Godzilla contro i giganti

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.

Struggling manga artist Gengo (Hiroshi Ishikawa) whose children's stories involving homework and stern mother monsters are consistently rejected by editors takes a job with the company designing the new monster theme park World Children's Land. When Gengo finds an audio tape dropped by a young woman named Machiko (Tomoko Umeda), he stumbles into a conspiracy that suggests World Children's Land may be a front for more insidious purposes involving the monsters of Monster Island.

After the divisive reception to Godzilla vs. Hedorah (it's hard to know how well it did financially due to scarcity of sources on that point) producer Tomoyuki Tanaka sought to bring the Godzilla series back where he felt it needed to be. With Godzilla still seen very much as cheap kiddie fare at the time, Tanaka devised a premise he felt would entice people back while also being cost effective by brining back fan favorite King Ghidorah who would fight Godzilla along a new monster. Supposedly made for $1.2 million the film was allegedly better attended than Godzilla vs. Hedorah and made $20 million when factoring in foreign exports. Godzilla vs. Gigan is less ambitious than its predecessor and is visibly fighting against its kiddified status and budget, but assuming you can forgive the slow buildup and indulgence of stock footage it can be reasonably entertaining.

As with the previous few Godzilla movies, the human characters are more here out of obligation than for providing anything interesting and while there aren't any prominent child characters here that same feeling of childishness that many later Showa entries have seen is here in spirit. Gengo's bumbling and stupidly on the nose monster drawings based on "what kids hate" to an absurdly literal degree isn't as charming as it thinks it is, and the supporting cast aren't much more developed aside from being "hippie-ish" archetypes who are very Scooby-Doo like in their presence here. Given producer Tomoyuki Tanaka's hatred for Godzilla vs. Hedorah it's rather ironic that he not only recycles footage from that film, but also parts of the message as it is somewhat glanced over when the big "reveal" comes which is disguised with the subtlety of Snidely Whiplash or Dick Dastardly.

So how is the monster action at least? Half-good and half-assed. Starting off with the half-assed portion: the series continues its gratuitous use of stock footage with action scenes for Ghidorah lifted wholesale from Destroy All Monsters and Ghidorah, The Three-Headed Monster most prominently, and the movie does little to disguise it aside from cheaply applying a day-for night filter on it. It's pretty clear that the Ghidorah effects they have now aren't as mobile and dynamic as the early ones with the presence of older footage next to new footage exacerbating that point. With that said the climactic fight in World Children's Land that features Godzilla and Angilus/Angirus vs. Ghidorah and Gigan is pretty fun with Gigan a pretty visually interesting monster that looks like a mixture of a Cylon from Battlestar Galactica, praying mantis, and bird of prey and the fights have some pretty bloody impact scenes at points.

Godzilla vs. Gigan doesn't reach the Showa era's heyday but it doesn't exactly embarrass itself either (questionably suit quality at this point notwithstanding). Godzilla vs. Gigan is a comfortably middle of the road entry that while it has its annoying bits mostly gets those out of the way early enough that the ending is a pretty good time.

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.

"Godzilla vs. Gigan" is perhaps the best of the 1970s Godzilla films that was aimed for children. It's definitely the most fun and enjoyable. Not as good as the first couple of Godzilla films, but better than others.

What I mostly like about "Godzilla vs. Gigan" is the lengthy and very entertaining four-way monster battle at the end. It's very fun to watch and I never get tired of it. Not to mention that this film was the one that brought Gigan to life, and Gigan is one of my top favorite monsters. King Ghidorah and Angilas, and of course, Godzilla, were great in this one also.

The music score is also very good. I love the dramatic music score that plays when it looks like Godzilla's going to be killed by the laser beams. Also, the drum score when Godzilla and Angilas are heading to fight the enemy is great.

Overall, a good fun Godzilla flick. I'd recommend it.

The film does seem to drag quite a bit. It's not a bad movie, and Gigan is one of my favorite Godzilla monsters. He has a great design, and we even have him teaming up with Ghidorah, one of the monsters who (supposedly died in Destroy All Monsters but is somehow back) is one of the most popular and powerful Godzilla monsters. The creatures don't seem to appear though until almost halfway through the film, and even then, most of the destruction you see doesn't actually show that it's the monsters causing it. Some scenes do quite well, but not all of them. I also feel like they got kinda lazy with the designs for the alien invaders who control Gigan, it's like they just picked a roach out and said "oh yeah, there's a good alien". Toho could have done better than that I think. Overall the film concept is AMAZING but they didn't jump into it very well, a lot of crap goes on that is just unnecessary.