Godzilla:
Godzilla vs Hedorah (1971): Aka Godzilla vs The Smog Monster, this is the Godzilla franchise at its most psychedelic. Like no other Godzilla movie you’ve seen, Hedorah features rampant use of the wide angle lens, not one but two psychedelic nightclub scenes, an LSD-esque tripout, and Godzilla ripping the innards out of his monstrous foe. Not to mention more horrific human deaths than are normally seen in the films; usually the monster destruction is limited to buildings, but this time we see corpses and skeletons in Hedorah’s wake. A shambling creature with big eyes that glow a psychedelic red (I have always loved how the eyes glow on Japanese monsters), Hedorah is the mutant spawn of pollution, and it goes through a series of evolutions in the film. It’s also the first stoner monster – made clear early on, as Hedorah inhales from a smokestack and makes purring noises, after which his eyes seem to be even more red. Godzilla shows up soon after and fights Hedorah throughout; this one’s filled with a lot of knock-down brawling between the two, and Godzilla takes some damage, even getting his left eye burned shut by Hedorah’s acidic spew.
The humans are comprised of a marine bioligist and his prepubescent son (the same actor who would show up as the obnoxious shit “Rokusan” in Godzilla vs Megallon, two years later) and a pair of hippie teens; the girl, who is also a singer at the psychedelic club, isn’t even named, I think. The movie features a hilariously arbitrary bit where the hippie teen hallucinates in the nightclub and sees everyone with fish heads – a bit that is unexplained and unexplored. The movie is filled with such bizarre shit, though, even periodically flipping over to crude animation that looks like it could’ve come off The Electric Company or somesuch.
Hedorah is very divisive among Godzilla freaks, but I do like it, mostly because it’s so different. Not to mention trippy – speaking of Hedorah’s red eyes, there’s a part at the end where the military shines lights at the creature to distract it, and the director just lets the camera sit on Hedorah as it stares back. It’s strangely compelling, not to mention more indication that Hedorah is a stoner, transifixed by those blinking lights. Plus the fights are pretty brutal and gory, with Godzilla ripping Hedorah apart – this particular monster really seems to piss the big guy off. However the movie was so bizarre that it got the director fired from the franchise; it was the one and only Godzilla movie he got to make, though he planned to do a sequel.
American fans were ticked that the recent DVD/Blu Ray only featured the “International English Dub,” ie the one heard in English-speaking countries other than the USA; fans wanted the old AIP dub. Personally I prefer the international dub, and not just because it features voices familiar from the many kung-fu and Shaw Brothers dubs of the day. The AIP dub I find annoying, as it’s one of those where the American voice actors give all the characters fake “Oriental” accents, which is more annoying than offensive.
Godzilla vs Gigan (1972): Released in the US in 1977 as Godzilla on Monster Island, Godzilla vs Gigan replaces the dark psychedelia of Godzilla vs Hedorah with super-bright colors, a goofy cast, and comedy hijinks. It also comes off as a lot more ponderous, despite featuring four monsters who engage in a brawl in the final quarter. Whereas Hedorah, while strange, was still compelling, Gigan seems to just drag. It isn’t helped by the fact that, for the first half, the human characters take center stage. They’re a diverse lot, from a manga artist to a female karate expert to a fat hippie who looks like Sammo Hung. Another gal is searching for her missing brother, a scientist. He’s been kidnapped by men who are creating a Monster Island sort of amusement park, an element which makes no sense within the context of the overall story. Anyway, the kidnappers are really space-cockroaches, and their goal is to control Godzilla and the other monsters, so they can kill them with their own space monsters(?).
As you can see, this film is from the era of the franchise in which Godzilla movies were exclusively made for children. The titular Gigan is the first of two space monsters called in – looking sort of like a cyborg chicken, Gigan has a very cool red-glowing visor for his eyes. The villains also call in three-headed King Ghidorah, who appears courtesy recycled footage from the earlier Monster Zero (1968). Meanwhile Godzilla slowly makes his way to Japan, bringing along his pal, stegosaurus-like Angilas. Godzilla vs Gigan is notable because we actually hear Godzilla talk – early in the film he bosses Angilas around, and in the English dub they gave Godzilla a voice. (The Japanese version kept it as backwards screeching sound effects – also heard in the English dub, over which you hear the spoken words – but they explained what the Big G was saying via kanji-filled word baloons.)
The finale is given over to a positively endles fight between these four monsters – with the Angilus-Ghidorah matchup again all recycled from Monster Zero – and it’s very ponderous despite the action. Godzilla takes a beating here, and we get a big splash of monster blood courtesy Angilas, but for some inexplicable reason Godzilla gets a second burst of energy and kicks monster ass. Neither Ghidorah nor Gigan are killed – Gigan in fact would return in the next film – but the Earth is saved and the space cockroaches are vanquished. Overall Godzilla vs Gigan is fun for the most part, but could’ve used a little tightening up.
Godzilla vs Megalon (1973): I’ve loved this movie since I was a kid, back when I got a VHS of it for Christmas in 1986. Parts of the English dub are ingrained in my brain – little did I know at the time that all of the dubbers were veterans of the Shaw Brothers English dubs. Thus there are familiar voices throughout the English dub of Godzilla vs. Megalon, which Tokyo Shock thankfully included with their recent Blu Ray (which also includes the original Japanese audio track). I’ve read online complaints about the low quality of this blu ray, but I assure you it’s a thousand times better than the pan and scan VHS tape of my youth. So many details are apparent here that were invisible on that shoddy tape – most humorously the tattoo on the Seatopian leader’s shoulder! Surely they could’ve covered that up?? The blu ray also includes the Japanese cut of the film, which features a bit more violence: the annoying little kid in the short-shorts is forcibly abducted at one point, snatched off his bike into a car, and there’s a bit more violence in the few fights.
The movie is dumb in a glorious way, with shoddy production and a phenomenal jazz-funk score, aptly compared to Yusef Lateef by Tom Servo in the great MST3K version of the movie. Godzilla here looks like a toy and Jet Jaguar is a poor man’s Ultraman, but there’s still something likable about him. And Megalon is cool, like a giant beetle with drills for hands who shoots exploding hockey pucks from his mouth. Gigan makes a return appearance from the previous film, teaming up with Megalon against Godzilla and Jet Jaguar; his visor glows a very cool red.
People deride this one but no one seems to understand it is intentionally goofy. It’s clearly not meant to be taken seriously; for example, toward the end Megalon and Gigan are getting the better of Godzilla and Jet Jaguar, surrounding them in a ring of fire. Then Godzilla throws his arms over Jet Jaguar’s shoulders and the two fly off, out of the fire’s reach. Megalon and Gigan – two mutant monsters – sort of look at each other and then throw their arms up, like “What the hell?!” This movie was clearly made by some people who were having a lot of fun, and unfortunately that’s lost on most who watch it – but then, most geeks are humorless twits, anyway. But I love all the little touches, even the weird interpretive dance beneath the Easter Island head carving in Seatopia. This is easily my favorite Godzilla movie.
Godzilla vs MechaGodzilla (1974): The goofy/campy tone of the previous film is gone, replaced with a more serious sort of approach that brings to mind the Godzilla films of the decade before. That being said, there’s precious little Godzilla to be found in this one; the big guy shows up for a brief patch early on and then disappears until the final fight. For the most part Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla feels more like a Japanese attempt at a Eurospy film, mixed with a bit of a Planet of the Apes ripoff. The focus is more on suspense and intrigue as our cast of heroes – a marine biologist, his mostly-useless brother, and two gals, one of whom is a photographer and the other the daughter of a scientist – run afoul of a shady group who turn out to be evil monkey-men aliens from space who disguise themselves as humans.
The film features more human-on-human violence than other Godzilla films of the era, with “human” characters strangled and shot, sometimes in the face – leading to cool, somewhat-psychedelic special effects of the skin “melting” off, revealing the Planet of the Apes ripoff faces beneath. But where is Godzilla? He shows up early in the film, or at least appears to – but when “Godzilla” gets in a bloody fight with series mainstay Angilas, even the humans know something is up. During the fight Angilas knocks off some of Godzilla’s skin, revealing a Terminator-esque steel skeleton beneath. This is MechaGodzilla, which reveals itself later in a brawl with the real Big G. Controlled by those aliens, MechaG’s intent is to destroy Japan and kill Godzilla, or something. Anyway Godzilla gets knocked into the sea and isn’t seen again for a helluva long time, save for a brief (and also slightly psychedelic) bit where we see him like inhaling lightning bolts and glowing a blacklight poster purple.
After interminable hijinks with the human actors, things finally get to the monster bash we want, with Godzilla and new pal King Ceasar (a monster that looks like a big puppy which is called forth by an endless song courtesy some kung-fu like chick in Okinawa) take on MechaGodzilla in a two-on-one brawl. Monster blood flies here and MechaG unleashes hell courtesy eyebolts, finger missiles, chest missiles, a force field, the works. But Godzilla manages to win the fight (no thanks to Ceasar, who sort of hides behind rocks throughout the fight) and then storms off back to Monster Island without even a glance back at the cheering humans. This was the last one courtesy the director who gave us the previous two films; after this old hand Ishiro Honda returned for Terror of MechaGodzilla, which was the last Godzilla film until 1984.
Godzilla vs Hedorah (1971): Aka Godzilla vs The Smog Monster, this is the Godzilla franchise at its most psychedelic. Like no other Godzilla movie you’ve seen, Hedorah features rampant use of the wide angle lens, not one but two psychedelic nightclub scenes, an LSD-esque tripout, and Godzilla ripping the innards out of his monstrous foe. Not to mention more horrific human deaths than are normally seen in the films; usually the monster destruction is limited to buildings, but this time we see corpses and skeletons in Hedorah’s wake. A shambling creature with big eyes that glow a psychedelic red (I have always loved how the eyes glow on Japanese monsters), Hedorah is the mutant spawn of pollution, and it goes through a series of evolutions in the film. It’s also the first stoner monster – made clear early on, as Hedorah inhales from a smokestack and makes purring noises, after which his eyes seem to be even more red. Godzilla shows up soon after and fights Hedorah throughout; this one’s filled with a lot of knock-down brawling between the two, and Godzilla takes some damage, even getting his left eye burned shut by Hedorah’s acidic spew.
The humans are comprised of a marine bioligist and his prepubescent son (the same actor who would show up as the obnoxious shit “Rokusan” in Godzilla vs Megallon, two years later) and a pair of hippie teens; the girl, who is also a singer at the psychedelic club, isn’t even named, I think. The movie features a hilariously arbitrary bit where the hippie teen hallucinates in the nightclub and sees everyone with fish heads – a bit that is unexplained and unexplored. The movie is filled with such bizarre shit, though, even periodically flipping over to crude animation that looks like it could’ve come off The Electric Company or somesuch.
Hedorah is very divisive among Godzilla freaks, but I do like it, mostly because it’s so different. Not to mention trippy – speaking of Hedorah’s red eyes, there’s a part at the end where the military shines lights at the creature to distract it, and the director just lets the camera sit on Hedorah as it stares back. It’s strangely compelling, not to mention more indication that Hedorah is a stoner, transifixed by those blinking lights. Plus the fights are pretty brutal and gory, with Godzilla ripping Hedorah apart – this particular monster really seems to piss the big guy off. However the movie was so bizarre that it got the director fired from the franchise; it was the one and only Godzilla movie he got to make, though he planned to do a sequel.
American fans were ticked that the recent DVD/Blu Ray only featured the “International English Dub,” ie the one heard in English-speaking countries other than the USA; fans wanted the old AIP dub. Personally I prefer the international dub, and not just because it features voices familiar from the many kung-fu and Shaw Brothers dubs of the day. The AIP dub I find annoying, as it’s one of those where the American voice actors give all the characters fake “Oriental” accents, which is more annoying than offensive.
Godzilla vs Gigan (1972): Released in the US in 1977 as Godzilla on Monster Island, Godzilla vs Gigan replaces the dark psychedelia of Godzilla vs Hedorah with super-bright colors, a goofy cast, and comedy hijinks. It also comes off as a lot more ponderous, despite featuring four monsters who engage in a brawl in the final quarter. Whereas Hedorah, while strange, was still compelling, Gigan seems to just drag. It isn’t helped by the fact that, for the first half, the human characters take center stage. They’re a diverse lot, from a manga artist to a female karate expert to a fat hippie who looks like Sammo Hung. Another gal is searching for her missing brother, a scientist. He’s been kidnapped by men who are creating a Monster Island sort of amusement park, an element which makes no sense within the context of the overall story. Anyway, the kidnappers are really space-cockroaches, and their goal is to control Godzilla and the other monsters, so they can kill them with their own space monsters(?).
As you can see, this film is from the era of the franchise in which Godzilla movies were exclusively made for children. The titular Gigan is the first of two space monsters called in – looking sort of like a cyborg chicken, Gigan has a very cool red-glowing visor for his eyes. The villains also call in three-headed King Ghidorah, who appears courtesy recycled footage from the earlier Monster Zero (1968). Meanwhile Godzilla slowly makes his way to Japan, bringing along his pal, stegosaurus-like Angilas. Godzilla vs Gigan is notable because we actually hear Godzilla talk – early in the film he bosses Angilas around, and in the English dub they gave Godzilla a voice. (The Japanese version kept it as backwards screeching sound effects – also heard in the English dub, over which you hear the spoken words – but they explained what the Big G was saying via kanji-filled word baloons.)
The finale is given over to a positively endles fight between these four monsters – with the Angilus-Ghidorah matchup again all recycled from Monster Zero – and it’s very ponderous despite the action. Godzilla takes a beating here, and we get a big splash of monster blood courtesy Angilas, but for some inexplicable reason Godzilla gets a second burst of energy and kicks monster ass. Neither Ghidorah nor Gigan are killed – Gigan in fact would return in the next film – but the Earth is saved and the space cockroaches are vanquished. Overall Godzilla vs Gigan is fun for the most part, but could’ve used a little tightening up.
Godzilla vs Megalon (1973): I’ve loved this movie since I was a kid, back when I got a VHS of it for Christmas in 1986. Parts of the English dub are ingrained in my brain – little did I know at the time that all of the dubbers were veterans of the Shaw Brothers English dubs. Thus there are familiar voices throughout the English dub of Godzilla vs. Megalon, which Tokyo Shock thankfully included with their recent Blu Ray (which also includes the original Japanese audio track). I’ve read online complaints about the low quality of this blu ray, but I assure you it’s a thousand times better than the pan and scan VHS tape of my youth. So many details are apparent here that were invisible on that shoddy tape – most humorously the tattoo on the Seatopian leader’s shoulder! Surely they could’ve covered that up?? The blu ray also includes the Japanese cut of the film, which features a bit more violence: the annoying little kid in the short-shorts is forcibly abducted at one point, snatched off his bike into a car, and there’s a bit more violence in the few fights.
The movie is dumb in a glorious way, with shoddy production and a phenomenal jazz-funk score, aptly compared to Yusef Lateef by Tom Servo in the great MST3K version of the movie. Godzilla here looks like a toy and Jet Jaguar is a poor man’s Ultraman, but there’s still something likable about him. And Megalon is cool, like a giant beetle with drills for hands who shoots exploding hockey pucks from his mouth. Gigan makes a return appearance from the previous film, teaming up with Megalon against Godzilla and Jet Jaguar; his visor glows a very cool red.
People deride this one but no one seems to understand it is intentionally goofy. It’s clearly not meant to be taken seriously; for example, toward the end Megalon and Gigan are getting the better of Godzilla and Jet Jaguar, surrounding them in a ring of fire. Then Godzilla throws his arms over Jet Jaguar’s shoulders and the two fly off, out of the fire’s reach. Megalon and Gigan – two mutant monsters – sort of look at each other and then throw their arms up, like “What the hell?!” This movie was clearly made by some people who were having a lot of fun, and unfortunately that’s lost on most who watch it – but then, most geeks are humorless twits, anyway. But I love all the little touches, even the weird interpretive dance beneath the Easter Island head carving in Seatopia. This is easily my favorite Godzilla movie.
Godzilla vs MechaGodzilla (1974): The goofy/campy tone of the previous film is gone, replaced with a more serious sort of approach that brings to mind the Godzilla films of the decade before. That being said, there’s precious little Godzilla to be found in this one; the big guy shows up for a brief patch early on and then disappears until the final fight. For the most part Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla feels more like a Japanese attempt at a Eurospy film, mixed with a bit of a Planet of the Apes ripoff. The focus is more on suspense and intrigue as our cast of heroes – a marine biologist, his mostly-useless brother, and two gals, one of whom is a photographer and the other the daughter of a scientist – run afoul of a shady group who turn out to be evil monkey-men aliens from space who disguise themselves as humans.
The film features more human-on-human violence than other Godzilla films of the era, with “human” characters strangled and shot, sometimes in the face – leading to cool, somewhat-psychedelic special effects of the skin “melting” off, revealing the Planet of the Apes ripoff faces beneath. But where is Godzilla? He shows up early in the film, or at least appears to – but when “Godzilla” gets in a bloody fight with series mainstay Angilas, even the humans know something is up. During the fight Angilas knocks off some of Godzilla’s skin, revealing a Terminator-esque steel skeleton beneath. This is MechaGodzilla, which reveals itself later in a brawl with the real Big G. Controlled by those aliens, MechaG’s intent is to destroy Japan and kill Godzilla, or something. Anyway Godzilla gets knocked into the sea and isn’t seen again for a helluva long time, save for a brief (and also slightly psychedelic) bit where we see him like inhaling lightning bolts and glowing a blacklight poster purple.
After interminable hijinks with the human actors, things finally get to the monster bash we want, with Godzilla and new pal King Ceasar (a monster that looks like a big puppy which is called forth by an endless song courtesy some kung-fu like chick in Okinawa) take on MechaGodzilla in a two-on-one brawl. Monster blood flies here and MechaG unleashes hell courtesy eyebolts, finger missiles, chest missiles, a force field, the works. But Godzilla manages to win the fight (no thanks to Ceasar, who sort of hides behind rocks throughout the fight) and then storms off back to Monster Island without even a glance back at the cheering humans. This was the last one courtesy the director who gave us the previous two films; after this old hand Ishiro Honda returned for Terror of MechaGodzilla, which was the last Godzilla film until 1984.
3 comments:
Interesting the spy element in the last movie. Apparently, it continued in Terror of MechaGodzilla and in some later film of the series.
All fair reviews of these highly entertaining films. For some reason, I prefer these Later, goofier entries.
You didn't cover 'Terror Of MechaG', which contains one of my favorite lines: "I love you..even if you are a cyborg!".
People probably make fun of that "interpretive dance" scene in GODZILLA VS. MEGALON, but "Seatopia" is a place right out of a Peplum film, and most Peplum films wouldn't be the same without those dance sequences.
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