Up to volume 22 now with this mook (magazine style book) series. This particular entry focuses on Frankenstein vs. Baragon (1965). While far from the best entry in the series, this one does a good job of highlighting the 1965 movie across the 32 pages.
For the format of the book, it starts with a section called the “process”, which tackles the concept of making a film around Frankenstein at Toho. This includes examining the conditions that led to the original pitch for Frankenstein vs. Godzilla and the even earlier pitch for Frankenstein vs. the Human Vapour. One thing that stood out to me about this section, though, is that it notes that originally Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964) was seen as a disappointment. While that seems crazy today, it does point to how utterly warped Toho’s expectations were for this franchise after the runaway success of King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962).
Following this are some bios for the movie’s monsters. Each gets about four pages for them, although the Giant Octopus takes up about half a page in Baragon’s section. There is a good mixture of color and black and white stills here, although most of the rare ones are in black and white. There are some really cool ones that I haven’t seen before, though, like a still of the young Frankenstein in the shadows overlooking the hill and another of the Giant Octopus. Sadly, this section has no mention of the “is it a monster or is it not a monster” Giant Boar from the film.
After these we have bios for the human cast and a bio for actor Susumu Fujita, who plays a police chief in the film. That shares a two page spread with yet another perspective from non-fiction author Asato Izumi (I’m very meh on these, but they seem to frequent the Showa entries). Next are bios for the vehicles followed by a blow-by-blow of the movie’s events. That concludes with looking at the deleted scene with the Giant Octopus.
The last bit of the book has an essay on the work of composer Akira Ifukube and then looks at the non-Japanese actors of the Showa era science fiction films. Finally, it also talks about the differences between the US and Japanese versions of Frankenstein vs. Baragon (1965).
Now I’ve complained about this in earlier split entries in this series, like Vol.19 on Gorath/Dogora, about the lack of interviews. However, sadly this book continues that trend despite being only on a single film. Curious on this, I skipped ahead to look at Vol.26 on Battle in Outer Space/The War in Space and Vol.32 on Submersion of Japan. Both did feature interviews, so thankfully this wasn’t a permanent trend for this series. That said, it is a bummer that none are featured here.
Overall, despite the lack of interviews, this is a good entry for fans of this particular film. While it has a few more black and white stills than I would like to see, at least there are quite a few full color ones. It’s also filled with some nice facts, even if a lot of them are commonly known now. |
