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Review: Godzilla vs Gigan
Year: 1972
I heard a rumour that there is a new Godzilla film being released soon, however, after searching online, and also being to the cinema a few times, I haven’t seen any evidence of this. You’d think that they would have tried to promote such a well known series..
Anyway, enough of my hilarity. I have been a fan of Godzilla since I saw my first Godzilla movie when I was very young. I remember it was Destroy All Monsters… Soon after that, they released all the Godzilla movies on VHS (remember them!) in funky black cases.. And now, they are all available on DVD… In case you haven’t figured it out, the Godzilla series is generally about giant monsters fighting each other, while annoying social commentary is played in the background. There is always a moral to the stories, usually aliens come down to either conquer, or make Earth a better place, however humans complain about it, and have marches, and then the evil ailens giant monster battles the Earth monster. Its generally good fun.
This particular Godzilla film is exactly that… Aliens have decided to bring peace to Earth, which involves an invasion of the body snatchers type affair. They bring with them two giant monsters, Gigan, a mad cyborg parrot thing with a buzzsaw for a stomach, swords for arms and lazer eyes… Awesome… The other is King Ghidora..Not the band… The three headed dragon. Also awesome.
Doesn’t get much more awesome.
Earth has Godzilla, and his mate Anguirrus, a giant spiky dude (see above picture). They all meet up and have a ruckus. Its all good fun.
This is not a particularly serious movie.. The human elements have some slapstick, which I think is generally common for their films, but there are even parts of the film where Godzilla and Anguirrus speak to each other… In English… Which I didn’t expect.
But the funniest moments come from the special effects. They are great! Obviously, its the 70’s, there isn’t a particularly big budget.. So the cities, and most of the armies are just models. And not very convincing ones either. But that really adds to the charm of the movie. The suits for the monsters are pretty good. Gigan being the most impressive. Godzilla looks a bit awkward sometimes, but still to this day has the best monster roar of all time!
Fuck you Michael Bay!
The problem with this, and in my opinion, is the same with all monster movies… They include parts with humans… These films should all be 75% monster fights, and 25% people getting crushed/eaten etc. Having said that, this movie has one of the more interesting human stories in it, so I didn’t mind as much.
One of the most awesome looking scenes in the movie, as Gigan and Ghidora smash up Tokyo!
So, its a good movie. So camp, cheesy, badly dubbed (I guess you could watch it with subtitles). The special effects are so bad they are awesome. Its great watching a little RC tank getting stamped on by the equivalent of those novelty monster slippers you can get.
Watch it with mates… You will have a blast! Especially the fights!
Like this one…
Overall
4 out of 5.
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