Godzilla Vs. Mechagodzilla

I may jump the gun but this is the best Godzilla movie of the 1970s.

It was 20 years after a genre, a metaphor for nuclear destruction, and the king of the monsters was born and Jun Fukuda went out swinging on his last Godzilla film. The plot concerns a statue being found at an excavation site and with it a prophecy of monsters, and I'll give you a buck if you can guess what I'm gonna say next. Aliens. Yes, another anonymous sect of extraterrestrials have created Mechagodzilla to destroy Tokyo. Why? Aliens. How did they build Mechagodzilla and why did they model it on a heroic monster? Aliens. Why does it move so fluidly in Godzilla camouflage and yet ultra robotronic without it? Aliens. It's like the Godzilla form of "It's magic, you don't have to explain it.". Granted it's the best Mechagodzilla design still to this day, and you get yourself a mighty fair dose of action. Hell there's enough explosions to put Infra-Man to dishonoring shame, my God they actually had a budget! You see what happens Toho? This is what happens when you have a budget in the effects Toho! Very well done on the suits, miniatures, action, and boom. Can't forget about the boom. And as we come to a close on 2/3 of the Godzilla series, I've yet to see a truly bad human story, the one aspect every fan wishes was simply not there. Now is there a gradient of human stories? Absolutely. But this is one of the best. You can tell a good human story by looking at the impact the characters have on the kaiju stuff. They are influencing events constantly, attacking the aliens, aiding Godzilla, summoning King Caesar (Not my favorite Caesar though.), relaying the prophecy. They put good effort into all of this and it shows. It's certainly the most bloody of any Godzilla movie I've seen, for a movie rated G and to have literal arterial spray at least 3 times is sort of shocking. I feel this is where the demographic for strictly kids ended, and that was a fair stint of 4 movies in a 15 movie series. And it all culminates in the best end fight since Destroy All Monsters, excellent use of effects, explosions, and brawling, a truly memorable highlight of the entire series. So it's no secret I love it, but really I haven't had any negative feelings towards any of these movies and I doubt that will occur with the final Showa entry. 4 stars, 8/10! Mechagodzilla will return. In the meantime I strongly and highly recommend Brandon Tenold's YouTube channel, he makes great reviews and his Godzilla stuff is engrained in my memory. So check it out and it all ends tomorrow.

Godzilla Vs. Megalon

The only Godzilla film in the public domain, and probably the reason why these films never quite caught on here in the States.

Do I personally think this is one of the most notorious and poor entries in the Godzilla series? Actually no, it's wild and certainly could be considered the black sheep of the Showa series but I enjoyed it for what it is. The story centers around an inventor named Goro who somehow, I wish I knew how, independently created a robot named Jet Jaguar who gets swept up in a plot of underground humans, a bug kaiju, and quite possibly the most iconic tag team duo in history. The film was originally supposed to be all about Jet Jaguar as our hero but thinking it wouldn't perform well, Toho added Godzilla and Gigan to try and up the box office profits. Now you can tell that from watching the movie, Godzilla really only shows up for the big fight and a brief scene where Jet Jaguar and him meet. I don't have a huge problem with that but it is kinda silly for a movie named Godzilla Vs. Megalon. But I think Jet Jaguar is awesome, the design is unapologetically 70s, the concept was very much based on other heroes like Infra-Man and Kamen Rider, and the fact that a child designed Jet Jaguar for a competition and got to see his creation on the big screen is pretty amazing. It's a shame Haruo Nakajima bowed out of the role in the last film, I honestly thought he was there until the end of this era but Shinji Takagi does mighty well giving personality and power to the king. But yeah, this movie is kinda weird when you step back and look at it. Not at all to say the production is bad, the cast does decent work, the production design is cool, you can tell and the special effects director at this time Teruyoshi Nakano said so too, that the effects crew working on this put a lot of work into it. It's such a shame the budgets for the effects got so limited, I can't even imagine trying to make all this work with a genuine inadequate amount of money, and I just have monumental respect for the effects creators of these movies and more importantly this genre, even if it wasn't flawless. The final fight is worth it, it's pretty awesome in it's own outrageous way, with plenty of explosions, tag team moves, and one of the most absurdly hardcore badass moves ever put to cinema. I can't obviously speak for audiences in 1976 when this was released to the States, but they pretty much shit on this movie. Now I know the climate of viewing cinema has changed, and all for the better I say, but if I watched a piece of japanese cinema about giant monsters fighting even if it was hacked to hell in editing, I couldn't bad mouth it. But the stigma this movie got transcended generations even to this day, if you tried to sit someone down to watch a Godzilla movie from the 60s or 70s they would probably object due to the quality. Oh it's a rubber suit, oh it has dubbing, blah blah blah, it drives me up the wall. Do I blame this movie? Hell no, it has a cult following all of it's own, with lots of it's own idiosyncracies that makes it so popular whether in a positive or negative light. And if you're wondering what camp I reside in, I can recite almost the entirety of the Jet Jaguar song. I rest my case. 2.5 stars, 5.5/10. Final two coming your way.

Godzilla Vs. Gigan

We are truly in the tail end of an era.

Jun Fukuda returns once more to direct in Godzilla Vs. Gigan, a not half bad entry in my eyes. Though you can tell the production was just as low budget as similar films of this period, I can't say this movie is at all bad. The plot once again features aliens from outer space but has one of the most interesting of twists to it. An illustrator for comics is contacted to work for a theme park that is building a Godzilla tower but treachery is afoot as oopsy daisy my employers are aliens, as they bring down King Ghidorah and newcomer Gigan to tear stuff up leading both Godzilla and Anguirus to stop the menace. Yeah, it's an original if nothing else stance on invading aliens. They come from a planet in the Space Hunter Nebula M (God I love terms like that) very similar to Earth hence their plans here, but they also have perception filters so they look human but are actually space cockroaches. Freaky, but props to keeping it fresh and unpredictable. Gigan also is a strange creature, with a Cylon eye, hooks for hands, and a buzzsaw on it's chest, an instantly recognizable and memorable foe for such a hacked and slashed budget. The plot focuses more on the humans but once again in a twist, for the last roughly 30 minutes of film it focuses mostly on the monsters fighting, with brief scenes of the humans. That's never occured. I think the longest kaiju fight up until this point was the stand off in Mothra Vs. Godzilla, cause you get the winged version and the 2 babies at the end. So it's one of the best entries if you want prolonged fight sequences. Granted there is a fair amount of stock footage from Ghidrah, Destroy All Monsters, and even Son Of Godzilla, but it's really not a lot. I do find it hard to rate though, because while I do not consider it sub-par I also don't think it's very good either. I'd give it a solid 2 stars, 5.5/10, and we only have 3 left. But the next one might not be so great either, so join me tomorrow for Rex Dart eskimo spy!

Son Of Godzilla

Quite a leap from decimating Tokyo and being an allegory for the most horrific weapon in existence.

All good jests aside, Son Of Godzilla while massively divisive in the States didn't showcase the worst of this series. I put it on par with Ebirah, and urge everyone to see it just to find out where you stand. The story once again goes tropical with a team of scientist's working on a weather machine to influence food growth for the world, but apparently they never knew the premise of Geostorm otherwise they would have ended the project, but if that wasn't enough multiple kaiju are found on the island. Of course you have Godzilla and his probable son Minilla, but you also have giant preying mantises, and a spider that would put Tarantula to shame. Now I need to say, while the setting of the movie was purely for cost effectiveness because of the budget which is no bad thing I mean studios have shot films in local places for decades, just look at Vasquez Rocks and Bronson Cave, and the monster suits are pretty good. I seriously have no clue how they pulled off Kamacuras and Kumonga, because it's not your average man in suit technique which makes me think it's pure wirework but they do such a good job with it that it seems there is far more to it, once again showing even in the lesser renowned entries in the series that these special effects are an artstyle as much as just an effect. It's praise worthy for sure. Though I will admit the Godzilla suit is my least favorite of the series thus far, and Minilla while going through phases showing his growth isn't horrible, it's kind of easy to pick on this being the least good design of Godzilla's son. Now I've heard tale Minilla is quite well recieved in Japan but here in the States it's a true love or hate situation, do I feel it was entirely necessary? Nope! Even the writers really had no clue what to do next so they were throwing anything that would stick. Despite Toho being the most world known Japanese studio besides perhaps Studio Ghibli, they were on hard times in the late 60s through the 70s nearly going bankrupt. The Godzilla movies from Ebirah onward were made essentially to keep the studio in production because of how succesful they were with audiences, more so children now at this point, so I somewhat see the decision to appeal to as many kids as possible to keep tickets selling. But you can tell even with less than great entries it was never a cash cow for Toho and they still put a lot of effort in it. I think the human story is kinda interesting, the new monsters are good additions, the interactions between Godzilla and his son do work and you can tell what's going on through visual storytelling and physical acting, I even kinda like the relationship thing going on between Saeko and Goro Maki (yep the same name from both 1984 and Shin Godzilla, guess Hammer wasn't the only studio guilty of renaming protagonists), so I can't genuinely say this is a bad movie. You need to be in a specific mindset but I didn't mind it much. It's a kaiju family film and I can appreciate that somewhat. 2.5 stars, 6/10, the supposed end is near next time.

Ebirah Horror Of The Deep

Or Godzilla Vs. The Sea Monster if you want the late night cable version.

I know people consider this to be one of the lesser Godzilla movies but I don't think it's bad at all. True it focuses primarily on the human characters, more so than usual even, with a man named Ryota searching for his brother lost at sea before the weather started getting rough and the tiny ship was tossed before setting foot on an island used for creating nuclear weapons. Soon he and his companions find a woman from Mothra's island and very soon Godzilla as well. So it's a matter of evading military forces, avoiding Godzilla, and trying to find a way past Ebirah the eponymous sea monster. Most Godzilla movies have about half if not 60% of the runtime devoted to the human characters, but here I'm almost willing to bet 85% of the runtime is devoted to the human characters. You don't get a lot of monster action or fighting until the last quarter of the movie. Originally this was supposed to be a King Kong film and it seems abundantly clear when you take that fact into consideration when watching the movie, but my question is would Mothra still be a part of the movie to get everyone off the island? Now why they swapped Kong for Godzilla is beyond me, he still has a lot of traits of the Toho King Kong and I don't mean the 30s japanese King Kong, and I do feel it would have worked better with the ape. This happens to be a significant entry not for plot elements but production elements, this is the final Godzilla film to feature Akira Takarada who's been around since the first film until the Heisei series, this is the directorial debut of Jun Fukuda in the Godzilla series who will pop up more as we go along, it's the first Godzilla movie not to have Eiji Tsuburaya doing the special effects since he was heading his own special effects company though I would say the effects are on par for the series, and both the adult Mothra and the twin fairies also wouldn't be seen till the Heisei series. So quite a few events to take note of for an entry that's less than good. It's not horrible by any stretch, the pacing is decent, the cast does well I even strongly approve that there is zero romance subplot with Daiyo, the plot though scarce of monster action isn't the worst I've seen, but I think it's safe to assume this is a definite skip in the filmography. 2 stars, 5.5/10, and we get a divisive entry in the series next time.