Guilala

Ahhhh, to grow up in the halcyon days of the early 1980's! Guilala, or Girara, or the X from Outer Space is a giant Japanese kaiju. Gesundheit.

Image via Wikipedia

No, really. Of the same ilk as Godzilla, Gamera, Rodan and other rubber-suit creatures imported to the United States during the 1960's and 70's, Guilala was the star of a rather awful movie from 1973, The X from Outer Space.



Resembling something like the mating of Godzilla and a giant turkey, he captured my imagination as the local CBS affiliate broadcast his sole adventure on the summer/after-school Godzilla-fest. If they ran out of man-in-suit movies to run they would dust off Guilala and throw him to the masses.




Relegated to minor childhood memories (and major obscurity) the big outer space turkey reared his, um, awesome head once again for a pseudo-sequel/pseudo-political commentary/comedy in 2008's The Monster X Strikes Back/Attack the G8 Summit. He even had a major (for him) pop culture appearance in commercials for The Ladders.com. The big guy received mostly positive reviews but there's no word yet on if he'll strike back again anytime soon.

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