Saturday, October 14, 2017

ANTI-MASHUPS (-2)

As a contrast to post #21, this one offers another comics-cover which also references KING KONG VS. GODZILLA, but is not a mashup.



From what I can tell this fire-breathing dragon-like creature never appeared before, so he has a "negative value," existing only to be an antagonist to the comic's monstrous star, Konga.

Similar negative values accrue to the monster-antagonists in all of the Japanese "Gamera" films. The studio in charge of Gamera, Daiei Studios, never pit the "good" turtle-monster against more than one creature at a time, and so all of the films fail the "mashup" test.



Amusingly, one of Gamera's opponents, "Barugon," copied the name of a monster-antagonist, Baragon, who appeared in just one previous film, Toho Studios' FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD. I assume that the name-copying was nothing but a jape on the part of the Daiei moviemakers, since Baragon didn't exactly set the world on fire, even when he was revived in 1969's DESTROY ALL MONSTERS as a "team-player."

Addendum: I should add that in GAMERA SUPER MONSTER, footage from the older films is recycled to give the impression that Gamera is fighting each of his individual foes in sequence, and that all of the monsters have been sent against Earth by evil aliens. Yet I can't really call a "clip show" a true mashup, especially when it's transparent to anyone in the know that the footage has been recycled.

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