Frankensteins Höllenbrut

Godzilla and a giant alien chicken. Great stuff. It's back to the very basic for Godzilla after many were disappointed by the previous effort (I loved it). It kind of throws away everything Godzilla started as. Now we have a fairly kid friendly film, in which aliens design an amusement park in the hopes of controlling some of the monsters from monster island. Because giant monsters are the greatest way to attract families away from their mundane lives. A manga artist uncovers this bizarre plot and soon the aliens release their own monster, Gigan. Fun fights and frolics abound, even if these movies are getting rather crowded.

Godzilla Vs. Gigan has no right to a good review. It makes heavy use of stock footage, has a plot that just barely hangs together, and arguably features the most ridiculous looking kaiju aside from Minya...and yet I love it! The plot, if you can call it that, involves a group of Japanese twentysomethings who stumble upon an alien invasion plot involving-gasp!-a children's amusement park. They unwittingly summon Godzilla after playing an eight track tape, leading to a battle between the Big G, Anguirus, and their old enemy King Ghidorah, along with the grotesque Gigan.

The film suffers from a number of issues, perhaps the most glaring of which is the extensive use of stock footage. At times, Toho did not even bother to match up the footage, with the scenes switching suddenly from day to night and back again. The film also has an anti-technology message, introduced in the last half hour, even more ham-handed than the environmental themes of Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster. The characters never even bother to change their clothes, despite the film taking place over the better part of a week.

Nevertheless, Godzilla vs. Gigan retains a fond place in my memory. It features a good twenty to thirty minutes of sustained kaiju destruction. Furthermore, Gigan, despite its ridiculous appearance, is a surprisingly menacing villain, being the only monster to make Godzilla bleed. In the end, it's a dumb but fun movie.

Second only to Godzilla vs Hedorah in terms of weirdness, this Goji flick sees a bunch of aliens trying to conquer the earth using a children's theme park as their base. No, seriously. The bizarre theme of the film also shows in several other ways. The human characters are a bit of an oddball crew. No brave explorers, psychics or secret agents this time. Just a budding manga artist (who comes up with monsters and plots so daft not even Toho could take him seriously), his karate champion girlfriend, a funky hippy and some others. The aliens are their usual ludicrous and badly-dressed selves (they wear orange two-pieces with pink shirts underneath. Heaven help us) and their whole earth conquest plan is utterly ridiculous, of course. Something about an answering machine that can summon two monsters from space, probably. Thing is, all the silliness seems right in place this time, as the whole movie doesn't take itself seriously.

Other good points include Anguillas being quite active, music by good ol' Akira Ifukube, and new baddie Gigan, who really is rather groovy.

But for all that, there's plenty to dislike as well. Godzilla himself looks terribly messy in this film. Small bits of rubber are litterally falling off him during the fight. The rubber suit was in pretty poor state, apparently. It ends up looking as if Goji's suffering from kaiju-dandruff of some kind. Then there's the disappointing use of stock footage a go-go, which looks very lazy in some scenes. The scene where Anguillas pops up at Sagami bay and then blatantly -runs away- from the puny millitary without even smashing up one single thing is really shameful (and is probably the reason why Anguillas is often regarded as a bit of a wuss). Finally, the only really serious flaw is that the big battle at the end has a poor structure. Godzilla takes a huge beating for about fifteen whole minutes, then somehow decides that enough is enough and begins to kick back with some help from Anguillas (who did fairly little so far). But just then, after a few good smacks, the two nasty monsters just turn tail and run away. Booh. It's doubly disappointing when you consider that a battle between four monsters, Godzilla and Anguillas on one side, and Gigan and Ghidora on the other, could have been so much more, especially with such cool-looking nasties.

So that leaves a bad aftertaste, but this is still an interestingly strange and silly kaiju movie that should please die-hards of the genre, or people looking for something hilariously odd. Worth watching once, just for it being so loveably off-the-wall, but you can find lots better if you want quality kaiju action.

The pinnacle of freakiness has to be the scenes where Godzilla and Anguillas -talk- to each other. Not only do we hear some utterly ludicrous distorted voices, but both kaiju are also pretty poor conversationalists (especially Anguillas). Wonder what they talk about when there aren't any big, nasty aliens around?

After the interesting but none too successful experiments Godzilla's Revenge and Godzilla Vs Hedorah,Toho made this film,which sometimes feels like an attempt to make a 60s Monster Zero-type film on a fraction of the budget. Obviously,it's not a good film in the traditional sense,but all the 70s Godzilla films,despite their childishness,cheapness,shoddy effects work,samey plots,and 'wacky' ideas {in this one ,Godzilla and his mate Angilas TALK to each other in the non-Japanese version,whilst the Japanese version has speech bubbles instead!}etc,are fun to watch,and Godzilla Vs Gigan is no exception.

The plot is the aliens-out-to-conquer-Earth-by-controlling-monsters one already used in Monster Zero and Destroy All Monsters and it would be used a few more times,but here it is reasonably successful,with some fairly intriguing ideas {though often badly done}and unusual human characters,although their constant in-and-out of the Godzilla Tower,the alien's base,becomes a bit tiresome. When the monsters show up,we have probably the longest battle in a Godzilla film,and one of the funniest,too,as Godzilla and Angilas engage in a tag team duel with the evil Ghidorah and Gigan. Sadly the movie is badly let down by excessive stock footage from previous films {Ghidorah the Three Headed Monster,Monster Zero,Son Of Godzilla,Destroy All Monster and probably a couple of others too!}. At least in Godzilla's Revenge the stock footage had a sort of context,here,it jars with the new footage. The worst bit for this is the lengthy destruction scene,where new,night time footage of a tattered,slow moving Ghidorah who can barely move, is intercut with older,daytime footage of Ghidorah,showing a fast-moving dragon in action.

Somehow all this adds to the film's quirky charm,a sometimes good,occasionally awful,entry in the series. The soundtrack is one of the best,it's all Akira Ifikube stock music,much of it from Godzilla films,but it has many of the great Ifikube tracks and a wonderfully rousing title theme.

Right, well I hadn't really expected all that much from "Chikyû kogeki meirei: Gojira tai Gaigan" (aka "Godzilla vs Gigan") given the fact that the movie was from 1972. But still, I sat down to watch it with my 9 year old son as we are having a run through all "Godzilla" movies.

Turns out that the 1972 "Godzilla vs Gigan" was actually surprisingly nice. The storyline was adequate. After all, it is a "Godzilla" movie we are talking about here.

But what made it work so nicely was the sheer amount of destruction throughout the course of the movie and the excessive amount of kaiju fighting - which exceeded the contents of many other "Godzilla" movies. And you actually got to see the kaijus bleeding in this 1972 movie. But the destruction of buildings and such was just phenomenal. Sure, it was toy buildings and miniature scales, but still, it worked out so nicely. Especially because they had put so much effort into the miniature scale models that it was just amazing.

Man, I do love it when Godzilla gets frustrated and starts going into hyper-mode. That is just hilarious.

Two things about this movie wasn't overly impressive. First and foremost, the appearance of Godzilla. He looked atrocious in this movie, and it was a bitter pill to swallow. And then the fact that they reused footage from another "Godzilla" movie for the King Ghidorah vs. Anguirus fight. That was just a horrible thing to do, and it was definitely a slap in the face with a dead, cold fish for us that have sat through the majority of the "Godzilla" movies.

But all in all, the 1972 "Godzilla vs Gigan" was definitely a nice surprise and quite worth the effort of sitting through. I am rating it a solid six out of ten stars.