Movie Review: Godzilla vs. Gigan, a.k.a. Godzilla on Monster Island (1972)

Japanese movie poster

 Great poster there on the left, ain't it? Next to Destroy All Monsters, I think it's the best of the series. Too bad that poster is for the movie that is the nadir of the Godzilla series: Godzilla vs. Gigan (1972).

The film was released briefly to US screens as  Godzilla on Monster Island, though the Big G doesn't spend a lot of time there.

The basic story is that an alien race of cockroaches have come to take over Earth since the humans on their own planet destroyed that world through pollution and waste. They hire a cartoonist to do some unspecified design work at an amusement park they're building to be their base of operations, complete with a giant Godzilla Tower. The cartoonist and his black-belt girlfriend get involved with a couple of folks who know about the cockroaches' plan. Gigan and King Ghidorah are called in to attack Tokyo and lure Godzilla (and Anguirus) from Monster Island, so the aliens can kill him and complete their plans of conquest. Naturally, things don't go as planned.

The ecology message doesn't smash you in the teeth like it did in the previous entry Godzilla vs. Hedorah. But the film will be giving you dentures for numerous other reasons. The plot, story and script of this movie makes Godzilla vs. Megalon, considered by many to be the worst G-Film, seem like Citizen Kane. Very little sense of logic was applied to it. I understand it is a kid's movie, but I saw it on TV when I was a kid and pretty much gave it a "WTF?" even then.


This movie is a stock footage parade. The rampage of Gigan and King Ghidorah through Tokyo is accomplish with mostly stock footage. Almost all of King Ghidorah's footage is from previous movies, notably Ghidrah the Three-Headed Monster and Monster Zero. I think maybe, at the most,  three minutes of Gigan footage was filmed, and most of that was of the creature kicking in storefront windows. Apparently, he does not like seventies' era window dressing.

Use mannequins at your own risk
when this guy's window-shopping.

This movie has some of the most laughable special effects I've ever seen. For at least the first ten minutes of their appearances, King Ghidorah and Gigan are simple plastic models - possibly off-the-shelf toys - with no movement at all.  The Ghidorah suit is pretty laughable, with the hair-like tufts behind his heads making them look remarkably like Keith Richards. Apparently, this outfit was on its last legs, since the heads don't really move separately like they did in earlier movies. When they do move, that is.

Gigan's certainly an interesting looking monster, though never quite detailed as being a cyborg. The buzzsaw in his belly doesn't make a lick of logical sense, and the hook hands must mean he's really easy to beat at Super Mario Kart. Of course, it's not until Godzilla Final Wars that Gigan actually lives up to the promise of that appearance.

It isn't nearly as bad as the movie's heroes, Godzilla and Anguirus. Anguirus (also known as Angillas) shows up as different colors all the time. There's a scene in the ocean where he's lobster-red, and when he approaches land, and the Self-Defense Force shines searchlights on him, he's a multitude of colors, all looking as if it was painted in sickly splotches. All through the big battle scenes, at least in the parts that aren't taken from earlier movies, Godzilla is losing bits and pieces of himself, the rubber of the suit appearing to be on its last legs.

This is also the first, and thankfully only, movie in which Godzilla talks. He's kinda bossy, and sounds a little bit to me like Chester A. Riley with a head cold. (Go ahead and Google, you young whippersnappers; the rest of us will wait.) The whole concept is ludicrous and does little to help the lack of a plot.

Most folks know I love bad movies. Give me something by Ed Wood or Bill Rebane and I'm a happy camper. Godzilla vs. Gigan is NOT that kind of endearing bad. It's just a crappy movie. You'll, of course, have to watch it if you're a kaiju and Godzilla fan, but I can't see even kids wanting to sit through this thing. If there's a Godzilla movie to completely forget about, this is the one.

AVAILABLE FOR THE KINDLE ON AMAZON.COM

THE TRIVIA QUIZ BOOK: VOLUME 6

By Rich Meyer

Here we go folks with another bout of family-friendly and fun-filled quizzing! 500 questions for all ages and all skill-levels from trivia neophyte to omniscient master. This time around, the questions fall into ten categories: Capital cities, famous quotes, Green Lantern and Green Arrow, Doc Savage, song lyrics, Jack Benny's radio show, The Andy Griffith Show, comedy albums, the comic strip Peanuts and Presidents of the United States.

US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AF1MXS6

UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00AF1MXS6

CA: http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00AF1MXS6

DE: http://www.amazon.de/dp/B00AF1MXS6

Movie Review: Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monster All-Out Attack (2001)

Japanese movie poster

One of the interesting things about the last round of Godzilla films, known as the Millennium series, was that none of them had to have much continuity with the previous films, other than the original Gojira (1954). There was also none of the sixties and seventies' Godzilla,  who was a friend to children and protector of the planet. With Godzilla Mothra King Ghidorah: Giant Monster All-Out Attack, the Big G goes further back than the original; he's not just a force of nature in this one - he's a mean bastard out to destroy everything in sight.

While Godzilla was ostensibly destroyed in the original movie (with a little retroactive continuity for this one), the monster in this movie is given a much more mystical origin and is basically Zombie-Godzilla for all intents and purposes. The lack of pupils and irises makes him even more evil-looking in my opinion.

Godzilla now exemplifies all the lives lost to Japanese forces during the Pacific War. He's come back to take revenge on the islands of Japan for those deaths, since the Japanese people (or at least the Government) is more than willing to consign those acts to a forgotten corner of their history. To protect the land (the actual land of Japane, not the people), the Guardian Monsters rise up: Barugon (from Frankenstein Conquers the World), Mothra (from almost as many movies as Godzilla), and King Ghidorah (ditto). It is interesting to see Ghidorah as a hero, as usually the space monster is one of the ultimate bastards. Barugon is still a popular kaiju in Japan, which explains his inclusion, rather than the more popular Rodan or fan favorite Anguirus (Angillas).

The human side to the story features the commander of the Japanese Self-Defense Force dealing with his often-drunk daughter, a reporter for a cheap digital TV station producing sensationalist dramas. She's the only one who has contact with an old man who knows everything about the Guardian Monsters, and the coming battle.

There's a lot of great action and destruction in this one, as Godzilla, left loose for the first time in his cinematic career, gets a free hand to destroy Tokyo. Nothing accidental about this rampage ... he's there to kick ass and take names! He decimates the Japanese land forces in less than a minute, and nearly destroys everything on the water as well. The battles with the Guardian Monsters show there's no quarter given to the populace of Japan. Hundreds, probably thousands of people are shown being crushed under the debris of the monsters' swath of havoc. The only way this could be worse for Japan is if Godzilla was hungry and started eating people.

Godzilla facing King Ghidorah and Mothra
(Barugon already met his end about
twenty minutes earlier).

Barugon gets a bit short-changed in the end, but does have a pretty long battle with the Big G in the movie. Mothra's role is apparently just to die and supercharge King Ghidorah a couple of times. Ghidorah is at his most impressive (short of his brief Mecha-King Ghidorah phase, which was simply too cool for words), but it is Godzilla's show all along. And one of the few instances in the long series that the efforts of the human forces actually play a major role in the villain monster's defeat, much like the original 1954 movie.

This is definitely a must-watch for the kaiju fan, and it is a very accessible film for the average movie-goer.

Movie Review: Destroy All Monsters (1968)

When I was a kid, Destroy All Monsters was the gem in the kaiju eiga crown ... that Holy Grail that every Godzilla fan wanted to see. Luckily, back then in the seventies, TV stations actually played stuff that people actually wanted to watch. The CBS Late Night Movie, The ABC Friday Night Movie, WLUK's T.J. and the ANT (All Night Theatre), and Saturday afternoon movies on the local stations in Central Wisconsin finally got me to that goal. And then the early days of TNT and The Sci-Fi Channel (I can't being myself to call it SyFy out of deference to the days when it actually played science-fiction) Channel buttressed it in the mid-eighties by replaying it. It took nearly twenty years to see that film twice.

Of course now, I have it on DVD and can watch it anytime I want. And two nights ago, it was my Kaiju fix. This 1968 flick is what you would call a "monster fest", much like Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman or House of Dracula  twenty five years earlier. it featured almost all of the popular giant monsters created by Toho Studios, battling on both sides of an alien invasion. In the far-flung year of 1999, space travel with the moon is common and all the world's monsters have been confined to an island for study. The invading Kilaaks take control of the island and the monsters, wreaking havoc on the world's cities. Earth isn't defenseless and fights back, culminating in a monster brawl at the base of Mount Fuji. The aliens bring in the space monster Ghidorah as a last ditch effort, but hey, you know how this ends, right? Godzilla, good guy, aliens, smucked all over the place.

Godzilla is, of course, the star of the movie, but a good number of his kaiju cohorts get a lot of airtime, namely Mothra (in caterpillar form), Rodan, Angilus (a.k.a. Angurus of Gigantis the Fire Monster fame), Manda (from the sci-fi movie Atragon) and Gorosaurus, who's only previous appearance was as the dinosaur that the giant ape kills in the Rankin-Bass/Toho production of King Kong Escapes. The monsters Varan (from Varan the Unbelievable) and Barugon (from Frankenstein Conquers the World) make brief appearances, usually at a distance, since the rubber man-in-a-suit-a-saurus costumes for those two creatures had degraded to the point that they couldn't be used for close-up, active city stomping. Gorosaurus does the subterranean monster bit instead of Barugon in Paris, destroying the Arch de Triomphe. Godzilla's son is on hand for a little comic relief in the final battle, blowing a smoke ring onto one of Ghidrah's flailing heads as he gets stomped by his dad and friends.

On the whole, the special effects are pretty good in this one, with a minimum of stock footage. Godzilla gets to stomp New York for the first time, and the monsters attack cities that aren't Tokyo for the first time. The story's fine, too. Don't bother deconstructing it; I mean it is just a monster movie and if you're watching a monster movie like you'd watch a Scorsese or Tarkovsky flick, you've got something wrong in the cabeza to begin with. The plot is adequate for the movie's intentions, and gives lots of opportunities for spaceships, monsters, aliens and wanton destruction to appear on the screen.

Sure, it's dated, but this is a fun movie and wastes an hour-and-a-half quite efficiently!

Happy 57th Birthday, Godzilla, King of the Monster!

Since today is the 57th anniversary of the release of Godzilla, King of the Monsters in the US, I decided to pull out a couple of the ol' G-films from my DVD collection.

Godzilla 1985 is basically a direct sequel to GKOTM, and is the first film in the second, or Heisei, era of kaiju films that came out of Japan from 1984 to 1995, and the first Godzilla movie since 1975's Terror of Mechagodzilla. Like the original Gojira, the American release of this film includes Raymond Burr reprising his role as journalist Steve Martin.

Much like the original 1956 movie, Godzilla mysteriously appears (this time during a volcanic eruption) and takes out a fishing boat and soon after a nuclear plant. A scientist has a simple plan to lead Big G from Tokyo using bird noises, but international politics have the Soviet Union launching a missile at Tokyo to deal with the menace. Japan's defense forces take Godzilla down, only to see the radiation from the missile revive him, letting him destroy their new Super X bomber. While there's no Oxygen Destroyer this time around to end Godzilla's rampage, he does get imprisoned in a volcano.


Godzilla vs. Biollante was the first sequel to Godzilla 1985, though it wasn't released until five years later. Godzilla's still safely packed away in Mount Mihara's caldera, but he's awake. A scientist uses some of Godzilla's cells to create an immortal plant creature, in a lopsided attempt to honor his daughter, the victim of a terrorist attack at his lab years earlier. Big G and Biollante engage in your standard fisticuffs a couple of time, but most of the action is out of the suits and in an okay if predictable spy drama going on under the monsters' feet.

These are both pretty okay movies, as far as kaiju flicks of the era are concerned. I think these are two of the last movies I saw to use grainy stock footage to bolster their storylines and running time. Having seen both the American and Japanese version of Godzilla 1985, I sort of prefer the Japanese version simply because it's a lot less jingoistic ... in the original, the Soviet agent is trying to stop the missile from firing, not trying to set it off. The US version does have Raymond Burr, who ends up looking annoyed at the American military officers who call him in as an adviser. They also appear to have a product placement deal with Dr. Pepper...

Biollante was one of the few original monsters in the whole series that weren't really based on a prehistoric creature of some kind. The monster metamorphoses through two distinctive and unique appearances, but a plant is still just a plant and when it isn't fireproof, it isn't much of a challenge for Godzilla to handle. The espionage tale in the background is a lot more effusive than a lot of story segments in between monster brawls, but these are some of the stupidest spies in history. They either try way too hard or give up way too easily.  But at least everyone gets their just desserts at the end.

The highlight of the movie is the introduction of actress Megumi Odaka as the psychic Miki Segusa, who would go on to play an important role in almost all of the Heisei era movies. She's a fresh face, an interesting character and eventually becomes a good foil to several other characters and even Big G himself.



Available for the Amazon Kindle:

The Science Fiction Quiz Book
by Rich Meyer

This book contains 301 questions (and answers) on all things sci-fi: Books, movies, TV shows, animation, comic books and even music! The science-fiction fans in your house will find themselves entertained, intrigued, and maybe even stumped now and again with the Science Fiction Quiz Book!






LINKS: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006T8G5QA http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B006T8G5QA

Book reviews: Nine days, nine books.

Well, I've been in a reading fervor for the last week or so, and naturally you readers have to pay the price! Here’s the reviews that are the result of all that reading. Oddly enough, this time I picked my titles a little more carefully, so I didn’t read anything that sucked the big one.

The Annals of the Heechee by Fredrick Pohl. This is the fourth full-length novel in Pohl’s long-running and award-winning Heechee Saga. Everything’s tied up with ribbons to end the quartet of main novels that focused on the adventures of Robinette Broadhead. I enjoyed it, but there’s a lot of semi-theoretical physics in it. The main character is also dead, spending his time as an electronic consciousness. If you’ve read the others in the series, this is a must-read, but I wouldn’t advise someone to start with this book, as even genre fans will be a tad out of their depths. And I’d recommended reading at least the first two books anyway, as they are true modern classics of science fiction.

Ballpark Mysteries: The Fenway Foul-Up by David A. Kelly. I hadn’t realized this was a rather Young Adult title, but its baseball, so how bad could it be? It literally takes less than fifteen minutes to read. It’s a mystery about a stolen bat at Fenway Park, but the clues are way too obvious, even for a kid’s book. The book has a lexicon in back with definitions of a lot of the baseball terms used in the story, and quite a bit of Fenway Park trivia is revealed during the course of the tale. I wouldn’t suggest an adult buy this to read for themselves, but it might be a good tale for a parent and a child who were baseball fans.

Doc Savage: The Man Who was Scared and Doc Savage: The Shape of Terror. These are #138 and #139 in the series of pulp adventures featuring the Man of Bronze, written by Lester Dent (under the house pseudonym of Kenneth Robeson). Both are excellent examples of both Doc Savage stories and great pulp adventures. The first story opens with a man falling dead on Doc’s doorstep, with his plaintive final words being “my breakfast cereal.” The second tale opens with Doc being kidnapped by the RAF and being killed in an airplane crash. His aides Monk and Ham die in a fiery car accident soon after. Both are well-written, as these books are in the phase where Doc was often a somewhat more fallible than his reputation.

I Had the Right to Remain Silent, But I Didn’t Have the Ability by Ron White. A good three-quarters of this autobiography is just restatements of Ron White’s stand-up act. I’m sure even the most anti-redneck/Blue Collar Comedy Tour fan will get a chuckle here and there. There’s a great section on White’s travails in trying to get a couple of TV pilots on the network. It’s a good read if you have an hour to waste.

Godzilla Returns, Godzilla 2000 and Godzilla at World’s End by Marc Cerasini. These are the first three novels in a short-lived Godzilla series from the nineties, inspired by the remakes of the Godzilla movies that started with Godzilla 1984. Godzilla Returns is somewhat based on that movie, but the others have no true movie progenitors. As with most of the Showa and Millennium era G-films, Godzilla was last seen in 1954, where he was driven away (and not destroyed by the Oxygen Destroyer) until his reappearance in the first book. The first two books are pretty standard, though the characters in the Godzilla Returns are a lot more accessible. The storyline in Godzilla 2000 is a bit hard to follow in spots. The third novel is a monster tour de force, with most of the Toho rogue’s gallery out to face Godzilla. It loses a little as it goes, because the whole tale tries to be too much in too short a story. If you’re a kaiju eiga fan, they should be on your reading list. If you’re just a sci-fi fan, try Godzilla Returns before bothering with the others to see if you like the style.

You Might Be a Zombie, and Other Bad News: Shocking But Utterly True Facts by the Editors of Cracked.com. If you aren’t familiar with Cracked.com, forget this review and head over to that website immediately. This book is like an actually relevant edition of The Book of Lists meets The Daily Show. There are a lot of oddball, trivia facts in this little tome, and unlike the aforementioned Book of Lists, they’re actually presented in a very readable and hilarious form. Quite a few of the chapters have appeared on the website, but there are a good number of lists and articles that are exclusive to the book. Funny, sometimes caustic and highly recommended.

Well, that's all for this go-around. I've got a couple of album reviews and an old-radio show review on plan for next week, as well as another comic book from the "New 52" reboot. Take care, folks!

Review: Godzilla Final Wars (2004)



Godzilla, standing amid the aftermath of doing his thing.



Godzilla: Final Wars was the last Godzilla movie in the current Millennium series of films. Right off, I have to tell you that this is not a great film. It’s barely a good film, but it’s mighty fun to watch.

The movie was released to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the original Gojira film, which began the many-storied Godzilla franchise. And as such, the movie is a virtual homage to Toho Studio’s science fiction/daikaiju (giant monster) output over the past half-century. The film itself is a melange of remakes of several previous Toho movies, notably Monster Zero and Destroy All Monsters!

The story is pretty simple: The movie opens with the crew of the Gotengo managing to trap Godzilla under tons of Antarctic ice back in 1954. More monsters began appearing after that, and a race of mutants with vaguely-described physical enhancements also came into existence, working alongside humanity to protect the planet.  In 2004, all of the world’s monsters start attacking for no apparent reason. Then a seemingly-benevolent alien race from Planet X captures them all, and seeks to help Earth because a runaway asteroid is on a direct collision course with the planet. After a group of people discover something’s not on the up-and-up with the Xians, the monsters are released and the aliens reveal their plan to take over the world and use the human race for food. The rebels take off in a flying submarine to release Godzilla from his Antarctic prison, who proceeds to kick kaiju ass and the aliens are defeated. I could’ve labeled this “SPOILER ALERT,” but let’s face it, you know everything’s gonna be the status quo at the end.

I know, I know ... the story sounds rather trite and childish. Well, so what? If you want highbrow storylines, go rent some Kurosawa. Final Wars is merely a celebration of a genre that has given a lot of pleasure to a lot of kids (and kids at heart) for the better half of a century.

Let’s look at the special touches in this movie:

• The storyline is a combination of the movies Monster Zero and Destroy All Monsters!, both of which are near-classic giant monster slugfests.The Xians are very similar to the Kilaaks from DAM in motives, and the original Controller of Planet X is grabbed very much like the leader of the Xians was in MZ.
• The monster tableau is almost the same as DAM, with a few of Godzilla’s other foes tossed in for good measure. Rodan, Gamackeras (the giant insect), Spiegas (the giant spider), Angillas, King Seesar, Ebriah (the Sea Monster - a giant shrimp/lobster), and Hedorah (the Smog Monster) all cause a lot of fun damage, as do two versions of the buzzsaw-bellied Gigan. A good number of the monsters are computer-generated this time around, rather than being regular puppets or man-in-a-suit-asauruses.
•  Mothra and the tiny Twin Fairies make an obligatory appearance.  It's just not a Japanese monster movie without a pair of twins of indeterminate age to control a giant moth.
•  The American version of Godzilla is acknowledged in the form of Zilla, who gets easily trounced by the real thing. “Stupid tuna-eating monster!”
•  As in DAM, the flying fiery UFO from space turns out to be something else  ... Monster X, who transforms into King Ghidorah.
• The plot point about an asteroid on a crash course with Earth was taken straight from the movie Yosei Gorasu, a sci-fi flick about a planet named Gorath that was going to play billiards with Earth. As over the top as this movie is, Gorath was prevented from destroying the world by moving the whole Earth out of its orbit with giant rockets. Again, I know, I know. But it’s another fun movie, so go watch it!
• There are cameos of monsters from a number of lesser-known kaiju eiga, including Gaira from War of the Gargantuas, Baragon from Frankenstein Conquers the World, Titanosaurus from Terror of Mechagodzilla, Varan from Varan the Unbelieveable. Gezora (the giant, walking squid from Yog, Monster from Space), Manda, Destroyah and Megaguirus. Most of these cameos are film clips from the original movies.
• The plot weaves in a lot of stylistic elements from The Matrix movies with a dash of X-Men. The main weapon of the defense forces, the flying, drilling, submarines, are taken directly from the movie Atragon, as was the monster from that movie, Manda, which is taken out of play by the Gotengo right after the opening credits.
• The day is proverbially saved by the appearance of Godzilla's son, Minilla. He's too cute for words as usual. 
• The cast is filled with Japanese stars of previous kaiju eiga, including Kenji Sahara, Kumi Mizuno, Masakatsu Funaki, Akira Takarada and Jun Kunimura.

I'm sure it sounds campy to anyone who isn't a fan of the genre. But you know what? It's fun! This film is a lot more enjoyable than some of the big-budget sci-fi blockbusters that tainted American screens back in 2004, like The Day After Tomorrow or I, Robot.

One has to always remember that, with one exception, giant monster movies are supposed to be just unbridled fun to watch. They aren't high art, and they don't have to make perfect sense. Godzilla: Final Wars is an hour and a half of simply pleasure that any fan should take the time to experience.