La Guerre des monstres

This is one of the more original Toho productions out there, and it's also one of the more frightening. The Green Gartantua is the bad one, and he is only too happy to eat people whole whenever he gets the chance. The classic seen in this movie is when the Green Gargantua comes ashore near a hotel/apartment complex and tears the walls off exposing people inside. Then he grabs one and pops them into this mouth, chewing with gusto! To top off this great scene he *spits out* the chewed clothes of the person he ate, sort of like a person would spit out a cherry pit.

This movie really needs a re-release on DVD!

We'll give credit to TOHO productions, it is different from the Godzilla films, which I adore. It seems they just used different monsters while using the same scaled army vehicles and scenery. Having viewed Frankenstein Conquers the World, this "Sequel" doesn't quite add up to it's previous storyline which was a little vague, blame it on poor editing? Had they expanded on why and where these 2 monsters originated from, it would make more sense, while still leaving out human dialogue. I saw this film as a child, it scared me into believing there really were creatures walking around stomping on people! When you hear the lady singing on the cruise ship, and that poorly written song sticks in your head, believe me, you'll wish she had been eaten first. The movie is a classic, worth a look see.

A fond and nostalgic personal memory, "War of the Gargantuas" was a welcome treat in my family's living room (they had more console television sets back then; am I getting old or what?), and is one of my favorite Japanese monster movies. When they aired it, which was often, I'd get a chance to watch it five times during that week, at 8:00pm on a KTLA (Los Angeles area Channel 5) Movie of the (whole) Week (I was just a kid then, and before anybody was able to rent videos at Blockbuster).

Barebones Summary (without spoiling it for the inexperienced viewer):

A beautiful young female scientist, Akemi (pronounced ‘ uh-kay-mee '), does research on a docile, missing-link-like monster child -eventually called `The Brown One.' (There is a cute scene in which Akemi feeds it a chocolate bar, soon after it has played with children's toys). One day the small and hairy young creature escapes the laboratory and grows up alone in the forest. Some years later Akemi meets an American scientist, Paul Stewart, and you just know these two lovebirds are going to fall in love.

Meanwhile at Tokyo International, a huge green monster pops out of the ocean and proves everybody wrong when they say Airport food is lousy. The ugly sea titan sticks its hand in an office window, pulls out an even uglier cleaning lady and shoves it in his mouth. As it munches away and spits out the wrapping (clothes), the clouds overhead start to clear (Ouch, it hates the light!), so it peels-off down the runway and dive-bombs into the ocean.

Elsewhere that evening, aboard a luxury yacht, an American singer belts out a corny love ballad to her formal audience-`The words get stuck in my throat…' (And you just know someone--or something--will soon put a stop to her awful singing).

Before you know it, the behemoth brothers meet several times to resume their sibling rivalries by knocking the wind out of each other, smashing military vehicles of all shapes and sizes, and knocking over downtown buildings.

I believe WOTG offers considerably more than your usual Toho Studios/Japanese Monster Movie, and could do with a modern spin (provided the original plot is not much altered as to seem another film entirely). It certainly has its comedic moments, as already mentioned. There are infinite possibilities in remaking it. The Japanese are great at creating model tanks and realistic building models… all that stuff. And the title creatures are scary looking… ‘Green' looks like a gargoyle without horns, and ‘Brown' looks like a somewhat frightening, foreign version of Frankenstein's montster

I saw this movie when it was in theaters in Queens, New York around 1968 and the promotional ad stated that the first 100 movie goers will receive a free pet monster. Well, my monster loving friends & myself were all over that. Turned out that the pet monster was a silly little rubbery goofy animal. Everyone loved them nonetheless! We all enjoyed the movie & it was billed as a second feature along with D.A.M. Destroy All Monsters! What a blast! War of the Gargantuas was definitely the better of the two flicks and every time I went to the beach after that kept hearing that eerie music and waited for the green gargantuan to rear his big ugly head out of the ocean. The ultimate battle between good (brown gargantuan) and evil (green gargantuan) as can best be done in Japanese monster fashion. Russ Tamblyn was popular at the time after appearing in West Side Story and Tom Thumb. I would say this was his best movie. I recommend it to any monster movie buff. MikeW

For monster lovers, this has to rank up there as one of Toho Studio's greatest and most satisfying giant monster movies. For those looking for it, there's plenty of nonstop monster mayhem and devastation on tap. However, it's hard for me to decide which of the two versions I prefer; the Japanese original (which calls our creatures "Frankenstein's" and is a direct sequel to Toho's own FRANKENSTEIN VS BARUGON, aka FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD) or the U.S. edition (which christens the beasts "Garganutas" and works better as a separate stand alone story). This may be a rare occasion where the American rendition proves to be more entertaining, for a few reasons...

One grisly sequence shows the evil monster chewing a woman victim up like a piece of meat and spitting something out; in the Japanese version it's a bouquet of flowers, while in America it works more effectively as the girl's clothes.

Another quality I prefer in the U.S. edition is some of the music. Just works better for me during the action sequences of the monsters being fought off by the army as well as when they're beating each other up.

In the American film, Russ Tamblyn is especially funny to hear while looping his own embarrassed voice into English. And no matter which version you settle on, you'll still get the treat of hearing a female nightclub singer belting out that horrendous and long-vilified classic tune with hilarious lyrics that include "the words get stuck in my throat"! Worth watching for this alone! *** out of ****