Gojira · Ebira · Mosura Nankai no daikettô

Yes. I'll admit it . This is a bad movie. A bad movie that I've watched over and over and over and over again! It is weird how much I like this movie. You could say I like it ironically, but not really, because I believe it has a type of charm that I find intentional. The monster fights are fun, and I like the plot. I totally understand people that hate this entry in the series, but I find it to be one of the most fun Godzilla movies out there!

On my Top 10 Godzilla Films list, it is actually included. Here's the list: 1.Gojira 2.Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla 3.Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah 4.Godzilla: Final Wars 5.Mothra vs. Godzilla 6.Godzilla vs. Destroyah 7.Godzilla vs. Spacegodzilla 8.Godzilla, Mothra, and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All Out Attack 9.Ghidorah: The Three-Headed Monster 10.(this film.)

Almost all Kaiju flicks involve two story lines, the story of the little guys and the story of the monsters. This is one of them where the story of the little guys is what really matters. A distinctly B movie, half-espionage and half-island-action, about a guy's search for his brother and getting caught up with a gang of various other guys and a beautiful native to stave off an organization's evil deeds in the South pacific. Pretty scenery. Pretty natives. Some fair jokes and some good 1960's style cheese action. Even Ebirah, a jumbo jumbo shrimp who guards the island, more or less, works well enough as a background piece. It is when the big piece of seafood tries to take center stage that things start slowing down.

By the time Godzilla shows up, the movie suffers from the monsters. Not only does the original Japanese soundtrack have a habit of playing just about the most inappropriate music for all of his scenes (look, jets are coming, let's play surf rock...he's smashing a base, let's play slow horror mood music); but there is the distinct problem the director has in getting the transition from Godzilla as a monster to a potential hero down right. Too often, Godzilla's actions make no sense. He seems to like people in one scene. In the next, he is randomly destroying things again.

The movies final problem is the Kaiju fights sort of repeat themselves. Whether it be the two monsters throwing rocks back and forth more than once, or the exact same "flip" later on, it does seem a little out of place.

This is actually on of my favourite Godzilla films. While on one hand it has one of the worst enemy monsters, Ebira (although it also has Mothra, but he only appears at the end and doesn't really do anything) it also has a neat story. It's not as cool as the original, but I think it sure as hell beats the cheezy alien stories which are so ridiculous and unbelievable that even their cheeze value is threatened. As well, most Godzilla movies spend *way* too much time and focus on the monsters fighting and rampaging (Godzilla vs. Gigan is a perfect example of this), but this one had more of a plot. The takeover didn't seem as implausible and it was more tongue in cheek. It's also one of the best dub-jobs I've *ever* seen in a Godzilla movie (or any of the other similar ones).

Overall: this is one of the more fun Godzilla films. It's still silly, but in an enjoyable way. It's not ruined by being overly stupid and it's cheeze factor is definitely amusing. 6/10.

This movie was set on an island, where all the mayhem, action, destruction, battles and drama take place. A group of teenagers go sailing in search for a long lost brother and gets shipwrecked on an island. The island inhabitants are a band of people called the Red Bamboo, who are secretly making nuclear bombs in order to conquer the world. Islanders from Infant Island were kidnapped as slaves and the teenagers try to do everything they can to save the islanders and stop the terrorists. To add to the excitement, who would have guessed Godzilla would be seen sleeping in a cave on the island and that an over-sized Shrimp (Lobster or Crab in some reviews) is supposed to be guarding the island? A lot of humor in this movie, especially the lines "I thought you studied science?" with an answer "But I didn't pass the first year, one thing's for sure."

A pretty native girl, played by Kumi Mizuno, is attracted by Godzilla, who gave a little love relationship to her-a love relationship more associated with King Kong (since the story of this movie was originally written for King Kong). Masaru Sato's music score is catchy and Jun Fukuda did a great directing job. Shinichi Sekizawa gave us an exciting story and Eiji Tsuburaya gave us cool special effects. And, Mothra has a cameo in this movie and her tiny twin priestesses also made an appearance.

Overall, it is a unique and exciting Godzilla entry with plenty of monster appearances and action, which is a plus!

Grade A

This was obviously made because Toho wanted to discover new plot elements for their kaiju film formula, which was falling into something of a predictable rut (humans fight humans, humans fight monster, monster fights monster, sayonara). But simply limiting the amount of time the monsters appear on screen offers no improvement.

"Sea Monster" is one of the weaker entries in the original Godzilla series. Much of the film is directed as light comedy, a mild satire on the James Bond films. Actually, the comedy works pretty well; it's never knee-slapping laugh-out-loud, but it finds and sustains a level of humor most viewers should find fairly easy to live with.

The monsters here are almost tossed in for deus-ex-machina plot devices, saving the day at the last moment. To be sure, it's amusing to see Godzilla sit around pondering what to do with the woman he's just saved from bad guys, but there really isn't much for him to do here. He zaps a giant vulture, pulls the claws off a lobster and smashes a nuclear power plant - and that's about it. For a minute towards the end, it almost looks like things will get complicated by a battle between Godzilla and Mothra, but this doesn't really amount to much either.

For Godzilla completists, it's a relatively harmless sub-par entry - it certainly doesn't scrape the same bottoms as "Godzilla's Revenge" or "vs. Megalon". But if you are not yet a Big G. fan, this should not be your introduction to the series.

Entertaining fluff, nothing more.