Godzilla, Motra, Ebira: The Great Fight in the South Seas Became almost a thrash delirium in “Monster Zero” Godzilla cost this time much more sane plot without any aliens. And about the number of monsters here did not forget - Godzilla, the giant cancer Ebira, Motra in the shape of a butterfly and even the giant condor Daikondura (Daikondura) or Oocondora - there is something to see.
The approach to history is also interesting. Not only will the action unfold on the islands, moving to megacities to a secret base, but the characters are built here specifically. Such “villains against villains”, such as in the films about Godzilla has never happened.
In the center of the plot - a desperate guy for two months looking for his brother after a shipwreck. The local fortune teller assures that he is not in the afterlife and he is still alive. As a result, the main character simply steals a boat in the port along with two losers from a dance contest. The “owner” of the boat is suddenly another hijacker – a criminal genius who robbed the bank.
All four are shipwrecked when they encounter a giant lobster that has crushed the boat and drowned everything they have stolen. True, everyone managed to survive - rarely when the story has 4 key characters instead of three, and here, besides, there is also a woman and a scientist absent from the team.
The woman is soon found on the island. It's not all that uninhabited. That's just the locals - the organization "Red Bamboo", which creates nuclear weapons and uses the slave labor of savages from the island of Infanta. Here is one such savage and runs away from supervision, bumping into the main characters - already a team of five people, which is not great.
In total, we have a mysterious island, a hydrogen bomb factory, floating around a predatory sea monster, slave labor, a bunch of military fanatics, headed, it seems, the second time playing villain himself Akihiko Hirata (Seridzawa in Godzilla), even again with an eye patch, working on the always embodying role of bosses, and even on the “dark side” became the main villain – Juna Tazaki. The main role is also played by not a beginner in kaiju films - Akira Takarada, an escaped girl - Kumi Mizuno also with a number of genre paintings behind her shoulders.
And now the five main characters after all sorts of spy sorties, shootouts and errands on the island are in a cave, where, ironically, Godzilla sleeps soundly. Naturally, the atomic monster is better to wake up, so that he and the military distracted and overgrown crab crucified.
But the most interesting thing is that Godzilla, contrary to his last two films, is not represented here as a “defender of the earth” and “savior of mankind.” And it is perceived by the heroes as the horror of atomic war, and in itself sows chaos and destruction - simply because of the specifics of the terrain on the basis of the "villains of the film."
Fukuda, of course, not Honda, and the special effects for the film did not even Tsuburaya, and Sadamasa Arikawa under his supervision, and the music was not written by Ifukube, but again by Masaru Sato (“Godzilla attacks again”), and this time quite some ridiculous and delusional.
But the plot here is simply adventure. It's entertaining, a bit family-friendly and humorous, but not childish or ridiculous. Yes, there are a couple of places that make you hit yourself in the face with your palm – a tennis boulder between Goji and an overgrown cancer, the fact that Mothra moth sells Godzilla off his feet with a thin wing, and, because of the music, the scene of firing fighters, as Godzilla is dancing there.
The rest of the movie is good. The main thing is to endure the costume of the Monster King. Yes, Godzilla is terrible here, you can't take that away. He hardly changed in anything since the last picture - the frog-shaped "Korzhik", the costume did not even try to return to the level of "Godzilla vs. Motra". But the rest of the monsters are great!
Ebira is a horror of the depths, a thunderstorm of the seas, in fact just a huge cancer of red color, a kind of healthy lobster or lobster, claws, eyes on “sticks”, a characteristic tail and shell. Arthropod looks like a monster cancer. He's not funny, he's not human (except for the volleyball episode), and he's eating people alive.
The film is really hard to call a children's. For all its naivete, there is blood, murder, the shooting of slaves, people crushed by destruction, and the already mentioned devouring alive.
The giant lobster is shown literally immediately - the episode with the claw goes on in the fourteenth minute of the film. Godzilla will wait longer. Several scenes show him sleeping - and at this point the costume does not even look so bad, apparently it's in the eyes and some of the behavior. Wake him up by the method of Dr. Frankenstein - lightning! Wait for a thunderstorm, stretch wires to awaken an ancient sleeping evil, while slaves pray to their not arriving here Motre.
Motra appears at the end of the picture and "saves the day" as the deity is supposed to. Double case, Motra - already with wings. And the last time we saw it, we saw it as a worm. The butterfly has two models -- an amazing new one and a very shabby old one. Most often, an older model is used - the studio, apparently, wanted to keep the updated one intact and in a pleasant form. But this alternation still catches the eye from scene to scene.
The last participant in the battle of monsters for a short period of his star hour appears Daikondura / Ucondor - a huge bird attacking the tired Godzilla. They say that the monster was crammed into the Japanese, as irony over the American film “Giant Claw”.
There is another fact that puts everything in its place, and the strange behavior of Godzilla (throwing stones and sympathy for the girl) including. In the script, instead of Godzi on the island featured sleeping King Kong. A new costume has already been made - he will be involved in Ishiro Honda's "King Kong Attacks Again", but at the very last moment the studio decided that it would be better to use a "more popular monster" - and shoved the same Godzilla.
Monsters a lot, screen time they all have not a little, at least Godzilla and Ebira fight several times, including in chicly made underwater episodes.
At least, even with a ridiculous soundtrack and a number of ridiculous scenes, such a movie certainly can not be called stupid. It is very adventurous, full of plot curious moves, perhaps now obvious under the banal confluence of different circumstances, but still there is as much adventure spirit as in the masterpiece “Godzilla and the Alien from Space” of the 90s, where the action at first also takes place on the island.
Jun Fukuda didn't ruin Godzilla movies. At least not yet. With serious Kaiju tapes, this movie, of course, can not be compared, but to be something in the spirit of “Three Monsters” and “Godzilla vs. King Kong” he manages to fame. Well, maybe a little worse because of the delusional music that you want to scold just in every paragraph. The rest is a very good Kaiju movie. Quality, dynamic, interesting and with good effects of its time.
7 out of 10
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