Three features, and a whole mess of creatures.

Last weekend I went to see a triple feature with my friend and his parents. The movies were 20 Million Miles To Earth, The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad, and the kaiju movie Destroy All Monsters. It was my first time seeing all of them.



The first two were directed by Nathan Juran and featured stop-motion animation effects by Ray Harryhausen, who you may remember died earlier this year. I'm a pretty big fan of Harryhausen's work, but I have not seen everything he's done. Although they were enjoyable, I didn't love the two Juran/Harryhausen movies. They're far from being my favorite movies that Harryhausen has worked on. That being said, it was great seeing those old school stop-motion animation effects up on the big screen. Beautiful stuff.

I haven't seen many kaiju movies, so it was also interesting seeing Destroy All Monsters. It was somewhat of a unique experience for me for kind of a strange reason. Exposition time! An old friend of mine made a video several years ago consisting of the Men Without Hats song "Safety Dance" being played over clips of Gamera. He had said about the video, "The idea popped into my head one morning during breakfast to make this, so I did." I know that Gamera isn't even in Destroy All Monsters, but probably because of the similar visuals, "Safety Dance" was stuck in my head for pretty much the entirety of the movie. I think it's pretty safe to assume that my experience of watching the movie was quite different than that of anyone else in the theater. I really miss my friend.



Speaking of music, while we waited for the movies to start, they played various music videos. I must say, it was awesome seeing the music video for The Verve's "Bitter Sweet Symphony" projected up onto a big screen. It's one of my favorite conceptual music videos.