“Well, maybe he fell in love with a whale?” Of course! Nobody ever suspects interspecies shenanigans! Join this episode’s Grue Crew – Chad Hunt, Whitney Collazo, and Jeff Mohr – as they struggle to keep the two Gargantuas straight in one of Ishirô Honda’s Toho classics, The War of the Gargantuas!
Decades of Horror: The Classic Era
Episode 57 – The War of the Gargantuas (1966)
An experimental lab animal called a Gargantua escapes from his captors and is suspected to be the creature that is killing people all over the countryside. But when the Gargantua from the lab appears at the same time as the evil Gargantua, the two begin to battle across Japan.
IMDb
- Director: Ishirô Honda
- Writers: Reuben Bercovitch (story), Ishirô Honda (writer), Takeshi Kimura (as Kaoru Mabuchi)
- Featured Cast:
- Russ Tamblyn as Dr. Paul Stewart
- Kumi Mizuno as Akemi
- Kenji Sahara as Dr. Yuzo Majida
- Nobuo Nakamura as Dr. Kita
- Jun Tazaki as the Army Commander
- Hisaya Ito as Police Chief Izumida
- Kipp Hamilton as a club singer
- Yû Sekida as Sanda
- Haruo Nakajima as Gaira
The War of the Gargantuas is a bit of a pseudo-sequel to Frankenstein Conquers the World (1965). In this case, however, Frankenstein grows hair, becomes a brown gargantua, and meets its green clone from the ocean. The brown and green gargantuas are rechristened Sanda and Gaira, and the two then do battle. Jeff calls this film golden cheese and loves every minute of it, especially the destruction of the miniatures. The plight of the suit actors makes an impression on Whitney and she is really taken with the scenes between Akemi and Sanda as a very young gargantua. Chad educates Whitney and Jeff about two Toho legends: director Ishirô Honda and the legendary suit actor, Haruo Nakajima. The Grue Crew unanimously recommends The War of the Gargantuas in any of its many versions.
The Decades of Horror: The Classic Era Grue Crew plan to release a new episode every other week. Hey, where else will you hear podcasts on films ranging from King Kong (1933) to Half Human (Jû jin yuki otoko, 1955) to It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958)? The next episode in our very flexible schedule will be the first Amicus portmanteau, Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1965).
Please send us feedback on the films we cover, ideas for future films, or the podcast itself. After all, without you, we’re just four somnambulistic horror freaks talking about the films we love. Send us an email at feedback@gruesomemagazine.com or leave us a message, a review, or a comment at GruesomeMagazine.com, iTunes, the Gruesome Magazine Horror News Radio Facebook group or your friendly neighborhood podcast aggregator.
To each of you from each of us, “Thank you so much for listening!”
Jeff has written for Horrornews.net and SQ Horror Magazine. He currently writes for Gruesome Magazine and is a co-host of the Decades of Horror podcasts - The Classic Era, 1970s, and 1980s - and the Gruesome Magazine Podcast.
