Go ahead and face it-- your Independence Day isn’t going to be strange enough. You’ll eat some barbecued meat, watch some pretty colors in the sky, maybe warble the national anthem off-key (though you’ll think you sound great). Yawn. You know what your holiday needs? A giant flesh-eating lizard.
Encore Action and Vongo have read your mind, and are presenting to you and yours ‘Godzilla Invasion!’, a 13-hour marathon of Godzilla movies, none of which include Matthew Broderick or Hank Azaria. These are the old-school Godzillas, with bad special effects and nonsense Japanese dialogue; the four titles are Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II, Godzilla vs. Spacegodzilla (my personal favorite title), and Godzilla vs. Destroyah.
Best of all, the day is presented by Steven van Zandt, last seen struggling for his life in a hospital in the season finale of ‘The Sopranos.’ Except instead of Silvio Dante, this time we’ll see van Zandt as his foppish, British rocker “cousin” Rocky Rialto, whose “knowledge of B movies is renowned,” according to the press release. Says van Zandt, “Nobody is more qualified than my cousin to host a series of films featuring a cleverly photographed, egotistical, fire-breathing 6-inch lizard,” says Van Zandt, “just ask his ex-wife!”
Yes, it makes my head hurt too. But it’s nice to see the Fourth of July get the movie-marathon treatment, what with Christmas getting the A Christmas Story 24-hour run and The Nightmare Before Christmas constantly showing up at Thanksgiving. And given that the obvious choice was Independence Day, I’ll take a fire-breathing lizard any day of the week.
