Disclaimer: I am connected with Detlef Claus on Facebook, though we have never met, and I actually connected with him on that platform in order to purchase this book. In the following review, as always, I will try to be as unbiased as possible and will be exploring both positive and negative elements of the publication.
Some ten years ago, I reviewed the softcover version of Sean Linkenback’s wonderful The Art of Japanese Monsters, a self-published tome that covered worldwide advertisements (mostly posters) from a grand variety of Japanese creature features and special effects flicks. Sean Linkenback is one of the most prominent collectors of Godzilla and Japanese monster merchandise, being one of the only author in the English language to publish books on the subject matter. A new entry in this underrepresented field has now stepped up to the plate, however—in 2023, German mega-collector Detlef Claus (possibly the biggest collector of kaiju posters in all of Europe) self-published a massive, full-color text on Asian monster movie posters with both German and English (together in the same volume). The book is far longer than Linkenback’s already impressive The Art of Japanese Monsters, though its breadth is somewhat narrower and wider simultaneously. While Linkenback’s book covered all sorts of monster films from Japan, including fantasy films like the Daimajin trilogy from Daiei, Claus’s book (as the title suggests) focuses in on monster and science fiction films, but mostly avoids fantasy (with the exception of 1966's The Magic Serpent). His book, too, does not include Japanese advertisements, while Linkenback’s includes many posters from the Land of the Rising Sun. What would seem a larger difference, Claus’ volume encompasses entries from all over Asia—though the vast majority of films covered are Japanese (more on this later). Still, with over three hundred fifty pages, all in full-color, Claus has assembled a truly remarkable coffee-table book here for fans to peruse and savor. As a self-published endeavor, the English text suffers from some familiar issues (and a few new ones that come from the translation process), and I have a few minor complaints to note, but still, we have a really impressive book here worthy of the pennies and dimes (and eyes) of fans with an interest and the spare change to purchase the thing.
First, let’s breeze over the contents so we can get an idea of what we are getting ourselves into. The book starts with a lengthy two-page introduction detailing Claus’ background with the fandom and how he got into Asian monster poster collecting specifically. We get boyhood tales of kaiju cinema in Japan, his first Japanese monster flick (it was 1967’s Gappa the Triphibian Monster!), and the evolution of his interest from German posters related to his fandom to worldwide publications, followed by an inclusion of his email and an invitation to join him in purchasing and trading. Of course, because the text of this introduction covers two full pages, we also get two full pages in German—whatever text appears in either language will take twice as much space because of this decision, though usually the English and German appear side-by-side on the same page. After the introduction, we get a brief account of how Godzilla movies and the like spread through the world and which countries’ cinemas they invaded, a map showing the countries whose posters/cinematic histories will be touched upon within the book, and a few pages outlining (generally) what the sizes are for the different kinds of advertisements covered in the book. Then we move on to the entries, and for each film covered, Claus includes some commentary on the release, a few notes on the sorts of posters covered and their artistic inclinations, sometimes a note or two on favorites or disappointments, and a list of all countries where the movie was released in theaters and when (if known). Claus includes entries for almost sixty films altogether, beginning with Godzilla (1954) and ending with Godzilla vs. Kong (2021). Then, in the very back, we get a very brief section with a few posters from Japanese fantastic film festivals. Finally, Claus encloses a conclusion/epilogue with some comments on the changing face of movie advertisements and the trend for globalized, mostly uniform posters, as well as a list of films that DID have releases outside their home country but which were not included in this book (for unspecified reasons).
Let’s start with the positives—this CHUNK of a book is gorgeous! The posters are reprinted on high-quality paper, and the images come through beautifully, with many posters given full-page spreads for fans to ogle. Claus also usually chooses some of the most stunning or visually interesting posters for the full-page treatment, and usually even the smaller reprinted posters are easy to make out and enjoy. While I have seen a lot of movie posters (kaiju and Japanese science fiction in particular) online and in books and in person, there were many I was not familiar with in this book, and it feels wonderful to find these new-to-me masterworks (such as the wide variety of splendidly rendered Italian monster posters), or rediscover old favorites (like the endlessly bizarre Polish posters, or the surprisingly striking Thai ads). If I was going to make a list of favorite kaiju artists, my go-tos would be Arthur Adams, Shinji Nishikawa, Bob Eggleton, Noriyoshi Ohrai and the like—but it’s nice to add Ukrainian-born Constantin Belinksy as a notable monster-poster artist! He did The War of the Gargantuas, King Kong Escapes, X from Outer Space posters—even Space Amoeba, which might be my favorite (it was also included in Linkenback’s book). Some of the movies have extensive and impressive representation in the book, with one of my favorites being Son of Godzilla (the poster from Spain is pretty remarkable). While Claus doesn’t give so much background material about each film, sometimes he sneaks in a few choice nuggets, pointing out that certain posters straight up made-up cast member names, or solving a puzzle I have wondered about for ten years. Back when I reviewed Linkenback’s art book, I was puzzled when he identified a poster from Destroy All Monsters as featuring artwork based on a comic book—but did not include the poster, nor identify the comic book. Now I know from Claus’ description (and from confirming via a quick google search) that the comic was Turok, Son of Stone #50—that toothy rex (or at least copied versions of the same) features on a surprising number of kaiju posters, and not just DAM. Also, I love the original monster designs that crop up in some of these posters—monsters that don’t really look like the monsters featured, but are pretty neat in themselves—such as the humanoid reptile from the Italian Invasion of Astro-Monster poster, the dragons from the Italian Gamera vs. Barugon poster, the cross between a bear and Gorgo on the Italian X from Outer Space poster… I guess you could say Italy really made an impression on me in this book. At one point, Claus notes that Legend of the Dinosaurs & Monster Birds has an Italian version with additional footage taking the story worldwide that intrigued me—though I haven’t been able to confirm this information yet. (Curiously, despite widespread reports on the Internet that Legend of Dinosaurs etc was big hit in Russia, Claus doesn’t include any posters from that nation.) Maybe it’s weird to say, but I also really enjoyed seeing all the giant gorillas/Kong offshoots that appear in posters where apes should not be—and trust me, there are a LOT of these beasts of false advertising! Also, just like with Linkenback’s book, it is just so nice to have all these posters neatly laid out on the pages with identifying information about the size, when they were printed, what kind of posters they were, where they came from, etc—the sorts of details you probably won’t get when making Google searches.
That said, there are some weaknesses worth mentioning here. The translations to English from German by Henning Strauss are often quite articulate, but occasionally become garbled and confusing. Sometimes country names in the English side are not translated at all and retain their German spelling (though they are usually still easily understandable). Some movie titles receive many pages of advertisements with huge and beautiful pages, while others barely get two pages—Gamera Super Monster (1980) is one of the latter, with the added frustration that those two pages are squished and don’t have the usual excellent page design. I don’t mean to say that all the entries in this book should rate equal coverage, as certainly some films had many more posters available to cover, but if you are going in with a hope to see a particular favorite film and find scant material or nothing at all, you might come out more than a little disappointed. A bigger issue—the title for the book is ASIAN Monster and Science Fiction Poster Art, so you might expect ample representation from monster films around the Asian continent and associated isles outside of Japan. However, Claus only includes one non-Japanese film in his entire book (well, other than a few MonsterVerse films)—that being the original Yongary (1967)! Now I understand that many monster and science fiction flicks from Asian countries likely never had distribution outside their home countries—you aren’t going to find posters for Gogola (1966) around Europe (I wish), or Our Friend Power Five (1989) ads from South America, etc. But what about Hong Kong’s The Mighty Peking Man (1977) or Inframan (1975)? How about Thailand’s Crocodile (1980) or Garuda (2004), or South Korea’s The Host (2006) or D-War (2007)—or heck, how about A*P*E (1976)? Russia is also part of Asia, so including Planet of Storms (1962) or Solaris (1972) would also be appropriate. I don’t think Claus is under any compunction to include all these movies, but if you’re going to title your book Asian Monster and Science Fiction Poster Art and only include one non-Japanese film in the entire book spanning over 350 pages, it feels a little dishonest. In addition, some of the posters get quite repetitive, with the same images paired with a mere switch in language, or entire pages of lobby cards in which the same design is repeated eight times with just a swapped publicity still inside. Godzilla King of the Monsters (2019) gets a surprising number of full-page spreads that feature poster images that are very familiar. If I had my druthers, I would have preferred a book that was a bit shorter (and, ahem, cheaper) that trimmed the repeats—and as much as I love the MonsterVerse films, given that they are not Asian movies, I would probably cut them altogether—unless you want to include films like Dragonball Evolution (2009), Ghost in the Shell (2017), and Alita: Battle Angel (2019) as well.
Note that the book includes no entries for All Monsters Attack (1969), Gamera vs. Zigra (1971), Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II (1993), Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla (1994), the Rebirth of Mothra films, Godzilla vs. Megaguiras (2000), Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001), Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla (2002), Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. (2003), nor Gamera the Brave (2006).
Despite my occasional kvetching, I really enjoyed reading this book and gazing at the treasure trove of posters inside. My eyes felt like they were drying out from ocular gawping at the gorgeous art inside, so even with the few dodgy English errors and the lack of proper Asian representation amongst the entries and a few other issues, I still recommend picking up this book if you’re at all interested in monster movie art and history. There are just so many searingly beautiful posters lurking inside ready to be discovered and enjoyed by the fans, and I would love to see this sort of project get more attention and so future editions can be produced. Shoot, maybe we can get Claus to produce English versions of his previous books if this one sells well enough! If you are interested in purchasing the book, you can contact Detlef Claus at this email: godzilla-germany@web.de |
