Movie 1: The Dead Zone                                                   
(Original Air Date: 07-15-89)

Movie #1 starts out with Piccolo training to be better than Goku. After smashing the usual amount of mountains and destroying the countryside in order to improve his power level, he notices that he is being watched. He turns around to see a dark shadow on either side of him. Suddenly, he is attacked from the bottom. A surprise attack! Piccolo is being attacked on all sides and does not know who to attack first. After semi-recovering, he turns to face his attackers. But they easily start to beat him up again and Piccolo is soon defeated. Meanwhile Gohan is studying (big surprise) in the forest when he is called in for lunch. When he returns he and Chi-Chi are surprised to see that Ox King, Chi-Chi's dad drop by for a visit. But after a warm greeting, Ox King's face goes blank and he falls down, seemingly dead. What could be happening? After the initial shock, Chi-Chi spies a dark, hooded figure behind her fallen father. She motions Gohan to go inside and asks the figure what it wants. It says that it wants the Dragon Ball that is sewn to Gohan's cap. Before she answers Gohan is scared out of the house by another of the strange creatures and backs against his mother wondering what could be happening. Chi-Chi attacks the hooded creature but she is defeated easily by the thing simply by blocking her and pushing her backwards. Goku immediately senses that something is wrong and rushes towards his house. He sees Chi-Chi lying on the ground. She says that they kidnapped Gohan.

When you see Gohan again he is lying in a strange room with four other dragon balls in it. He is in the room with 4 other monsters. One of them is kind of small, is sitting on a throne, and has little spots on his green head. His name is Garlic Junior. There are 3 other monsters that resemble him but are a little bigger. They find out shortly that Goku is the little boy's father when he says that when his father comes they are all going to be in big trouble. Upon hearing this Garlic Junior senses that this boy has immense power and could be a great ally if he treats him right and wins him over to the side of evil. He tells Gohan that he is going to be his disciple (apprentice). After hearing this Garlic's followers let Gohan know that he is very lucky. He is not going to be killed. However his henchmen wished otherwise when it came to the prospect of babysitting little Gohan. After Gohan evaded his men for about an hour, he ate the fruit of a strange tree not knowing that if a child ate one they would hallucinate and see strange things. This was no different with Gohan. Immediately after eating the fruit, he starts to see strange purple dinosaurs and fields of flowers. He strolls along in his dream world not knowing that he is waltzing on the edge of the castle where Garlic Junior lives. Finally, he is caught and he goes to sleep on Garlic Junior's throne. 

Garlic Junior's henchmen find the rest of the dragon balls. They summon the eternal dragon and Garlic wishes for immortality. It is given to him. (wow, this is the first time a bad guy gets the wish for immortality granted). After Shenlon leaves, Goku arrives shortly on his nimbus cloud. Obviously the impending battle starts without much delay. Garlic's henchmen perform some kind of power-up maneuver and instantly their muscles become larger and they are ready to fight. Goku starts to dodge a barrage of hands and feet but there are too many henchmen for Goku. Besides, they are way to fast. But after Goku recovers from their first attack Krillin arrives, followed shortly by none other than Piccolo! (by the way Piccolo is not in the best of moods since he was recently defeated by the three henchmen standing before him. Before I finished watching the movie I knew that piccolo would rip these losers into shreds). Right after this, who should arrive but......Gohan! he is still drowsy from his intoxicating encounter with a strange fruit, and he is quite groggy. He is standing on a floor about 50 feet above the Z gang and since he had just woken up, decided to take a pee pee. However he does not know that Krillin is standing right below him and he takes it full on the head. Right after this Krillin starts to rush upstairs to fetch Gohan, but he is intercepted by one of the henchmen. Piccolo follows and starts to one on one against the henchman. After seeing the henchman fight for a couple of minutes, Piccolo stops fooling around and gets busy. He defeats the henchman easily. Meanwhile Goku finds himself battling the two other henchmen. Each of which are now equipped with multiple blades. After dodging them, he uses his Power Pole to knock one of them aside. Then he uses his totally awesome Kamehameha to destroy them both. Now with them dead it is only a matter of killing Garlic Junior. But he is already having a fight with Kame, who is the guardian of the earth. However Kame was beaten up badly. Goku and Piccolo start to attack Garlic and right off the bat they are warded off but then they regain their composure and attack. This time they are a match for Garlic and they finish him with a blast. But wait! they forgot that Garlic is now immortal! Once the dust settles they can see Garlic. But he has opened up something in called a Dead Zone, where everything that is sucked into it is trapped for eternity. He himself is not sucked in since he created it, but almost everything else is! Just when it seems like everything is doomed, who should save the day but Gohan! he blasts apart the castle since he knows that his dad is in danger and with one blast, knocks Garlic into his own Dead Zone to spend the rest of eternity in black emptiness. After this Goku and Piccolo are standing outside the castle and after a short goodbye, they depart to lead their separate lives.