Orochi, the Eight-Headed Dragon (1994)
aka Yamato Takeru
Article 5955 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-25-2021
Directed by Takao Okawara
Featuring Masahiro Takashima, Yasuko Sawaguchi, Hiroshi Fujioka
Country: Japan
What it is: Little bit of this, little bit of that

One of a pair of twins discovers that he is destined to do battle with an evil god.

This movie is based on a legendary story, and is part adventure fantasy, part kaiju and part “Star Wars” clone. I’m glad for the legend part; it gives the movie an air of authenticity that balances out the sequences that feel overly derivative of other movies. The title monster is basically Ghidorah with 166 percent more headage, but he doesn’t appear until the end of the movie. I gather the movie didn’t do as well as expected; it was supposed to be the first of a trilogy, but the sequels never happened. It’s colorful and fairly entertaining, but it really needed to find a style of its own to be trilogy-worthy.