While my Ultraman Leo article was intended to be Kaiju Kompendium’s Halloween article, I feel like maybe one last Halloween surprise is in order, this time covering what is in my opinion, one of the spookiest pieces of tokusatsu that Showa era Tsuburaya put out.
Giant Beast Planet was a pilot Tsuburaya Productions had created in 1974 that was used to show off the ambitious show concept that combined stop motion animation for the creatures and traditional anime for the humans. There’s not really much plot to this pilot, but we follow two explorers on a desolate planet being menaced by several different creatures. While I’m sad this wasn’t picked up for a full show, it’s a perfect little capsule of horror full of suspense, some clever melding of animation techniques and a genuinely creepy electronic score make this a perfect thing to throw on in the background of your Halloween party (when it’s safe to do so of course!).
The first creature we see in the pilot is this bizarre hybrid between a prehistoric bird and insect that menaces the party for a bit. Despite only briefly being seen, this guy looks wonderfully weird and leaves a wonderful impression. If I had to pick a “mascot” to represent this particular film, it’d be this guy. He deserves more Tsuburaya!
Our explorers run into trouble with the second monster, a large, subterranean squid-like monster that erupts from the ground to attack and eat one of the human characters!
It’s a fairly well-animated prop monster, and features some good melding of the different animation styles at play, and his slimy, black hide contrast real well with his beady yellow eyes make him a really nightmarish creature. While I don’t think it was intentional at all, this guy really brings to mind the squid-like insect that was in the legendary “Lost Spider Pit Sequence” from the original King Kong.
The last monster we see in the pilot is this friendly giant made out of light no not Ultraman who saves the lone survivor of the expedition from falling to his death. I don’t find him as interesting as our previous two monsters here, but I do think it was a nice idea to throw in a nicer monster to balance out the creepier ones and it makes me wonder what sort of story this guy would’ve had if Giant Beast Planet was turned into a full show.
While we’re done with Giant Beast Planet, Tsuburaya did another test reel of various new techniques for future shows. Entitled Tsuburaya 3D Animation, it features a live-action actor being menaced by this stop-motion bird monster briefly. It’s not as slick as his counterparts in Giant Beast Planet, but I really like the look of this guy, and the cruder animation may not be up to the snuff of Harryhausen or O’Brien’s work, looks very much in line with stuff like Equinox which I can really dig.
What makes this guy really unique though is that his body is this real cool centaur inspired one! I don’t think I’ve quite seen a bird monster with that sort of design, so this guy gets points in my book.
While Giant Beast Planet would never be picked up for a full show sadly, the idea of combining anime and stop-motion creatures would be fully realized in Dinosaur Catcher Born Free. While I don’t plan to cover Born Free since it treats it’s dinosaurs as realistic animals and the only “monster” in the show are Suflan-like killer plants. I will cover it’s two followups Dinosaur War Aizenborg and Dinosaur Sentai Koseidon, though those will be coming very far down the line, so don’t hold your breath for them.
Halloween has always been my favorite holiday, and I usually keep myself busy with the annual fall activities to celebrate it. Sadly, due to some very obvious reasons, it’s now a little too dangerous to even hand out candy, so I tried to throw out quite a few fun articles for all of you currently stuck at home, including this one. I’m not done with this year’s output yet, as I will hopefully get at least three more articles out here before the year ends, and due to how this pandemic will probably affect my holiday plans, perhaps I’ll find the time for some more surprises.
Unfortunately, due to a variety of different circumstances, my original Halloween article had to be postponed for next year. But I have the feeling it’ll be worth the wait…..
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