I know this is technically Giant Monster March material, but it’s Christmas, and kaiju are often dinosaurs in some way, so let’s have some technically correct fun with this obscure South-Korean kaiju film, The Flying Monster, better known as War Of The God Monsters because it is law for genre cinema films like these to have multiple titles.
1985 was definitely an interesting year for kaiju film as this was most likely made as a response to the North-Korean produced Bulgasari, itself made because of Return Of Godzilla debutting one year prior. Then King Kong Lives almost killed all of this new found momentum.
Directed by Jeong-yong Kim, War Of the God Monsters/ The Flying Monster (originally titled “Bicheongoesu “, which would translate literally to “(The) Undead Beast”), and it does somewhat still fits for Dino Dicember, the plot IS about a shunned professor trying to prove that dinosaurs still exist, with a young reporter trying to get a story from him.
But at it turns out, “Vegamunk” is right, as various giant dinosaurs (and a Pterodactyl kinda thing, the titular “flying monster” i suppose) suddendly appear, forcing the odd to confront the peril and find a way to save the world from the kaijusauruses.
One reason for its obscurity and basically being considered a lost film until its 2021 release on VHS (yes, that’s not a typo) and Bluray by SRS Cinema in US territories under the War Of The God Monsters title…. is due to the film itself being a stock footage stew of a film.
By that i don’t mean some stock footage, i mean all the monster scenes are stock footage from Tsuburaya Productions Ultraman series, heck, apparently even from Tsuburaya’s Fireman, but mostly the Ultra series, though, not being really familiar with it, i’m not able to tell you which monsters’ footage they lifted, but let’s just say that some do are dinosaur-ish…. and some like the dual twin-starfish joined at the hip/bat head are definitely NOT, XD
and you can tell because the video quality doesn’t really match, the aspect ratio doesn’t either (as the recycled footage is forcibly stretched into widescreen), the film tint and colors neither, we can go from brightly lit day footage to obvious shots of darkly lit night or almost night footage of some reddish-blackish that obvious an older, cheaper film tint.
We can the movie go from the mountainside to a city scene in seconds, or from the near beachside to a Ultraman kaiju tearing up an electric power plant, or from somewhere nowhere near a body of water to a kaiju in the water swimming into a refinirey port station.
it’s not really “woven” into the original footage, just rammed in, and cut into abruptly, if it matches it’s by pure chance.
Even weirder, Tsuburaya Productions did approve the usage of stock footage from the Ultra series, this is an indipendent production but it’s not a bootleg like Super Betaman/Super Batman & Mazinger V, also from South Korea.
There is a singular original prop of monster feet (and i guess a giant egg) that stops this movie monster effects to be 100 % recycled content.
Even odder than that is the movie itself, because it’s tonally inconsistent, just unpredictable but not in a good way, sometimes it’s cheesy, sometimes you’d think things are about to go into horror or thriller territory due to lighting or music choices (which also uses lifted or unfitting tones) implying so, then cut to some goofy looking kaiju, only to follow that up with some actual, effective family drama, as the doctor lives on a mostly isolated island with his daughter, after his wife died, which he never told the daughter directly, but she sensed it, and is lonely as her father is obsessed with his work, to proving his theory right against is fellow scientists that shunned him, to the point he’s not giving her enough attention.
This family drama is honestly the core of the film, where it works best, and the acting is surprisingly good, but it’s just buried as the script will just kick itself in the nards by following up emotional scenes with stuff like the reporter paying the rude bumpkin she met on the bus to stage an attempted rape on herself, so she can fend him off Benny Hill style, hoping to manipulate the doctor to let her back into his, after he discovered she moonlight as the nanny they were expecting, ALL of this to sneak into the forbidden room and read his theory.
That’s some psycho behavior, so much for likeable characters that aren’t the doctor and his daughter.
That his, when this reporter isn’t randomly “horror jumpscaring” the doctor outside the house, at night, by passing herself off as a ghost or something, and the aforementioned cutting to already 10+ years old stock footage of Fireman, Ultraman, Ultraman Ace (maybe more, i don’t know) and his kaijus, alongside the perfunctory fighter jets, which isn’t much initially, but about the midway mark, when the doctor theories are proven right, the editors unleash the Ultraman-sans-Ultraman footage, which makes up pretty much the latter half of the film.
Also, War Of The God Monsters it’s one of those where the crisis is caused by global warming causing the ice containing the “dinosaur god monsters” to melt and release the creatures, but this is never developed into an enviromental message à-la Godzilla Vs Hedorah or the 1975 King Kong remake, as is anything else in it, for that matter.
Even glossing over them not having the budget for the “dinomonsters” and instead having to loan stock footage from the Ultra series, the tone is all over the place and this is also due to a lackluster script that nails some drama but then immediatly follow that up by having the same character do stuff that makes them look bad or stupid, and ultimately not having any real arcs for the characters, no real resolution.
For example, when the monsters rampage, the tone is actually serious and dramatic, but it doesn’t last, as the drama is undercut by the doc’s daughter noticing a woman carried a pillow on her back sash instead of her baby when escaping their homes, and almost turning this into a comedy bit.
Not that it matters, this specific subplot is never resolved, but this holds true for pretty much all subplots and character arcs, as they ultimately go nowhere,
For example, you might wonder how they stop or try to stop the monsters…. they don’t, the editors run out of stock footage, the tornado that started minutes ago during the monster destruction scenes dies down, the reporter, doctor and doc’s daughter reunite, they imply doc and reporter have or had a thing going on, but even that goes extra nowhere, since the movie stops seconds later.
Plus sometimes even the stock footage doesn’t even make sense in this new context, especially in the final act i had no idea why two monsters (the asian dragons) appeared to be fighting each other.
Then again, they’re never shown to be defeated or killed either.
War Of The God Monsters is a bad mess, overall, despite some highlights, not the worse, but it’s just an extreme – and extremely unknown – oddity i’d recommend only to diehard kaiju buffs.
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