I am still a little surprised at the harsher criticism I’m hearing of this year’s “Godzilla: King of the Monsters.”  (It was indeed brainless, as its detractors point out, but it was still fun enough for me to give it pretty forgiving review.)

Hey … if you think the new movie was goofy, you should see the Godzilla movies that I grew up with.  No, I wasn’t alive in 1969, but these movies ran periodically on television in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s.  I was utterly awed by them when I watched them with my older brother.

But they are cringeworthy to any sane adult.  Take a look at the trailer below (sorry I couldn’t find one in English), and the two clips that follow it.

Okay … this wasn’t technically a “Godzilla” movie because the radioactive (?) lizard is absent.  (It might have actually been set in a different fictional universe.)  This film’s putative good-guy is the eponymous “Gamera,” who is a giant, space-faring turtle with … rockets that can deploy from the rear of his shell … from the leg holes.  And he employs gymnastics to fight his enemies.  (See the second video below.)

There was one part of this movie that scared the heck out of me as a little kid.  You see the two little boys?  They’re abducted by some sexy lady aliens whose nefarious plan is to eat their brains, thus absorbing strategic knowledge of the Earth they wished to conquer.  Seriously, they give the kids drugged donuts and plan to open their skulls, and that scared the $^%# out of me.

Still think the new movie was a mess?