Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla
Release Date: 21st March, 1974
New Monster: Mechagodzilla
Description: Pimp
Origin: Built by an invading race of alien gorilla men.
Destruction: GODZILLA TWISTS HIS F***ING HEAD OFF.
Actor(s): Isao Zushi (Godzilla), Ise Mori (Mechagodzilla), Kinichi Kusumi (Anguirus and King Caesar)
Description: A floppy-eared, fast-moving bipedal dog ape demon.
Origin: Magically unleashed from a mountain and sung to life as means of protecting an ancient Japanese clan.
Destruction: King Caesar merely goes back to sleep.
Ancillary Monsters: Anguirus
Like the Star Trek movies, the Godzilla films seem to be alternating between totally awful, kid-friendly messes, and outright cinematic classics. Godzilla vs. Megalon is an incomprehensible mess. Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla may easily be one of the best of the Godzilla movies. I’m a little baffled by this constant change in quality, as it’s the same studio and most of the same creative team behind them all, and they’re cranking these out with startling regularity (there was one Godzilla film a year since 1964 until 1975, with the exception of 1970). How is it they went from such an awful film to such a good one? This is a question best left to philosophers.
The quality of the monster, I am finding, can directly determine the quality of the film it is in, and Mechagodzilla is most certainly one of the best monsters in this canon. Mechagodzilla is an evil robot clone of Godzilla, possessed of all the awesome traits of both a giant nuclear lizard and a giant robot. It can roar and stomp and breathe nuclear breath like Godzilla, but can also shoot lasers and missiles like a robot. I defy you not to feel inspired joy when looking at Mechagodzilla. What’s more, this film has another slow burn setup, allowing the story to kind of get going before it turns into monster mayhem. The story – about mysterious alloys and secretive criminal organizations – is not entirely original in the Godzilla scope, other than to say that it is kind of necessary.
And who built Mechagodzilla? Why a race of alien apes, of course. Hiding on our planet disguised as human (a conceit that has been used at least four times before), a race of evil aliens – apes – desire to take over Earth. They will do so by making a robot double of Godzilla. Which is perfectly logical. At first, people think that Godzilla has had a change of heart, and has begun wrecking stuff for not reason again, but it doesn’t take long for the real Godzilla to show up and reveal that he has a robot clone. Mechagodzilla makes short work of Godzilla and of Anguirus (poor Anguirus gets pretty badly bloodied) and returns to base for repairs. This allows the locals to call upon an ancient prophecy about a monster that will rise to protect their clan.
Yes, in addition to Mechagodzilla, there is also an ancillary monster named King Caesar. Our heroes arrange a special magical statue on a rock at just the right time (the statue was stolen by aliens and then stolen back early in the film), and it fires a laser out of its eyes, disintegrating a mountaintop. Underneath was a long-hibernating upright dog demon that is awakened with a musical number. King Caesar eventually teams up with Godzilla to fight Mechagodzilla. Godzilla twists the robot’s head off. This is one of the coolest scenes in any movie. The fight between Ellen Ripley and the alien queen at the end of Aliens is downright boring in comparison.
I will say little else other than to recommend Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla. It’s just fun. I could go on about how King Caesar represents tradition and how Mechagodzilla represents encroaching modernity, but I’d rather just glory in the simple visceral thrills of what amounts to be one of the world’s best monster movies. So far this one, Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, and Destroy All Monsters are running the best, and Godzilla vs. Megalon, Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster, and All Monsters Attack are the worst. I’ll be sure to give a final judgment at the end of this eight-week project.
Be sure to join me next week as I bid farewell to the Showa era, and ring in the Heisei era. The Heisei era began with a reboot of the franchise called The Return of Godzilla, and was a proper sequel to the 1954 original, ignoring all the films from the interim. In the same fashion as the original, there were actually two different versions of it, including the Japanese original, and an American severe re-edit, which also featured Raymond Burr (reprising his role from Godzilla, King of the Monsters!). The Raymond Burr version was released in America as Godzilla 1985. The original Japanese version was never released in America.
A warning: I have had some trouble tracking down The Return of Godzilla, and I may not be able to review it in time for next week’s article. If that’s the case, I will charge ahead as usual, and then review it when it arrives in the mail. I apologize if I have to do this. But it will eventually be reviewed either way.
Until next week… Roar.
Witney Seibold is a featured contributor on the CraveOnline Film Channel, co-host of The B-Movies Podcast and co-star of The Trailer Hitch. You can read his weekly articles B-Movies Extended, Free Film School and The Series Project, and follow him on “Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind. If you want to buy him a gift (and I know you do), you can visit his Amazon Wish List.
