Terror Of Mechagodzilla

Excellent ending shot for the entire Showa series.

It's a real shame that this is the most least succesful Godzilla movie to this day, cause it is a decent ending to it all. The year is 1975, Godzilla has been on screens for over 20 years, and the energy crisis has hit Japan leading Toho to make just one more Godzilla movie. And in that time and place in the world it was the last, the Heisei series didn't pick up until 9 years later so for all intents and purposes this was the final Godzilla film. It was the final film of the series directed by Ishiro Honda, and was also the final appearance of Akira Takarada playing one more scientist role. The story follows a marine biologist who is sent to investigate the appearance of a dinosaur named Titanosaurus, while Mechagodzilla is rebuilt and both forces start to take on Japan. The strange part is this film is the first and only entry to focus on a romance, sure there have been couples and young people going out but it's never been this prominent and in the foreground, with our biologist Ishinose falling in love with Katsura the daughter of the scientist who discovered Titanosaurus. It's not a terribly good romance, Ishinose just seems completely whipped for this lady with little provocation and the story of Katsura is quite tragic and apparently this was only one of two Godzilla movies that had a female who wrote the screenplay, and had a good amount of the story focused on Katsura. So the human story is decent, I don't like it as much as the first Mechagodzilla movie but it does work. Seeing the opposite of what happened in the last movie with Godzilla in a big handicapped match against two other monsters is really good stuff, though the monster action isn't very abundant. It does however have the best Godzilla entrance ever, fight me this is no hot take, I'm right. It never fails to get me pumped and ready, it is all the awesome and greatness. And while the box office was lacking big time, the production is very well done and does not feel like just another average Godzilla movie to cap off the series. It truly was great fun to go through all of these movies, and I'm kinda sorta tempted to do a ranking list just for the fun of it tomorrow, I just really loved talking about all these movies. But for this one I'd give it a solid 3 stars, 7/10! And now that I have done over a month of talking about nothing but Godzilla it's time to move on, but very much like the ending of this film it's just a break before we return again to the empire of the rising sun with the king of the monsters surveying all in his domain. And it has come to my attention today that a certain movie just hit theaters and to apologize for my lateness, get ready for a week of MORTAL KOMBAAAAAT!!!!

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. King Ghidorah

Ah, memories.

Yes the Heisei fan favorite is quite possibly my most watched Godzilla film, way back when I was a kid I had the fortune of having this new thing called satellite cable and I had access to many movie channels beyond HBO and back then Starz and Encore had a fair share of Godzilla movies and this was one I taped along with the Super Mario Bros. Movie and Clue, I still have the tape and it's something I still treasure. This movie along with Godzilla 2000 were the big ones I watched when I was younger. So it's no surprise I really love this movie and it hasn't lost any of it's appeal or entertainment value in the subsequent 15+ years. The story is one of the most unique in the Godzilla series where a UFO sighting leads a group of national government authorities to make contact with not aliens but people from the 23rd century who seek to wipe Godzilla out from existence through time travel. The movie gives an interesting new take on Godzilla's origins where he was originally a dinosaur on one of the islands in the Pacific that were used for the H-bomb testing grounds, and future installments take some of that to heart, even the 2014 movie a little bit. So they reverse the polarity of the neutron flow and travel back to 1944, teleport Godzilla to the then present day of 1992, but shocking twist the humans from the future are bad guys and create King Ghidorah in Godzilla's place which they use to level Japan and our heroes have to find a way to revive Godzilla and deal with the evil doing humans. There's more twists and turns but I want you to see them for yourself. So you have an interesting and original plot, very good characters which we will talk about in a bit, quite frankly awesome special effects, and a bunch of other good things I could spend hours gushing over. I really like the characters in this movie, surprisingly though they range from a writer to government officials to humans from the 23rd century they feel very relatable. And I have to admit upon watching this movie again, I just realized that the guys from the future kinda look like Rick Astley and Donald Trump which kinda makes the movie better strangely, and if you've ever wanted to see either of those guys get their asses kicked you gotta watch this movie! I also have to applaud the continuity, not only do they bring back a few actors from Godzilla Vs. Biollante who stick around for the rest of the Heisei series but they specifically mention Biollante by name and that Godzilla is still resting from that fight. Awesome! The special effects are Heisei quality with great miniatures, fantastic monster designs, but it also doesn't skimp out on the human scenes either especially now that you got time machines and other far out future tech, it's really a great Godzilla movies even for younger kids. Yeah, it's a great movie in my eyes, the special effects are outstanding in all areas (for the most part but eh whatever), good characters, great story, and a must see for any Godzilla fan. And tomorrow we look at one more from the Millenium series before the big day!