You can watch this on Tubi.

The third film of Shinpei Hayashiya’s “Deep Sea Monster Series,” this is the sequel to 2009’s Raiga: God of the Monsters.

Raiga returns, rising in Atami Harbor and attacking the city as another monster, Ohga appears to attack him. As the city is destroyed, the defense force launches a new KAMIKAZE as well as a drill tank named Gokumei. As always, the real issue might be the government, who looks at the destruction of the city as a way to make room for a new casino.

It takes so many weapons to take out these two monsters, including pulse weapons, a Gatling Robot, tanks, planes, helicopters, a NI-26 Amphibious Combat Vehicle and a Plasma Photon Bomb that won’t just take out the creatures but anyone near it. Spoiler warning: It also creates a whole new monster, Kuga, which makes its way to Hawaii and a battle with the volcano-generated Dias.

There are moments here where your brain may just give up with all the strobing and colors on screen. There are even scenes where action figures take the place of human beings. This also has dumb government officials — like a comedy version of Shin Godzilla — working with CIA agents that may as well be Ellwood and Jake Blues.

You can watch this on Tubi. You can also buy the blu ray from SRS.

Planet Patrol is a Full Moon anthology movie without telling you that it will be, taking parts of Kraa! the Sea Monster, Doctor Mordrid,  Subspecies and Robot Wars to make an entirely new movie that makes you feel crazy because you’ve certainly seen some of these moments and heard even some of the dialogue.

They took the first few minutes of Kraa! and then take us to the headquarters of the Planet Patrol, which is the museum from Doctor Mordrid. Someone steals the Bloodstone that belongs to Radu and then a dinosaur from Doctor Mordrid to come into this movie and the skeleton ones as well, except that the creature was created by Patrolman Curtis (Alison Lohman), a Planet Patrol member with mental powers. Then, you get a supercut of Kraa! that actually improves that movie by cutting most of it.

There’s also the same Lord Doom from Kraa!

It’s like Full Moon had no money but people were demanding movies, so they said, “What if we made a family film with all this footage we have here?” Notably no other studios usually do this. It’d be like if the next Marvel movie was an entirely new movie made up of scenes from Iron Man and Avengers. People would lose their minds. With Full Moon, you just expect this and shrug and wonder why they do things like this.

You can watch this on Tubi.

The sequel to Reigo: King of the Sea Monsters, this was also directed and written by Shinpei Hayashiya. ten years later, there was a sequel, God Raiga vs. King Ohga: War of the Monsters.

Global warming has melted the ice caps in the South Pole and disrupted Earth’s ecosystem. This also brings long-sleeping sea creatures back to life, including Raiga, which instantly decides to destroy the city of Asakusa while avoiding destroying any temples. There’s also a father (Yukijiro Hotaru) and his three daughters (Miyu Oriyama, Mao Urata, Manami Enosawa) who use the monster’s attacks to create merchandise and sell it, like something out of Yeti Giant of the 20th Century when father isn’t trying to get a new girlfriend to the anger of his children.

The Defense Force has a new weapon, KAMIKAZE, as well as cluster bombs and stealth fighters. But they can barely stop one monster, much less two. I mean, have you ever seen a kaiju piss all over some rubble to mark its territory? Watch this and you can say that you have.

This feels very close to the original Godzilla but in a way that lovingly echoes that movie. I had a lot of fun with this and found it way better than the first movie.

You can watch this on Tubi or buy it from SRS.

I know that I am old as this is the 31st Godzilla movie and the third reboot. Actually, there are two reboots going on, the Legendary Pictures movies that started in 2014 with Godzilla and this series, which stars the Reiwa era.

Directed by Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi with a script by Anno, this is the highest grossing and best received Godzilla movie of all time at least until Godzilla Minus One comes out.

Much like all of the first Godzilla films, a boat is found with no one on it. Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Rando Yaguchi believes that something living caused it and soon, news reports show a tail coming out of the ocean. Soon, whatever it is crawls through Tokyo, destroying anything it can before overheating and going back under the water.

Whatever it is, it’s powered by nuclear fission. Kayoco Anne Patterson, sent by the U.S., believes that anti-nuclear zoology expert Goro Maki predicted this, which seems to be true as the abandoned boat was his. He’d been censored and his reputation ruined. It turns out that he was right.

The creature, now known as Godzilla, destroys even more of Tokyo as it continues to change form. It even wipes out most of the Japanese government before using up all of its energy and going into a sleep stage. The governments of the world decide to drop nukes on Tokyo but before they can do that, the Japanese Defense Force is able to freeze the creature.

Godzilla was once the nuclear fears of Japan seen as a giant creature. In Shin Godzilla it has become a way of trying to deal with the ecological issues and disasters that Japan faced starting with the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. It also shows that a government not ready to adapt and be flexible when these major events happen are just as frightening as a kaiju.

It’s weird to me that Toho’s contract with Legendary Entertainment keeps them from releasing their Godzilla films in the same year as Legendary’s Godzilla films. While there hasn’t been a sequel, there have been several other movies set in the Shin universe, such as Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time, Shin Ultraman and Shin Kamen Rider.

Directed, written, produced and filmed by Anthony Polonia, son of Mark, this movie uses footage from Konga TNT, Gappa: The Triphibian Monster and Reigo: King of the Sea Monsters to show the kaiju that have attacked Earth. Thinking humans are too violent to be part of a peaceful universe, aliens sent the ape-reptile hybrid Zillafoot to Earth. Its mission: Destroy everything and everyone.

Can the military stop it? Can Dr. Kaski (Mark Polonia), inventor of the GXG-1 weapon? Can the Ultrasquad? Can anyone?

This has effects by Brett Piper, which explains why props from Empire of the Apes and Revolt of the Empire of the Apes are in this. Man, this has some bad reviews on IMDB and Letterboxd, but I was somewhat charmed by it. It’s only an hour and pretty goofy, which are two things that make me watch a movie.

You can watch this on Tubi or buy the SRS blu ray.

Based on the Native American myth and inspired by Suitmation kaiju movies, Uktena is eighty feet tall and 200 tons thick. He’s an ancient Cherokee monster that has awakened because of the modern world’s greed.

Made by father and son Dan and David Treanor, this pits the titular monster up against Sheriff Poncho Bravo (Marc Bilker), Doc Collins (Kyle Borthick), Colonel Tuttle (Norman Hughes), Dr. Geco (Kayla Rose) and Jerome Greywolf (Jerry Roys).  You should not expect a movie that looks like a high budget epic. But you can be assured that the monster against little people scenes are a lot of fun. There’s a lot of green screen and I know that some people can’t get past that. I get the feeling that the filmmakers had a lot of heart and wanted to make the best monster suit movie they could.

This also has a lot of blues music, talk about the blues and Dan’s friends playing the blues. Kaiju blues. I feel like rewriting “Talk About the Blues” by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion just for this:

That’s right
I’m talkin’ ’bout the kaiju
I said it looks so huge baby
Uh
I’m talkin’ ’bout the kaiju
G-FAN magazine
On the telephone, baby
Talk about the kaiju
Right now
Uh
Look out
Yeah

You can buy this from SRS Cinema or watch it on Tubi.

An entry for GEMSTONE’s Creators Audition, a collaborative project between Toho Co., Ltd. and AlphaBoat in which Japanese artists and filmmakers competed in a challenge to create new works inspired by the Godzilla series, Hedorah Silent Spring was made by Hiroto Yokokawa, director of indie kaiju films The Great Buddha Arrival and Hoshi 35.

You may think the Rachel Carson quote is out of place in a kaiju movie, but Godzilla vs. Hedorah director Yoshimitsu Banno also took inspiration from her book.

Just five minutes long, this finds a man unleashing a small piece of Hedorah on a city, basically deciding that humanity has had its chance to fix the pollution they created. Now, Hedorah will return and destroy everything.

With perfect music by Hiromi Shinoda, this does more in a few moments than most modern kaiju do in hours.

You can watch this on YouTube.

A small Japanese village of fishermen has decided to join together to kill the monstrous whale that has been ruining their catches. It becomes such a cause that the richest man in town (Takashi Shimura) offers his power, his land, his money and his daughter (Kyoko Enami) to whoever can kill the kaiju-size whale. This works well for Shaki (Kojiro Hondo), who has been planning on killing the whale after it ate his family. However, a man known only as  “I am–” (Shintaro Katsu) has come to town with the same urge to kill the demon whale.

Can a kaiju movie pretty much be Moby Dick? Yes, it can. This is the film. Yet it’s also more, as it’s based on a novel by Uno Koichiro (thanks Japan On Film).

Directed by Tokuzô Tanaka and written by Kaneto Shindô, this finds “I am–” fighting with everyone in town and even assaulting a woman in love with Shaki (Shiho Fujimara). Our hero raises that child as his own. Meanwhile, both “I am–” and the rich man’s daughter are nearly stoic, silent and near-emotionless figures despite their importance to the story. The old man sees his daughter as the biggest prize, but neither man wants or needs her. Our hero wants revenge and his enemy just wants something different, a new experience and something to challenge his will.

Daiei is such a strange company, one that could release Rashomon and also the Gamera, Zatoichi,  Yokai Monsters and Daimajin series of films. They even had their own baseball team, the Daiei Stars, which are known today as the Chiba Lotte Marines.

I’ve never seen anything like this movie, a moody look at fishing life that just so happens to feature a kaiju whale.

You can get this movie on blu ray from SRS or download it from the Internet Archive.

Kenzo Miyazawa is a night school teacher with a class full of weirdos. Sadly, there aren’t enough students and the school is about to close. There’s also a musical that the class wants to put on for a festival. And oh yes, an alien kaiju that has come to destroy the city which Mr. Miyazawa challenges to a battle.

Directed by Yoshikazu Ishii and written by Nobuhiko Ishii, you may be not pleased to learn that the giant teacher doesn’t become giant until the last few minutes of the movie. Instead, it’s an entire movie about alien students learning about themselves. You might be let down if you’re looking for an entire movie of a monstrous kaiju instructor.

You can watch this on Tubi.