Wawa is a convenience store chain popular throughout states of the East Coast, with an impressive selection of snack cakes, clean deli cases and often many gas pumps….
…wait, this is the Night Owl. If we’re going to cover Wawa, there has to be something distinctive about it.
Like, say, good old, deep south, American kaiju.
Birth of a Legend: The Story of the WAWA is a lower-than-low budget movie filmed in Alabama in 2007, and it is a rare entry into the traditionally Japanese-dominated Kaiju field of giant monster rampage movies. In this case, due to the extremely low budget, the “giant” is excused by being giant irradiated worms, so they only had to grow to the size of large elephant trunks.
Oh, and the reason the worms look somewhat fake? That’s because they’re irradiated plastic fishing lure worms. They’re alive because they merged with catfish DNA, which apparently happens all the time around nuclear plants.
“WAWA”, in this case, stands for “West Alabama Whoop-Ass”. The whole thing is played for humor, with a cast of locals, a narrator preventing any tension from being generated and effects that would have difficulty scaring an 8 year old.
The lack of any real scares and irradiated giant monsters firmly place it into the kaiju realm, though. It would have been a waste to have them get big enough to destroy buildings, anyway, in an area where there aren’t many buildings taller than a single story.
Question of the night: What’s your favorite giant monster movie?
