Ishiro Honda’s 1954 monster movie Godzilla isn’t scary now. Maybe it wasn’t scary then.  It possesses a certain eerie power, though, because of what’s outside the frame: its context. You’re watching two of Japan’s deep cultural fears (the deep ocean, and nuclear weapons) collide on the screen, in the form of a huge mutated creature rising from the sea, destroying city.

Forty years later Roland Emmerich resurrected the franchise and shot it full of steroids.

The good part is that there’s no phoned in “humans are the REAL monsters!” subtext, a’la every other monster movie from the period.

The bad parts can be generally defined as “the rest of the film”. The CGI Godzilla is never even slightly believable. There’s never the sense that it’s a skyscraper-sized colossus that weighs a hundred thousand tons. It dives into the sea and makes a tiny splash. It sneaks around New York as inaudibly as Solid Snake.

The film’s best moments are the ones where the monster is outside the shot, or barely seen. This is an effective touch. It gives the impression that we’re looking at a beast of uncontainable size, a beast too big to film. But that’s also an indictment of how shitty Godzilla looks in this. His every appearance does to our faith in the film what the monster does to buildings.

The movie is badly cast and written. About half the cast is from the Simpsons, and there’s comedic moments (such as the Roger Ebert mayor) that ruin the tension and aren’t even theoretically funny. The characters are extremely stupid – deciding to lure the monster to one of the world’s most densely populated urban metropolises, where mass civilian casualties are almost guaranteed. It’s also one of those movies full of shots of marines firing magazine after magazine at a monster that we’ve long-since established isn’t hurt by gunfire.

I was into kaiju shit when this movie came out. Godzilla caused me to go out of it again.

This was the film covering Arnold’s surprise comeback (and surprise victory) at the 1980 Mr Olympia bodybuilding contest after five years in the abyss. Stories abound about The Oak’s final appearance. He broke the rules by entering, nearly started a fist-fight backstage, and caused the retirement of Mike Mentzer, who was convinced the contest was a fix.

This video covers none of that. In fact, it doesn’t cover anything much. We have some gym footage, some contest footage, and some interviews with Arnold and his compatriots, in no particular arrangement or order.

Let’s get it out of the way that if you’re expecting a riveting clash of titans like in Pumping Iron, this isn’t for you. This isn’t about a story. You should watch Total Rebuild because it’s a slice of Arnold’s life. It seems like a more honest and “real” documentary than Pumping Iron, although maybe that’s because they didn’t have time to edit it properly. Apparently, Total Rebuild was filmed by an Australian promoter, using equipment borrowed from some friends, and as a result it has a gritty indy quality. Unfortunately, the contest footage here is the best we have of the 1980 Mr Olympia (I’ve heard that CBS filmed the entire contest at great expense, and then threw the footage away because like Mentzer, they felt the contest was clearly rigged in Arnold’s favor).

The interviews with celebrities such as Bill Pearl and Tom Platz are fascinating. Tom hero worships Arnold, while Bill gently tries to cut him down to size. Arnold is his usual Alpha Male self. This guy could start a successful cult. He injects some humor into the proceedings, too, such as when he sees a bodybuilder put a 10 pound plate on a barbell without making enough noise. “We’re on camera! You have to make it sound like a thousand pounds!”

The training scenes are lackluster. I’ve heard that Arnold suffered a shoulder injury, which restricted his training poundages. He does some smith squats and cable rows. There’s nothing as awe-inspiring or intense as Pumping Iron’s training sequences here (in the order they appear in my mind: Ed Corney’s squats, Lou Ferrigno’s military presses, Arnold’s dumbbell flys, etc).

So…was the 1980 Mr Olympia rigged? There’s no question, Arnold wasn’t as good as his previous contest appearances. But in my opinion, he still took down the other guys with his trademark Arnold body parts: big arms, big calves, huge chest. His weak points (such as quads) were his weak points in previous contests, too. It might be true that Arnold at 90% power is better than anyone else from his time period at 100% shape, weak legs and weak shoulders be damned.

So, this is very different to Pumping Iron, and mostly the bad sort of different, but it’s still well worth looking for. This is an important part of old-school bodybuilding, just like the guy who stars in it.

Before this movie, you’ll look at bodybuilding as a freak show. After this movie, you’ll look at bodybuilding as a freak show. But for an hour or so, you’ll be sufficiently entranced by Arnold Schwarzenegger’s willpower and George Butler’s filmmaking to take the whole thing seriously.

Pumping Iron captures the 1975 Mr Olympia contest, particularly the intense training leading up to the contest. Arnold is preparing to defend is title for the last time, and nipping at his heels are contemporaries Franco Columbu and Lou Ferrigno. The film isn’t a documentary. The training and contest footage is real, but the “drama” scenes (oh no, Arnold’s going to sabotage Franco!) are scripted. Some were actually shot after the contest had ended.

Watching these guys is fascinating. Arnold is charmingly boorish, while Lou Ferrigno is moody and angsty – a born underdog. A lot of the movie’s conflict centers around Lou and his overbearing father, who pushes him around with impunity. Straight away you realize that Lou can’t ever win. Even if he takes home the title, it’ll be his dad’s victory, not his own.

There are lots of fun moments. Arnold’s tireless ability to involve scantily-clad girls in his workout routine, his sledging of Lou Ferrigno before the contest (“I called my mama and told her I won Mr Olympia 1975!”), and his hilarious monologue about the similarities between lifting weights and having an orgasm. There’s some serious stuff as well, like Ferrigno’s clashes with his father and Mike Katz’s I-want-to-reach-for-the-shotgun speech after he loses the Mr Universe contest.

One might feel cheated by the obviously punched-up Hollywood drama. But to be honest, I don’t think the movie was any more fake than the contest it depicts. Arnold was the figurehead of the Weider bodybuilding empire, which (via Ben Weider) controlled virtually every aspect of the Mr Olympia. He was definitely going to win the contest, regardless of how the competition looked.

Want a freebie? Serge Nubret, 12 days before the 1975 Olympia, showed up in tremendous shape. But he got barred from entering, ostensibly because he dishonoured the sport by appearing in a porn movie (I’ll refrain from making a comment). So he let his training regimen fall apart, lost 12 pounds of muscle in 12 days, and suddenly…he was allowed back in. Nobody cared about his porn movie appearance, because now he wasn’t a threat to Arnold anymore. This seemed like a really damning story when Mr Nubret related it on a bodybuilding forum, complete with pictures of how he looked 12 days before the contest.

The Weider brothers had much to gain by keeping Arnold at the top. He was charismatic and handsome, he wasn’t a black man, and he knew how to play the game: he wasn’t someone who would upset the apple-cart by demanding better wages or working conditions. He crushed Sergio in 1972 and Mentzer in his 1980 comeback, and many critics agree that these too were paper championships.

Arnold is the greatest bodybuilder in history. But it’s not because of his 7 Mr Olympia titles. Regardless of the lingering sensation that the contest might be the truly fake part of this movie, Pumping Iron is a very entertaining watch.