Review of Godzilla vs. Gigan (1972) by Adam F — 22 Apr 2014

"Godzilla vs. Gigan" is a delightfully silly adventure that's so bad, it becomes good. The plot concerns Manga artist Gengo Kotaka (Hiroshi Ishikawa), who is a stupid, but curious man that accidentally stumbles upon the plans of a race of giant cockroach-like aliens from "Space Hunter Nebula-M" who plot to colonize/Invade Earth. Knowing that humanity's mightiest protector has thwarted the efforts of the Xians before them, they decide to use a bit of strategy and destroy both Godzilla and Anguirus before making their intentions clear. To do this, they call upon King Ghidorah (this film is set before "Destroy All Monsters") and their own creation: a cybernetic monster with scythes for hands and an abdominal buzzsaw called Gigan. While Gengo, his black-belt wielding sister (or maybe it's his girlfriend) Tomoko (Yuriko Hishimi), a girl named Machiko (Tomoko Umeda) who's brother Takashi (Kunio Murai) is being held hostage by the aliens and her hippie buddy try and find a way to foil the alien's plans, a royal rumble for the ages is getting ready to begin!

This movie scores pretty well when it comes to monster content. Fan favorites Anguirus and King Ghidorah return, the film lacks any mention of Minilla (the "Scrappy Doo" of the Godzilla series) and we get one awesome new monster: Gigan. This newcomer is such a cool creation. With his single cyclopean eye, his metallic claws for feet, his scythe for hands, his metal beak with mandibles and teeth to boot, a dinosaur-like tail, three wings adorned with spikes and jets that allow it to fly and, most importantly, the ability to draw blood. This is the movie where Godzilla and Anguirus bleed when in combat and considering these guys have been fighting monsters for nearly 20 years, it's about time. There is a ton of destruction when the two space tyrants arrive on Earth. As usual, military efforts to fend them off are useless and you can only watch in horror (or delight) as they reduce Tokyo to rubble. Not to be outdone, the climactic battle featuring Godzilla and Anguirus against our two villainous monsters is set in a children's amusement park and it gets completely flattened. These monsters toss each other around relentlessly. Biting, clawing, punching, and kicking, there's a lot of good monster action.

Up to now, this movie sounds pretty good, doesn't it? Well unfortunately, it isn't. That's no big deal, because you enjoy this film the same way you enjoy the old Adam West "Batman" television series. Kids will be genuinely entertained, while adults will have a riot laughing at the ridiculous story. One of the most memorable and hilarious parts of the film is when Anguirus and Godzilla actually talk to each other. Yes, you read that right. Part of the SHN-Mians' plot is to lure Godzilla and Anguirus using these "high tech" tapes in a frequency that only they can hear. When the tape gets played, we flash to Monster Island (whose security is actually pretty lax) and we hear the two of them discussing the strange noise before Anguirus decides to go investigate. Even if the voices had been cool instead of goofy, the scene would still be laugh-out-loud funny. This movie is filled with unintentionally funny material. From Anguirus' special attack where he jumps backwards to impale his opponents with his back spines, to the aliens' home world. Space Hunter Nebula-M. What is that? A planet? A solar system? A nebula? We are never told. The aliens themselves have a cool origin, but they are some of the stupidest aliens I've ever seen in a Godzilla movie. They are incapable of locking their doors, come up with ridiculous, convoluted plans to invade our planet and insist on making themselves easily identifiable by always wearing orange clothing and acting highly suspicious (their leader is a 17-year-old kid that sits in a large, spinning chair decorated like an alien planet). They keep a hostage around their base to aid them in their plan but the only way they keep him from calling for help is by keeping him in a locked room (with a huge window) and telling him politely not to sabotage anything. These invaders and their plans are almost as incompetent as the ones from "Plan 9 from Outer Space".

I've been avoiding talking about the human plot because in this movie, it's just as amusing as the monster action and it deserves its own paragraph. First of all, our heroes are just as dumb as the aliens they're supposed to thwart. Gengo is always snooping around the aliens' base because he finds them super suspicious but never has a good way to get out of trouble when caught. In his private life, he's a Manga artist that pitches terrible ideas to businesses and never gets hired. Not too much higher on the intelligence scale are our other heroes, who always go along with Gengo's plans, no matter how ridiculous they are. One of the highlights of the movie is a scene where Gengo sends crates of TNT (courtesy of the military, which is too busy fighting the monsters to send real help against the aliens) up an elevator to blow up the SHN-Mians' base. To make sure they detonate the bomb, he covers the explosives with a large poster illustration of himself and his friends wielding guns and looking like tough guys. The idea is that the aliens will be confused or just react really quickly to seeing humanoid shapes when the elevator doors open and actually fire at the explosives, killing themselves in the process! Adding to the hilarity is the horrendous dialogue and the dubbing that is without a doubt the worse I've ever seen in a Godzilla movie. You can't make something this bad on purpose.

When people parody giant monster movies, this is what they are making fun of. Goofy monster action that barely makes any sense, bad voice acting/dubbing, aliens with silly costumes planning to invade earth, incompetent authorities that put the fate of the world in the hands of a bunch of bumblers and some exotic monsters reducing cities to dust. I can't quite give this film as high a rating as the other truly great "so bad it's Good" film "Godzilla vs. Monster Zero" because of the frequent use of stock footage from many other films (ranging from "War of the Gargantuas" to "Destroy All Monsters") but there's a lot to love here. Just take it in lightly and you too can have fun at the expense of the patchy-looking Godzilla suit, the inhabitants of Space Hunter Nebula-M, the laughable story by Takeshi Kimura & Shinichi Sekizawa and that awesome Godzilla tower. (English Dub on Dvd, April 24, 2014).