The Monster Island Film Vault

The Ultra Series is celebrating its 60th anniversary, and MIFV is throwing a year-long own party! Join Nate Marchand as he gives on friends new and old to discuss the greatest cinematic outings of Japan’s favorite superhero, Ultraman. Not only that, you get more “Godzilla Redux” and an amazing assortment of Patreon-sponsored episodes! Now, if only Nate can figure out what’s giving him such a headache….

Rebecca Reynolds is living the life, as far as I care: she gets to write middle grade books about Japan’s favorite superhero, Ultraman. Book 1 of The Ultra Academy, entitled Beware the Baleful Baltan, was published last fall by Sky Turtle Press as part of Tsuburaya Productions push to make the Ultra Series an international brand. I discuss the writing process and why Ultraman is more important than ever with Rebecca and her publisher, the Eisner Award-winning Steve Smith.

Nathan sits down with Dr. Jeffrey Angles for conversation on his next upcoming kaiju novel translation: The Luminous Fairies and Mothra. This short three-part book was the world’s introduction to the ”Queen of the Monsters,” and it has a potent place in Japanese history and literary tradition. Learn about this and more in this interview!

Susan Murphy is dragged by her anthropologist parents to the Arctic so they can study the Eskimo tribe who introduced the world to Gamera. Susan is angry she will miss her last two years of high school while her younger twin siblings, Shawn and Sharon, love that they live closer to the North Pole and Santa Claus. But Susan won’t have any of this “baby stuff” and berates the twins, who run away. Susan is forced by her father to search for them, and she wrecks her snowmobile in a blizzard. When she awakes, she finds herself in the North Pole, which has the twins, Elves, a talking polar bear, and, yes, Santa Claus. If that wasn’t enough, she and her siblings get caught up with an invasion by Santa’s evil brother, Krampus, who commands an army of Goblins and a kaiju reindeer. Gamera intervenes, but he’s left-for-dead by the monstrous reindeer. Now, Susan and her new friends race against time to revive the Friend to All Children with Santa’s magic Wreath crown. But is the teenage girl’s faith strong enough to save the mighty turtle?

Hello, Kaiju Lovers! Nate and company reach the end of their world tour with a jump across ”the Pond” to Mexico, where they cover Gareth Edwards’ cult classic indie film, Monsters (2010). Mitch and Hayden from Entertain This! join him for the first time on MIFV to discuss the little-movie-that-could that got Hollywood’s attention and led to Edwards later directing movies for not one, not two, but three franchises. Those being Godzilla (2014), Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and most recently, Jurassic World: Rebirth. Edwards is hands on in this film, ”writing,” directing, and even creating the special effects. His secret was using a story that’s set ”after the Spielberg movie,” as he said. The Toku Topic veers into potentially controversial territory (and forces Nate to, for the first time ever, mention President Trump on the air) with a brief history of the U.S.-Mexico border wall. Such a wall is a key facet of Monsters’ world, and it’s a much older issue than you might know.

Happy Halloween, Monster Children! Your host, Vinnie Kami, returns to introduce another classic monster tale--but not his disgruntled butler, Kappa Joe! No, Joe gave himself the night off and sent his carnivorous Gen Z slang-speaking plant, ”Violet,” to fill in for him. It’s apropos, because this episode’s story is ”Green Thoughts” by John Collier, which inspired 1960’s The Little Shop of Horrors, which led to an off-Broadway musical in the early 1980s, and finaly to a 1986 film adaptation of the musical directed by Frank Oz and starring Rick Moranis. The reader is the Monster Island Legal Action Team’s very own Gary Steward, who bears a striking resemblance to Seymour from the musical. But this is assuming Mr. Kami can decipher what “Vi” is saying without an ancient tome to translate.