Actually it turns out there was a giant octopus in King Kong vs. Godzilla, by the name of Oodako. But apparently that simply means "King Octopus." And it's also called Daidako, which simply means "Giant Octopus." So maybe my complaint about Japanese kaiju names being more imaginative was misplaced...
I didn't see the 1940s Batman serials on the schedule. With the release of The Dark Knight Rises, this would have been the perfect opportunity. I saw them on DVD and discuss them here.
Watching It Came from Beneath the Sea, I about hit my limit with Captain T-Bone Chauvanist Sexual Harassment guy when they thankfully put him in his place a bit.
I like that Hornet serial. I don't know if I would've appreciated it years ago but I like the way the Hornet and Kato look and the Black Beauty too. The music and sound, the cool logo, the screen wipes give a breezy vibe to it all. I like Ms. Case's voice, you never hear women with inflection like that nowadays, kinda big city kinda Mae West, hard to describe. I think the thing that impressed me most was just the way the Hornet climbs a fire escape like a boss.
I haven't heard the car called the Black Beauty here. It's just called "the car of the Green Hornet" (an odd phrasing). And yeah, the serials' Casey is nice and sultry, though she's not as hot as Wende Wagner from the '60s show.
I'm amused by the way Casey is such a staunch defender of the Hornet even though she's never met him and has absolutely no reason for thinking he's a hero. "I think the Green Hornet is just what this city needs!" It's almost like she's peeked at the script. Or listened to the radio show!
It is kind of a shame that the Green Hornet isn't green . . . I'm not a big fan of colorization, but you could make a case for old superhero serials.
I found that was amusing as well. I guess she's a tough cookie so she just has a hunch about these things.
This week's Green Hornet chapters didn't handle the cliffhangers well at all. The resolution of last week's cliffhanger was what you'd expect -- they showed the part we didn't see before with the GH parachuting out of the crashing plane -- but in the subsequent two, the GH (with Kato in the second case) really was caught in the crash/explosion -- and just somehow happened to survive anyway, without explanation. That's weak. But we did get confirmation that the car is called the Black Beauty here, although only in the opening text crawl. And we finally got to see an instance of the Hornet actually pretending to be a racketeer instead of just stumbling into the reputation, although only briefly. I'm going to put the next bit in a spoiler box pro forma, even though I think it's obvious. It's about the identity of the mysterious "Chief" giving orders to the racketeers over the intercom: Spoiler: Green Hornet There's no doubt in my mind that Monroe, the heavyset bad guy who keeps getting orders from the "Chief," is actually the Chief himself, and that "intercom" is just a tape recorder playing back prerecorded messages. That's the only way the "Chief" could always be there on cue just when Monroe wants him to be, and the only way he could know when to turn off the "intercom" without any cue that his "boss" was done speaking.
^^ Yeah, I've been thinking the same thing. The cliffhangers are pretty half-hearted, but the serial is enjoyable overall. I like the characters and their interactions, especially Reid and Kato-- Kato is much more than a sidekick-- and I wish that Casey would get out of the office. The fight scenes are usually a step above what you usually see in a serial, especially the one in the office this week. I get a kick out of how the owner of the bus company has no idea why his buses are having so many problems when the bus driver and Reid can spot the clumsy sabotage in a matter of seconds.
^Yeah, and how we have one scene with Britt and the driver saying "That brake rod's been sawed through" and then a subsequent scene with Britt saying to the owner "You have no evidence of sabotage." Short memory, huh, Britt? (Well, I guess he could've meant "no evidence that Blue Streak is responsible for the sabotage," but that's flimsy.)
Or he wanted the owner to think that he wasn't interested so he could disconnect himself from his investigation as the Green Hornet, but that doesn't make a lot of sense either.