John Carpenter: What Hollywood Would not Get About Godzilla

Did these inspire you to infuse your own films with social commentary?

Well, they have thematic commentary, my movies. Some of them don’t. Some of them are straight-ahead stuff. Movies can do all sorts of things and they can do it well.  They don’t have messages, really, that doesn’t work. Themes work pretty well.

Josie Cotton sang a beautiful version of “Shiawaseo Yobo (let’s try to be happy)” from Ghidorah, tell me why this music endures?

Akira Ifukube, who composed the original Godzilla theme, is brilliant. As I recommend to everybody, there was a LaserDisc released in the ‘90s, it shows him conducting an orchestra for the Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah movie of the time. It’s brilliant to watch. It’s amazing. In terms of music, there’s a movie—that’s in this Godzilla Day—called War of the Gargantuas. There is a scene, a legendary scene, where this girl sings “the words get stuck in my throat,” and then this giant monster comes up behind her and eats her. It just doesn’t get better than that. Ever.

Russ Tamblyn plays a Frankenstein expert in War of the Gargantuas.

[Laughs] Yes, he does, you can light matches off his performance. He didn’t have any respect for that movie whatsoever. He adlibbed it all, his own dialogue. [Laughs] And then he had to loop it all, and it’s horrifyingly bad, and hard to do. I met Russ Tamblyn at an event before The Haunting. He wanted to talk about The Haunting, and I reminded him “fans love the Gargantuas. They love it. Why don’t you embrace it?” He said “I probably should.”