San Daikaijû Chikyû Saidai no Kessen

A giant meteor crashes on the Earth's surface in Japan(where else?). Out from this comes a monster from Mars that destroyed the Martian race and now wants to destroy humankind. The monster is none other than Ghidrah(Ghidorah), perhaps the greatest enemy faced by Godzilla in any of his films. Ghidrah is a neat monster with his three heads and tails. He spews electrical currents from his mouths. Is mankind's existence to be forever extinguished? No. With the help of Mothra's fairies who just happen to be visiting Japan during this "global" crisis, Mothra is sent to Godzilla and Rodan to try and convince them to help the people of the world and fight Ghidrah. The twin fairies, probably fatigued from singing a couple fine songs, translate what the mosters say. Rodan and Godzilla are wary of helping mankind, and would rather beat on each other, making one Japanese spectator remark, "These monsters are as stupid as human beings!" This is a fun film. The monsters look as you would expect. Rodan, for whatever reasons, looks particularly cheesy and fake, but Godzilla is fitted with a neat rubber suit. Yep, miniature towns are destroyed in this one too. The acting all around is very good for a film like this. The story is pretty good too. You cannot go wrong with a giant lizard, a giant reptillian prehistoric bird, and a giant caterpillar duking it out with a three-headed space monster. Throw in two charming, musically-inclined island fairies and an assasination plot of a princess into the mix as well... not to mention the directing skill of Inshiro Honda and the fabulous music of Akira Ifukube and you just cannot miss!

One of the best Godzilla sequels. A fun monster rally that introduces the title monster, King Ghidorah, a three-headed dragon from space. There's a lot of silliness in this involving a Martian princess and the two singing fairy twins from the last two Mothra movies. They can communicate with the monsters. They play a big part in the film, convincing Godzilla and Rodan to join forces with Mothra and save Earth from Ghidorah. This would mark Godzilla's official turn to hero for future sequels. The special effects are a lot of fun. If you see the American version you'll get lots of amusing dubbing. As with most of these Godzilla movies, there's a lot of time before any monsters show up. I haven't seen one of the sequels yet that couldn't have benefited from losing 10 or 15 minutes of people standing around talking. At least with the American versions the most boring segments have some cheesy entertainment value from the silly dubbed voices. Anyway, it's all harmless fun with nice visuals and ideas. The selling point, of course, is when Godzilla & co. do their thing. The monster battles are awesome. The rock fight between Godzilla and Rodan is especially goofy. The climactic battle has Godzilla, Rodan, and Mothra versus King Ghidorah -- what's not to love about that?

When a world ending three headed monster by the name of Ghidorah arrives on earth chaos ensues!

Godzilla, Rodan & Mothra are all on the scene but fighting one another. Can Mothra and the martians convince them to work together to fight this seemingly unstoppable force?

So once again we have the grade A cheese, men in monster suits, stop motion animation, ridiculous fight scenes and terrible acting. And yet somehow/someway this is actually the best Toho film I've seen.

It suffers with all the usual tropes and arguably the plot is even worse than usual but it works and makes for a fun monster epic.

The Godzilla films are certainly niche and not for everyone but this is a fun little effort.

The Good:

By this point it's actually starting to feel like a franchise

Builds up to a solid climax

The Bad:

Opening is really daft

Some of the outfits are embarassingly bad

Plot is a tad confuddled

Godzilla moves like a teletubby

Franchise is getting goofy

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

The mini martian ladies are growing on me

Mid battle giant monsters often enjoy games of catch with boulders

Yes it's goofy but damn it's awesome! I keep wondering how the creatures/effects were made back then. Sometimes hard to keep up with the subtitles too, but still nice to enjoy occasionally - I'm not judging. Japanese uniqueness can be quite a wonderful thing!

"Ghidora, the Three Headed Monster" is an entertaining and overall quite welcome addition to the Godzilla series (and of course the 'canon' of the other monsters appearing). The key to a good Godzilla flick is a solid plot (even if it's just interesting in a hokey B-movie sci-fi way) and interesting human characters, because let's face it, the monster action only actually makes up less than a third of the movie itself, so if the rest is torture to sit through there's almost no point to watching it (unless you're a completist, like myself).

"Ghidora, the Three Headed Monster" doesn't quite have the most interesting story of any of the Godzilla movies, but it's solid enough and we get a healthy dose of the lovable singing fairy girls. It's really the plot inconsistencies that let it down. I would forgive them, especially given that this is a Godzilla movie, but they are so glaring and obvious (why would the fairy girls, not wanting attention, appear on TV?) that they become annoying. The comedy in this film also really just doesn't work at all.

Ishiro Honda is once again the director, and as usual he proves that he is a more talented director than many would give him credit for. This most certainly wasn't the worst Godzilla movie he directed, but it's a shame the special effects couldn't be a little better and enhance the movie a bit. Although I quite like the monster suits themselves for both Godzilla and Ghidora the model work and the puppet work is especially bad and a surprising step down from the previous installment. Everything about "Ghidora, the Three Headed Monster" is a step down from the excellent "Mothra vs. Godzilla", but this is still an entertaining and welcome installment in the series, if deeply flawed.

6/10