So, yeah; 2019. The Year of the Meat Grinder, apparently. I spent the last half of the year watching in despair as important deadlines went flying by, not least of which were my commitments to the Cabal. Bad enough that I disappeared for the last half of our Anniversary… I even missed commemorating my own site’s 20th Anniversary in November.

Thinking of which: twenty years ago, while the Braineater site was still getting started, there were a handful of movies I felt a compulsive need to comment on. Since my site was still embryonic, I created a user account on the IMDb — user name “barugon” — and opined. One of these movies was:


Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster (1971)

…and it’s bewildered me that in the last 20 years I never returned to that capsule review to expand it. It’s one of those movies for which I feel a special affinity, not just because it figured so significantly in my childhood, but also because I felt I understood it — which was important, considering the general incomprehension this truly bizarre movie inspires.


It’s always seemed to me that most of the arguments for or against the movie were missing the point. I wanted to step in and provide a little wider context: not necessarily to change anybody’s mind about the quality of the movie itself, but to show how Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster was really an inevitable, pivotal artifact of its troubled time. So, having missed my original deadline for the B-Masters’ “At Long Last!” Roundtable, I’ve taken a deep breath, done more research, watched the entire Criterion Collection Godzilla set (the release of which has to be one of 2019’s only redeeming features), and come up with what I hope is a new way of looking at the eleventh installment of the Godzilla saga.

Will Laughlin is the Braineater.