Il ritorno di Godzilla

This is a most unusual Godzilla flick. To be exact a low budget affair with no big city to destroy with Godzilla doing his battle on an island. The story line is a little James Bond-ish, but we know Godzilla is the reason we are watching. The story line is of no real concern as long as Godzilla does his thing.

A group of young men take out on a sailboat in attempts to find a long lost brother shipwrecked and thought lost at sea. The would be rescue party ends up shipwrecked themselves on an island that is guarded by Ebirah, a giant mutant lobster-like creature, thus GODZILLA vs THE SEA MONSTER(USA title).Also on the island is a militia base that is producing nuclear bombs to overtake the world with. Godzilla is awakened from his nap in a cave to take on the sea monster and destroy the evil soldiers and their bomb factory.

My favorite scene is where Godzilla and Ebirah appear to be playing ping pong with a boulder during their showdown. Actually this is one of Godzilla's easiest foes to whip. Maybe to help in cutting production costs.

The low budget was due to the fact that at the time TV viewers were lowering movie theater attendance. This did not seem to effect the popularity of this particular Godzilla outing.

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.)

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

Of all the Japanese monster films that came out from the mid Fifties to the mid Seventies, Godzilla Versus The Sea Monster is the only one that seems to have taken a political stand on anything. The Japanese for obvious reasons are big on nuclear disarmament. This film involves Godzilla and two other giant monsters involved with the Red Bamboo who are a group conducting nuclear experiments on a deserted south sea island. Of course there was no such a group as the Red Bamboo, but the power across the Sea of Japan did have a Red Guard who were pretty active in those days. I think that was another political statement that Godzilla Versus The Sea Monster was making.

Anyway some 20 somethings who were involved in a dance marathon which opened the film, commandeer a boat that was to be the getaway vehicle of a bank robber to search for the brother of one of them who set sail southeast and was not heard from.

It's there that a storm washes them ashore on the island of the Red Bamboo. These dastardly folks are not only conducting nuclear experiments, they're making heavy water to use as nuclear fuel, but are using slave labor. The slaves are being taken from the island that Mothra resides, but he's sleeping and the natives are doing their best to arouse their friend and protector.

To discourage escape in the meantime, the island is guarded by Ebirah a giant lobster monster. The Red Bamboo controls him by means of the nectar of some exotic tropical fruit that acts as a tranquilizer.

When our heroes arrive, they discover that Godzilla is in some kind of coma asleep on the island. Needing an ally they look to get him awake to start doing his thing. Of course all three monsters battle it out in the end.

This particular all star monster spectacular is a cut above the others for its political statement wrapped up in the dopey way these films play. But I have to admit a soft spot in my heart for them.

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.