The Kaiju Transmissions Podcast

Matt and Byrd are joined by special guest, Ed Holland of Monster Attack Team magazine! We interview Ed about the creation of the magazine, its hiatus, and its resurgence over the last few years! Just how does one get a high quality magazine made in 2017? Ed also tells us about being on the sets of Ultraman Powered and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. But first, we discuss Ed's relationship with the l...

For our very first LIVE episode, we present our 50th anniversary panel discussion on 1967's GAMERA vs. GYAOS. Byrd and Matt are joined by Nicolas Poling (of the Monster Report on YouTube) to take a deep dive through how it was made, how it originated, the SPFX, how it changed the Gamera franchise, the social climate of the time that is reflected throughout the film, differences in the rare manga a...

Due to some MAJOR technical difficulties at G-Fest, the audio from our interviews with composer Michiru Oshima, director/SPFX Director Kiyotaka Taguchi and assistant director Kazuhiro Nakagawa were all unusable. To make up for it, we've transcribed the interviews for us to discuss them on the podcast, where we can talk about their answers and give our thoughts on what they had to say. Oshima discu...

Byrd and Matt dig into the life and career of famed monster music composer Akira Ifukube! To do this, they interview Ifukube's official biographer Erik Homenick (who runs AkiraIfukube.org) and film music buff John DeSentis (conductor & co-organizer of the Ifukube 100 and Symphonic Fury kaiju music concerts). As an added bonus, they've brought some SUPER rare Ifukube music cues (reconstructed and r...

Byrd and Matt are joined by guest Chris (of the Other Sounds Podcast and Cosmic Monster) to discuss the work and life of Haruo Nakajima, who passed away on August 7, 2017. Nakajima is best known for playing Godzilla from 1954-1972, as well as playing Rodan, Mothra, Baragon, the Green Gargantua, Varan, various Ultraman kaiju, and many others. Nakajima was the most prolific suit actor of the Showa e...

Byrd and Matt discuss two creature features from South Korean director Bong Joon-ho. First we discuss 2006's The Host and dissect the film's themes and the real life incidents that influenced the film. Then we discuss the recent film Okja, which just dropped as a Netflix Original. We go deep into the themes of each film, and discuss the hot topic of what the original content created by Netflix and...

Byrd, Matt, and guest Trev (of If It Bleeds We Can Kill It and Days of Future Podcast) take KT's first dive into the Giant Robot genre by discussing what is arguably the biggest giant robot franchise in the world. We discuss all five of Michael Bay's Transformers movies, as well as the Japanese roots of Transformers (which many seem to forget), our memories of the original animated series, and why...

Byrd and Matt are back home from G-Fest XXIV and they're ready to talk all about it! We discuss interview recordings gone horribly wrong, meeting KT listeners, highlights and new information learned from various panels including those from Shinji Higuchi, Kiyotaka Taguchi, and Yuji Kaida, seeing Kong: Skull Island in 70mm, meeting director Jordan Vogt-Roberts (and what we learned from his Q and A)...

On a very special episode, Matt and Nick Poling (of The Monster Report) sat down with suit actor and stuntman Tom Kitagawa! Kitagawa is best known for playing Godzilla in five of the six Millennium series films, playing King Ghidorah in Mothra 3, and playing many of the heroes in Toei's Sentai series. Recorded at the Days of the Dead convention in Indiana, Matt and Nick chat with Mr. Kitagawa abou...

Byrd and Matt take a look at Toho's disaster epic, SUBMERSION OF JAPAN. What happens when Toho decides to make destruction spectacle without giant monsters? We take a look at Shiro Moritani's SUBMERSION OF JAPAN (1973), Shinji Higuchi's SINKING OF JAPAN (2006), and Minoru Kawasaki's parody film THE WORLD SINKS EXCEPT JAPAN (2006). We compare and contrast the films by talking about their political...

Byrd and Matt are joined by very, very special guest, G-Fest organizer Jeff Horne! With G-Fest 2017 on the horizon, Jeff talks to us about a variety of topics, including the history of the convention, how it has evolved over the years, online fandom vs real life, convention guests, movie screenings, favorite G-Fest moments, and all the work that goes into organizing a convention every year. We als...

Byrd, Matt, and Eric take a deep dive into Daiei's OTHER kaiju franchise, Daimajin! In 1966, Daiei released not one, not two, but THREE films all starring the gigantic stone god Daimajin. A combination of the Japanese daikaiju and jidaigeki (period drama) genres, these are some of the most unique and interesting giant monster films to date. We discuss the three films and we also touch on the Daima...

Byrd and Matt are joined by Hedorah superfan Chris (of the musical project Cosmic Monster) to discuss the life and career of Yoshimitsu Banno, who passed away on May 7th, 2017. Banno is most well known for writing and directing Godzilla vs. Hedorah, but he did quite a bit more in his career. We discuss his life and career from his early days as an assistant director for Akira Kurosawa to writing/d...

For our MOTHER'S DAY SPECIAL, we take a look at a angry kaiju mothers! We start by talking about 1961's GORGO out of Britain. Then we talk about Nikkatsu's GAPPA: THE TRIPHIBIAN MONSTER (1967) and the long forgotten Fox television movie GARGANTUA (1998). We also touch on other angry gigantic mothers. Mothra, Jurassic Park's T-Rex, Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend, and more! We also touch on the par...

Byrd and Matt are joined by Trev (Days of Future Podcast/If It Bleeds, We Can Kill It) to discuss the recent giant monster indie COLOSSAL directed by Nacho Vigalondo. We discuss male entitlement, alcoholism, dissociation from foreign violence, toxic relationships, and giant monsters as an externalization of real life personal problems. Of course we also touch on the now infamous Toho lawsuit that...

On this episode, Byrd and Matt are joined by frequent guest Eric to discuss and celebrate the Shochiku studio's lone kaiju Guilala, one of the genre's oddest creations! We discuss 1967's "The X From Outer Space" and the 2008 comedy sequel "Monster X Strikes Back" (which turns into one of our most contentious reviews and leaves Byrd speechless). In addition to Byrd having a meltdown, you'll also he...

In celebration of Mystery Science Theater 3000's brand new season on Netflix, Byrd and Matt are joined by MST superfan Trev (Days of Future Podcast/If It Bleeds We Can Kill It), this time to discuss the phenomena that is MST3K! Although the show's reputation among kaiju fans is rather split, there are a great many who got their first taste of the genre through MST, spawning a life long obsession w...

At long last, we finally have the results from our Godzilla movie ranking poll! Over the winter, we conducted a survey asking listeners to rank all 31 Godzilla movies and Byrd, Matt, and Tom have the results. We give some predictions and then discuss what we found. Do certain age groups prefer certain eras of the franchise? Where do strange outliers like Godzilla (1998) fall? Where did the recent...

At 3:00AM, an exhausted Byrd and kinda drunk Matt consider rebooting the podcast as ORCACAST, where we will dedicate each episode to the 1977 masterpiece, ORCA. What better way to start such an experiment than with a full blown audio commentary on the movie? We'll talk stiff whale props, aborted rubber whale fetuses, how an Orca would know how to start an explosion, how the Orca could have fought...

Byrd and Matt are once again joined by Trev (of If It Bleeds We Can Kill It, Days of Future Podcast) as we discuss the new big budget Hollywood Power Rangers reboot. The film was met with a lot of doubt by a lot of fans, so how did the movie hold up? Listen and find out! We also talk about the film's origins, the original Max Landis script, the sequel graphic novel, and what we'd like to see in th...

Byrd and Matt are joined by guests Trev (of If It Bleeds, We Can Kill It and Days of Future Podcast) and the Goat (Hillbilly DVD Reviews, 1980s Movie Graveyard) for a casual and nostalgic look at the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers series. We discuss its Super Sentai origins, growing up with Power Rangers, our favorite episodes and characters, the two theatrical films (1995's Mighty Morphin'...

Our Kongathon comes to an end with the release of Legendary Pictures' Kong: Skull Island. Matt and Byrd are joined by Trev (of If It Bleeds, We Can Kill It and Days of Future Podcast) to discuss the latest King Kong film. We give an in-depth discussion of the film's pros and cons and decide if it lives up to the hype. We also give our personal rankings of all of the King Kong movies and discuss ho...

Our last episode leading up to the release of Kong: Skull Island sees us looking at the 2005 King Kong remake directed by Peter Jackson. In addition to our review, we talk about how the movie came to be, the differences between the theatrical and extended editions, and the career of director Peter Jackson. It's hard to believe this movie is nearing 12 years old, so how does it hold up after all th...

The next installment in our lead-up to Skull Island has us taking a detour to have a sleep deprived look at five King Kong rip-offs from around the globe. With King Kong being so popular, everyone wanted a piece of the action. We'll discuss Britain's KONGA (1961) and QUEEN KONG (1976), America's THE MIGHTY GORGA (1969), South Korea's A*P*E (1976), and Hong Kong's MIGHTY PEKING MAN (1977). We also...

On the next installment of our King Kong recap, we examine the Dino De Laurentiis remake from 1976, and its 1986 sequel King Kong Lives. But before reviewing the films, Byrd exhausts himself by recalling King Kong's convoluted legal rights history and the extremely troubled production of the 1976 remake. For some, these films bring a nostalgic sense of joy. For others, they represent a giant black...