Review: Godzilla vs Gigan (1972)
Godzilla vs. Gigan AKA Earth Attack Command: Godzilla vs. Gigan AKA 地球攻撃命令 ゴジラ対ガイガン AKA Chikyū Kogeki Meirei Gojira tai Gaigan AKA Godzilla on Monster Island has bad acting, too much focus on the humans, bad costumes, stock footage, and cockroaches, but it does have a long battle scene and the 1st appearance of Gigan.
Trailer:
Plot
A bunch of shady and weird businessmen want to build a Godzilla amusement park and make the world peaceful by eliminating the monsters on monster island. A comic book artist, his kung fu cute girlfriend, a female hippie, a fat male hippie, and a nerdy scientist team up to discover the deadly secret of these businessmen.
After an infinity of sitting through the crazy plot, it is revealed that these guys are really interstellar cockroaches underneath the optical illusion of having a human body that they replicated.
Meanwhile, the cockroaches have two monsters under their control: King Ghidorah and Gigan, the Space Monster. Godzilla and Angilas (now friends) are earth’s last hope. Angilas is a bad tag team partner since he has no tactics. Thankfully, Godzilla talks to him and teaches him how to fight the two monsters.
Speaking of the two monsters, they are deadly and, coupled with the alien cockroaches’ laser beams from a Godzilla tower in the amusement park, Godzilla bleeds and is almost killed before he gets a second wind. Suffice to say, Godzilla does a few tag team maneuver with Angilas to defeat Ghidorah and Gigan- but it was close.
The Good
- The real Godzilla composer is back…the music was great. Plus there was a new theme song at the end.
- Gigan may look like flying giant chicken from space, and you have to wonder how he got a circular saw in his stomach, and the laser beam eye, but he sure is a tough challenger and a unique-looking monster.
- The sound effects: all four of the monster’s voices were in vintage form. I laughed when a general listening to space recognized King Ghidorah’s voice.
- The blood: for the first times, we see monster blood and it’s pretty vicious.
The Bad
- Too much focus on the humans. I don’t know how I stayed away, but I did. And they were typicaly goofy. I was wondering: do the Japanese have such a poor self-image of themselves, or are they trying to make fun of the viewer being goofy enough to watch this movie?
- Stock footage makes a jumbled mess of trying to follow the fight scenes. We have costume changes, and day/night shifts.
- Why is Angilas so weak? He gave Godzilla a decent battle back in 1955’s Godzilla Raids Again.
The Ugly
- Godzilla’s costume actually falls apart.
- You can see strings and plastic heads on Ghidorah.
- Godzilla talking to Angilus…it sounded like a record scratching.
- They used real cockroaches for the aliens. The last time they used octopi for a monster was King King vs Godzilla, and the crew ate the fish after the scene….You do the math.
Conclusion
What can I say? New director Jun Fukuda was supposed to return the franchise to normalcy after Godzilla vs. Hedora, and in a way it is: bad acting, bad costumes, bad plot, bad villains…That being, said it wasn’t as bad as some others. Some fans peg this to be bottom of the barrel, but I don’t think it’s totally sunk.
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I actually liked the idea of the aliens being cockroaches but rendering them as such by showing shadows on the walls of their lair was bad.
I didn’t like the way the two monster’s speech was rendered, the sound much like an LP being dragged backwards.
Yuriko Hishimi was *very* sexy.
Not my favorite but still a Godzilla movie I can enjoy when watched…in moderation.
Yuriko Hishimi was the first godzilla chick to kick @$$
Half the time Ghidorah just stood there during the fight…