Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Swiss Cheese Memory

Me and my swiss cheese memory. My brother commented on my last post about Christmas gifts and he pointed out some toys that we had as kids that I remember as clear as if it was yesterday. All of our GI Joe stuff and the ghost gun were as clear as his first drum set.



WHY DO I REMEMBER THAT KIND OF STUFF? Thinking about that stuff got my Swiss cheese memory working again and I came upon a mental picture of a movie that I saw when I was a kid. I think my parents took my brother and I to see this fine cinema. I vaguely recall it being a superhero type of person with a silver and red outfit with a facemask that fought monsters like the old Godzilla type of monsters with the typical Japanese genre of monster movies. I recall a huge satellite dish with an octopus type monster wrecking it. My brother and I were both into the Godzilla/Mothra/King Kong thing back in the 70's and 80's so it kinda makes sense that we would have seen a movie like this. (Actually I still love the genre and looked forward to AMC's Monsterfest around Halloween.) I kinda remember this movie/superhero being called Ultraman, and lo and behold, through the modern marvel of the internet I actually found the movie. According to www.imdb.com the movie was released in 1979 (I would have been 12 years old, that's about right), but doesn't say that there was an english version. Ultraman is still a popular character with tons of listings on eBay. You can actually watch some of the tv series on www.youtube.com. Was it really a movie in the theatre that we saw? Don't remember. Why do I remember it? Don't know. Would I want to see this bad Japanese movie again? Hell yeah!


2 comments:

MR said...

I knew who you were talking about from the description. Growing up in Michigan, I used to watch the Ultraman show regularly. Sometime this year, I went looking for episodes as well. I found the pilot episode and downloaded it. Ultraman kicked ass. He knew kung-fu, and when he crossed his arms he could shoot this ray. And there was tension to the battle, too. Ultraman, like Superman, got his power from the sun, and he had a light on his chest that would flash when he needed a "power up." Sometimes he would have to stop fighting, fly to the sun and come back for the second half. One episode I remember, he couldn't get away and collapsed. The monster went back to stomping down shit and a ship from Ultraman's alien world arrived and restored him to life. He kicked the monster's ass forthwith. Great show. I also watched Johnny Socko (yes, the band stole that name). It was Johnny Socko and his Flying Robot. The robot could shoot missiles and stuff. Every kid who watched that wanted a giant flying robot. I'm still saving up for one.

Marcus said...

I'll have to watch it. I don't remember watching it, but it did have quite a bit of fan hype about it.