Invasion Of Astro Monster

Or pick whatever title you want, Monster Zero, Godzilla Vs. Monster Zero, it's a dime a dozen for these Godzilla movie titles.

Out of the Showa era, this is probably my favorite of the King Ghidorah entries. Ghidrah The Three Headed Monster was good, do not get me wrong and you could argue this could be a remake of that movie with a lot more sci-fi in it. The year is 196X, yeah back when movies had to be vague and stuff like this could actually happen, two astronauts voyage to a previously unknown planet orbiting Jupiter brilliantly named Planet X, we get one more and this will be the first Godzilla movie with a XXX (hoo-hoo), where an alien species makes first contact with Earth and requests their assistance. The aliens are attacked by Monster Zero or the kaiju formerly known as Ghidorah, and they want both Godzilla and Rodan to defeat it in exchange for the literal cure for cancer. We're not science fiction we are in fact, science fact over here at Toho. This movie was released in 1965, man had not yet landed on the moon but we're taking manned flights to Jupiter. I would be 86 years old and we still wouldn't have gotten to that point. Hell Star Trek wasn't even out yet, those 60s was the space age man. I was very happy to rewatch this movie again and to see it in it's native japanese was really nice. One curious thing to note is an american actor, Nick Adams was put in the movie for better international releases yet this is the only occurence at least in my memory that such a thing has occured in a Godzilla film. And even more so strange, he was dubbed in the japanese version which okay fine this is the edit for audiences in Japan, but that's never occured in another movie. I expected english audio with perhaps japanese subtitles, like when I watch something like Shin Godzilla with the japanese audio but english subtitles. Huh, how about that. I watch these to fully experience the performances sans dubbing, and yet I get dubbing in the original version. Blows my mind man. But enough of that, how's the rest? Pretty good, performances are really good, I like the designs of the spaceships and aliens, it's really friggin' cool to see Godzilla fight in outer space, I mean this is the movie that gives us the Godzilla victory dance for crying out loud, it's just a fascinating entry. And while the alien invaders plotline will get so dull even you'll want me to say something else happens, and this is where stock footage is first used albeit sparingly, I can't give this movie any good grief. It's solid, they play their cards right and still make a entertaining, special effects heavy, monster movie that doesn't go too weird or too quick. Keep in mind, weird is highly relative when it comes to this show. 3.5 stars, 7/10, and the directorial chair will be swapped out for Jun Fukuda next time.