Godzilla and Angirus vs. King Gidora and Gaigan After Tomoyuki Tanaka criticized the previous film, the Godzilla films moved in the usual vein of several predecessor paintings, telling time after time about the alien invasion. This time again with King Gidora under their control, but also with one new monster exposed to the title. Even returned the music of Akira Ifukube, instructing tracks from past different films about Godzilla.
A mysterious corporation is building a children's amusement park in Japan, promising to teach people "peace." They make terrible plans to take over and destroy our planet, being an alien form of life under human guise. Soon, the golden dragon Hydora and the bio-robot Gaigan arrive on the planet, and Godzilla and Angirus enter the fray with them.
Like the previous film, this film combines an extremely strange contrast, having both openly childish ridiculous episodes, and successful hard scenes, including abundant bloodshed (sometimes splashes fly straight into the camera). Godzilla is presented as a positive character, teaming up with his main rival from Godzilla will attack again - ankylosaurus.
Godzilla here for some reason already two costumes and their alternation strongly affects the impression. In some scenes, this is a quite acceptable costume from “Destroy All Monsters”, which has been used for several films, but in some scenes the appearance changes dramatically to a much more unsuccessful one. The atomic ray is quite good, although it has been better.
Moreover, the director wildly cheated, stuffing into the film just an incredible number of scenes from past Toho films. There are masers from Sanda vs. Gaira, and scenes shot by Ishiro Honda in a sand quarry, and Fukuda’s own fighters. Including different costumes Godzilla in different scenes in addition to the two that are involved in the main fresh story action.
Laps are just a huge number. The footage of past paintings is cut catastrophically, even without taking into account the time of day - the final night battle between four monsters two on two is constantly interrupted by inserts of blue sky and morning and afternoon episodes from previous films.
They even made idiotic boxing, but the most terrible thing is that Fukuda repeated for Yoshimitsu Banno the most shameful and wretched gesture of Godzilla - wiping his face with a waving paw. Everything, of course, is not as terrible as if Godzi again flew on an atomic ray, but there is an almost similar in idiocy moment.
The communication of Angirus and Godzilla is represented by the “comic clouds” of the text, while in the English and Russian versions we went further and read the conversation in voice, that is, it looks even more delusional than it originally looked. And the need to make such outright absurdities to the film, where blood and cruelty are shown with ecstasy, and the battle of monsters takes up most of the film is frankly unclear.
The human part here is as important as in "Chedor", that is, the people in the plot, like the dog's fifth leg. A kidnapped brother, some hippies, a karate sister, a comic book artist – all this is embroiled in a confrontation with alien cockroaches. Of all the actors, only Kunio Murai is associated with the Kaiju genre, and here, for the last time, Haruo Nakajima was dressed as Godzilla. In general, if Monster Zero had a bad and stupid plot, then Guygan took a seven-mile step further in this direction.
Of course, it’s not as bad as Godzilla’s Attack, and there aren’t even any annoying fanatical kids like the son of the main character in Hedore. Yes, and the film tries to build a serious mine (that is, there are no jokes, jokes, humor and frank comedy - just fantastic stoned nonsense of the 70s), and does not look openly childish, as the next - "Godzilla vs. Megaro" (aka Megalon).
Angirus, by the way, looks chic in "Destroy all monsters" here is not that has undergone serious changes, but looks, of course, worse and generally only receives from enemies, despite the thorny back and tail. But at least in the end somehow realizes its potential, albeit not the most believable jumps.
Hydora is perfectly executed, he is still the best Toho monster of the Shova-era after the arthropods. There are no claims to the Golden Dragon, except for his trademark roar - he is the most squeaky of all enemies of Godzilla and is no good anywhere.
But here's Guygan, the new monster, even in the title - it's some ridiculous squalor in the form of an armored cyclops chicken with a circular saw in its stomach! His appearance makes him laugh in his voice. Godzilla's more ridiculous enemy is yet to be found. Even Gabara looked like a monster, not a giant penguin (hello to Monty Python).
His tail was made, and the blades-hands, and the plates on the back, like, funny, and the jaws, apparently, were planned four-legged, and not so pronounced beak, and still nothing sensible happened. And the rotating saw built into the belly is a very dubious advantage, although many clearly liked it and seemed a successful find.
But, to be fair, Guygan is portrayed as Godzilla’s harsh and serious enemy. This is the second movie where the King of Monsters is not able to cope with his rival. It always requires human help and the intervention of the main characters - at least this somehow justifies the worthlessness of the clinically sick storylines of the "human" part of the plot. And that's nice...
There are a couple of very significant moments – for example, the scene where Godzilla sees his copy of the statue will be played through the film, and the battle in the amusement park will probably influence the inspiration of a similar fight in the most outstanding, greatest and most masterpiece of Godzilla film, released in 1992.
Special effects in the film was done by Teriyoshi Nakano, who was responsible for the children's "dolls" in "Daigoro vs. Goliath", apparently hence the stupid appearance of Gaigan. He also did Hedora in Godzilla vs. the Mist Monster - also not the most remarkable, although one of the strongest in fact rivals of the atomic lizard.
However, urban scenes and all kinds of models, layouts, miniatures are made an order of magnitude weaker and worse than when the effects were engaged in Tsuburaya, lovingly bringing into the objects every plank and shingles. But Nakano likes to blow up houses - Gidora here arranges a real lawlessness with its bright lightning.
With a bunch of its flaws and unforgettable bad clouds, the film still looks good. A lot of action, King Gidora looks great, Angirus is good, Godzilla is tolerant, and only Gaigan is a walking puzzling misunderstanding. Unfortunately, it will appear several more times. But the monster villains here at first beat the lizards to the fullest. Fukuda clearly wanted the audience to start worrying about the main lizard.
Godzilla vs Guygan is not bad anyway. But nothing more. There are four kaiju, there is no excessive comedy and childishness, although the plot is already completely thrash. But the action in most cases good it is very much, although there is a huge number of borrowed scenes and self-repeats. You can watch it because it is not the worst Godzilla movie.
6 out of 10
Original