How about some monster films for June?

Gorgo (1961), directed by Eugene Lourie. Often referred to as the British Godzilla, this film combines both Godzilla and King Kong. Like the latter film, this one focuses on greed and exploitation. The two men who capture the infant Gorgo (not knowing he has a parent), are encouraged to pass him over to a couple of scientists/paleontologists, but they sell him to a circus that sets up in Battersea Park, London. The plot is simple: two fellows who run a salvage boat find and capture a creature that comes to be known as Gorgo. This creature, as it turns out, is the child of a much larger parent who comes looking for his/her child. When mama or papa Gorgo reaches London havoc ensues, and we have the pleasure of seeing familiar places crushed by the large creature. Down goes Tower Bridge, down goes Big Ben, down goes the British Museum, and so on. Bullets, tanks, rockets, bombs, nothing is able to stop the raging parent. But heck, he or she just wants baby back and at the end the two walk peacefully back into the sea from whence they came. Nature gets its own back. These creatures, by the way, appear to have been unearthed by a volcanic eruption in the sea, not by radiation. I say this because the volcano appears also to have killed some large fish things that look like something created by radioactive activity. These monstrous fish appear briefly early in the film. All in all, this monster movie has its charms.

 

Gamera: The Giant Monster (1965), directed by Niraka Yuasa. I won’t say much about this Daiei Studio kaiju rival to Toho’s Godzilla because it is the least interesting of these films I have seen. It clearly takes it cue from the Godzilla series in that we have a giant creature, this time a turtle (!), unearthed from under the Arctic ice by an atomic explosion, that wanders about knocking down large buildings. Gamera makes its way to Tokyo where it wreaks havoc in a not unpleasing way. To give the story a bit of human interest, we have a young boy who befriends the monster and wants to see it saved. And so it goes, humans shooting various weapons at Gamera, Gamera breathing fire and eating fire too, people running about, and mayhem everywhere.

Atragon (1963), directed by Ishiro Honda and Shue Matsubayashi. An undersea empire called Mu that is guarded by a giant snake-like creature decides to conquer the world. Captain Jinguji (Jun Tazaki) has other ideas. Captain Jinguji and his crew have secreted themselves on an isolated island, and there they have built a new submarine that can fly as well as dive beneath the sea. The submarine is dubbed Gotengo or, in the English version, Atragon (“Atomic Dragon”). The submarine also has a nifty drill for a prow. And so a battle rages above and beneath the sea, with a goodly number of buildings razed to the ground. Characterization is minimal, and we do not see the sea creature a lot. There are a couple of spies, and the Muans are pretty good at turning the heads of their enemies purple. All in all, this is a rather tepid entry in the kaiju series from Toho. I was reminded of the Flash Gordon serials with Buster Crabbe. 

 

Space Monster Wangmagwi (1967), directed by Hyeok-jinn Gwon. If you value your time, then strongly consider giving this Korean entry into the kaiju genre a miss. The eponymous monster’s name is the best thing about this film. As for the monster, he or she or it has very bad teeth and a protruding tongue. Aliens in shiny suits and helmets drop the monster on earth not far from Seoul, expecting the creature to wreak havoc and eat earthlings. Well, the monster does wreak a little havoc, but I did not see any eating of earthlings. Oh, a young boy does make his way into the creature’s ear and later his nose, irritating Wangmagwi no end. The young boy also finds that Wangmagwi holds a young bride in his left hand, a reminder of King Kong. So we have King Kong crossed with Godzilla in this attempt to capture the monster-starved viewer. The said viewer, however, will find little nourishment in this film. Some films are so bad, they can be fun, and perhaps this film will be badly amusing for some. 

 

The Mysterians (1957), directed by Ishiro Honda. At the outset of this film, a huge and mysterious robot appears and wipes out an entire village. Humans manage to destroy this thing, but shortly after they do, an alien spaceship arrives. The aliens, who look remarkably like humans, say they are peace-loving beings who just want 3 square kilometres of land to park their craft on for a while. Oh, and they also want a crowd of earth women to mate with. For some reason I did not grasp, they seem unable to procreate with their own kind. Humans balk at the thought of sending their women to mate with these aliens, but the aliens take a few women anyway. And soon they are asking for 70-some kilometres of land. You get the picture. An all-out war erupts and we have the destructions of tanks and planes and buildings and soldiers and flying saucers. Of course, radiation comes into the action, and talk of the H-bomb. This is a Gojira-like effort from Honda, director of several Godzilla movies. We have the doomed hero who, for a while, sides with the aliens, but eventually learns better. We have the message that humans need to be careful how they act. This is a cautionary tale and warns of the misuse of science and the destruction of the planet if science goes unchecked. The colours are catchy and the wide screen photography effective. The special effects are what you might expect from sci-fi films of the 1950s. The look of the film may have dated, but the cautionary message remains pertinent.

 

Destroy All Monsters (1968), directed by Ishiro Honda. Here is another kaiju film from Honda, and it tries to outdo earlier films with a host of monsters from Godzilla to Rodan to Mothra to Gorosaurus to Manda and more. Eleven monsters show up here. All the monsters are contained on Monsterisland as the film begins, but a group of aliens with a lair underground has taken control of the monsters and let them lose on the world. There goes the United Nations building in New York, oh oh, and there goes the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. London, Beijing and Moscow fare no better. Humans must get the monsters under control and set them against the aliens. All this is colourful and catchy. The film not only has an impressive array of monsters, but it also has trips to a lunar base, journeys underground on earth, and battles galore. What the film does not have are characters with personality or dimension. The plot is thin too. What it offers is an extravaganza of monsters knocking things – buildings, ships, airplanes, other monsters – hither and yon. This one lacks the nuclear angle or any other socially aware angle. Even the aliens are harmless-looking and remarkably human-looking. For those who enjoy rubber-suited behemoths kicking things about, this one is for you.

 

Godzilla vs Gidan (1972), directed by Jun Fukuda, Yoshimitsu Banno, Ishiro Honda. This one is like a comic book, complete with speech balloons for talk between our hero Godzilla and his sidekick Anguirus. The human protagonist, Gengo Kotaka (Hiroshi Ishikawa), happens to be a comic-book artist, who has created a couple of monsters, one a Homework Monster and the other an over-protective Mother monster. Anyway, Gengo finds himself and a small group of others trying to rescue a fellow from the bad guys who are building a Godzilla theme park. These bad guys are alien cockroaches who have taken the form of humans wearing excessively orange clothes. In their efforts to take over the world, they enlist the help of two monsters, King Ghidorah and the eponymous Gidan. Ghidorah has three heads, and Gidan has a belly that contains a slicing buzz saw. These guys are impressive, and so too is their battle against Godzilla and Anguirus. While the small group of humans destroy the cockroach aliens, Godzilla and Anguirus defeat the two bad monsters and send them flying back to space. Keeping with the ecological warnings of some of the 60s Godzilla movies, the film lets us know that the aliens come from a planet that has destroyed itself through excessive pollution and also nuclear carnage. The word “camp” seems appropriate for this one. It has some hilarious moments.

 

Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975), directed by Ishiro Honda. This one not only has Godzilla and his mechanical adversary Mechagodzilla, but also Titanosaurus. The three of them duke it out while knocking buildings in Tokyo left and right. It seems the aliens from the third planet of the Black Hole are back to try and conquer earth. They enlist the aid of Dr. Mafune (Akihiko Hirata) and his daughter, Katsura (Tomoko Ai) because the doctor has learned how to control Titanosaurus, and his daughter, after dying and being revived by the aliens, is turned into a cyborg who controls Mechagodzilla’s brain. Interpol is on the case, and we have some running about an island forest along with the battle of the giant creatures. Titanosaurus steals the limelight with his tail that can expand to become a fan that waves and created a wind strong enough to knock Godzilla for six. As for Mechagodzilla, he can lose his head and still remain a formidable foe, emitting a beam from the small round ball that remains. All in all, this is good fun.

 

Godzilla Minus One (2023), directed by Takashi Yamazaki (also visual effects). Celebrating 70 years of Godzilla, this film is something of a throwback, clearly referencing Honda’s 1954 film while also giving us reminders of other films in the long-running series. The effects here are exceptional. Allusions to such films as Jaws, Dunkirk, War of the Worlds, and of course other Godzilla movies give us much to admire. But what is more impressive is the human story, or stories, here. The main character is Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuki Kamiki), a kamikaze pilot at the end of the Second World War who feigns engine trouble in order not to carry out his suicide mission. This act, along with a second act of seeming cowardice when Godzilla first appears, haunt him throughout the rest of the film. Much of the story involves the makeshift family Koichi becomes part of in the aftermath of the war in the ruins of Ginza in Tokyo. The strength to survive despite hardship and ruin are at the forefront here. The cast of characters is nicely drawn. Indeed, it is the human element that is so compelling in this film about a huge monster capable of hurling battleships hither and yon, and knocking down tall skyscrapers with ease. This is an impressive contribution to the Godzilla films.

 

War of the God Monsters (1985) directed by Kim Jeong-Yong. Here is a low budget Korean kaiju film that uses lots of stock footage taken from the Japanese TV series Return of Ultraman. The story is slight. Climate change has resulted in the Arctic ice melting, and as the “ice walls” crash into the sea, a number of weird and very large creatures are released to do havoc among humans. Only one human, Dr. Kim, knows what is happening. He lives with his young daughter in an isolated place by the sea. The film begins with a young woman reporter arriving in this isolated place to do a story on Dr. Kim. Perhaps the best thing about this rather modest entry into the kaiju genre is the interaction between the three humans, Kim, his daughter, and the reporter. The rubber-suited creatures are hokey. Yes, they are colourful and also very odd looking, one of them is a huge twin-like ghostly thing with the head of a bat (I think) between the two ghostly parts. If I haven’t described this clearly, well that is because the thing is just downright nutsy. Then we have the large chicken thing and the huge rhinoceros thing, and a few others for good measure. One of the viewer reviews on IMDB has the headline: “Forget that this is a movie and just let it happen to you.” I think this says all that needs to be said.