Godzilla Minus One (2023), straight out of the Patreon archive. We recorded it nearly three years ago, before it won the Oscar, and it's out on the main feed now because Godzilla Minus Zero is in cinemas.

Want to know if the sequel lives up to it? Our Godzilla Minus Zero episode is on Patreon now.

Japan was at zero at the end of the war. Godzilla is what takes it to minus one. Koichi Shikishima is a kamikaze pilot who didn't go through with it, home to a flattened Tokyo with his family gone and a war that, as far as he's concerned, isn't over. Then a giant atomic lizard turns up and he just can't catch a break.

Takashi Yamazaki takes Godzilla right back to basics. No monster team-ups, no saving the world, just a big scary giant lizard and the people caught up in it's destruction.

We get into why that works where Shin Godzilla didn't quite, the design that makes him properly scary again, and how Toho reminded Hollywood what a Godzilla film is supposed to be.

In this episode:
● Childhood Godzillas: Son of Godzilla, the 1998 one and a very big figure from Dorset
● Making him scary again, and the 1980s face that put Matt off as a kid
● Toho vs Hollywood: hollow earths and tag teams with Kong
● CGI or a man in a suit?
● That ending, Noriko's neck, and Shin Godzilla's very strange tail

Also discussed: Godzilla (1954), Son of Godzilla, Godzilla (1998), Godzilla (2014), Shin Godzilla, Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, Jaws, Jurassic Park, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Spider-Man: No Way Home and One Piece.

Which Godzilla film belongs in the Bad Movie Bunker? Tell us.

Next time: We Come in Peace continues with Escape to Witch Mountain (1975) and The Cat from Outer Space (1978).

Hosted and produced by James Payne and Matt Willcock.
Edited by James Payne.

Bonus episodes on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/journeythroughscifi
Join the JTSF Logbook, our free newsletter: https://journeythroughscifi.beehiiv.com
Full back catalogue and everything else: https://journeythroughscifi.com

Follow the show so you never miss an episode, and if you can, a review or a share costs nothing and helps a lot.

Journey Through Sci-Fi is part of the EOH Network.

David Bowie lands in New Mexico, a visitor who speaks only in musical tones lands on a foggy Scottish moor, and we don't treat either of them very well. Episode 5 of We Come In Peace, our series on the friendly alien, pairs Edgar G. Ulmer's 1951 B-movie with Nicolas Roeg's cult classic.

In this episode:
- A 1951 alien film shot in six days on leftover Joan of Arc sets
- Californian Scots, and a Scotland Yard in the wrong country
- An alien who talks in music, 26 years before Close Encounters
- Bowie's first starring role, and why he said he didn't need to act
- Why Paramount refused to pay for the finished film, and why America saw a shorter cut
- Walter Tevis, the writer of The Queen's Gambit, and the novel that explains what Roeg won't

The Man from Planet X or Thomas Jerome Newton, which visitor did we treat worse?
Tell us in the comments or a review.

Next time: Disney's friendly aliens, with Escape to Witch Mountain (1975) and The Cat from Outer Space (1978).

Hosted and produced by James Payne and Matt Willcock.
Edited by James Payne.

Bonus episodes on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/journeythroughscifi
Join the JTSF Logbook, our free newsletter: https://journeythroughscifi.beehiiv.com
Full back catalogue and everything else: https://journeythroughscifi.com

Follow the show so you never miss an episode, and if you can a review or a share helps a lot.

Journey Through Sci-Fi is part of the EOH Network.

The 27th Day (1957) and The Space Children (1958). Two films that hand humanity a weapon and
watch what happens next.

Journey Through Sci-Fi continues We Come in Peace, our series tracing the history of friendly
aliens on screen. This time, one alien picks five adults at random and gives them all the power
to end the world. The other skips the adults entirely and goes to the children.

First, The 27th Day. Five strangers from five countries are abducted, handed capsules that can
kill every human within 3,000 miles, and dropped straight back home. Only they can open the box.
Anyone can fire what's inside. It's a thought experiment with a script wrapped round it, it runs
75 minutes, and the final act takes a turn neither of us saw coming.

Then Jack Arnold, a year on from It Came from Outer Space. A glowing brain washes up near a
missile base where the Air Force is about to park a hydrogen bomb in orbit. It never speaks,
never explains itself, and does all its work through the children of the men building the bomb.

In this episode:
- An alien who introduces himself as "the alien", in a leather jumpsuit, wasting nobody's time
- A lock that only opens for you, and a weapon anyone can fire once it's open
- Shaving off a moustache as a witness protection programme
- A nuanced Soviet soldier and a cartoon Soviet general, in the same 1957 American film
- An H-bomb parked in the sky, and the kids who think it's brilliant
- Wisdom and innocence, and why the alien never once talks to an adult
- A stepdad with it coming, and a body nobody grieves

Also discussed: The Day the Earth Stood Still, It Came from Outer Space, Warning from Space,
20 Million Miles to Earth, The Colossus of New York, The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Twilight
Zone, The Box, The Blob, Flubber, Micromegas, The Midwich Cuckoos, Five Children and It,
Spirited Away and Space Truckers.

Five adults or a gang of kids? Tell us who you would trust with the button.

Next time: The Man from Planet X (1951) and The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976).

Hosted and produced by James Payne and Matt Willcock.
Edited by James Payne.

Bonus episodes on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/journeythroughscifi
Join the JTSF Logbook, our free newsletter: https://journeythroughscifi.beehiiv.com
Full back catalogue and everything else: https://journeythroughscifi.com

Follow the show so you never miss an episode, and if you can, a review or a share costs nothing
and helps a lot.

Journey Through Sci-Fi is part of the EOH Network.