Let me get an embarrassing admission out of the way right up front. Back when I was in college, I ran a Godzilla Film Club. Yes, that's right, while other students were practicing with their rock bands or rehearsing plays or making out with their significant others, once a month on Thursday nights I reserved one of the school's AV rooms -- which back in the late 1980s/early '90s was little more than a small room with a big TV and a VCR -- and made use of my own private stash of VHS tapes to show all the classic Godzilla movies from the 1950s through 1985. Sometimes the screenings were devoid of anyone but me and the student who was earning extra credit for her theater curriculum by hitting the play button on the VCR and sticking around to make sure the TV didn't explode. Other times, like when I showed 1963's KING KONG VS. GODZILLA, the room was packed with enthusiastic fans. For the well-attended screening of GODZILLA 1985, we even developed our own proto-MST3K, as I recall, supplying our own funny dialogue and counting off the blatant and inappropriate Dr. Pepper product placement scenes. (Seriously, watch GODZILLA 1985 again sometime and you'll see Dr. Pepper is all over the damn place, but most hilariously in a scene where the military honchos are watching in horror as a nuclear missile prepares to launch toward Tokyo and one soldier pauses to take a long, cool, refreshing drink of his Dr. Pepper -- awkward!)

Needless to say, I love giant monsters. They give me a warm feeling of childhood nostalgia whenever I see them. The bigger and crazier they looked, the more I adored them as a kid. Gigan, the Smog Monster, Ghidorah (still my favorite -- I have two plush Ghidorahs lurking in my apartment), Megalon, Mecha-Godzilla, I loved them all. Of course, it wasn't just the Godzillaverse that lit up my heart. KING KONG, SON OF KONG, MIGHTY JOE YOUNG, GAMERA, GORGO, episodes of ULTRAMAN and JOHNNY SOKKO AND HIS GIANT ROBOT, the giant Cyclops in THE SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD, even awful cheesefests like FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD -- I loved them all. Still do, deep down inside.

Which is why I lament the dearth of giant rubber monsters in movies these days. Sure, the more human-sized monsters are usually scarier because they can hide in the dark of your bedroom at night or behind the closet door, something Ghidorah certainly can't do, but these humanoid monsters were too much for me to handle as a kid, so I turned to the gigantic variety instead. Plus, giant monsters were so similar to the dinosaurs I was obsessed with as a child that they were like the equivalent of my own time machine back to the prehistoric age of mega-sized mayhem. The things we hated as children tend not to last -- for instance, I hated tomatoes and spinach, and now I'm a fan of both -- but the things we loved? Those tend to stick around forever.

I just about danced with childlike glee when GODZILLA: FINAL WARS came out in 2005, an homage/remake of 1968's giant rubber monsterfest DESTROY ALL MONSTERS, in honor of the big lizard's fiftieth anniversary. I rejoiced again when the Korean monster movie THE HOST hit American shores in 2006 and hoped the success of this smart, entertaining film would launch a resurgence of giant monster movies. Unfortunately, it didn't. All that followed on its slimy, tentacle-like heels, really, was 2008's CLOVERFIELD, which I liked quite a bit, and which, like THE HOST, managed to make its giant monster as scary as one that can fit under your bed. But where are the rest of the mammoth monstrosities I so crave?

Vampires are as popular as ever these days, their status reenergized by the Twilight books and TRUE BLOOD. Our old friend the zombie is enjoying a comeback too, with no signs of slowing down, so to speak. But for me, what I truly long to see is the return of the giant monster -- some poor stuntman in a rubber suit demolishing a miniature city to the delight of my inner child. Maybe someday we'll get a new giant monster series to join the pantheon, and who knows, maybe soon after some dorky college student somewhere might even start his or her own film club in its honor. One can only hope.

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When he's not compulsively watching giant monsters demolish Tokyo, Nicholas Kaufmann is a Bram Stoker Award-nominated author, reviewer and interviewer. For more regular doses of Kaufmannia, visit his blog at http://nick-kaufmann.livejournal.com or his website at http://www.nicholaskaufmann.com.