Godzilla and Jet Jaguar vs. Megalon and Gaygan When the monster Megalon didn’t make it to the previous movie, Godzilla vs. Guygan, it was decided to keep the monster in the archives and use it in the future. Toho staged a special competition, which was won by a boy, an elementary school student, who invented a robot named Red Arone, combining the features of Ultraman and Mazinger-X. The robot was eventually renamed Jet Jaguar and decided to make a movie about it.
This was the beginning of Jet Jaguar vs. Megalon. At a late studio, the studio realized that the film could not be drawn in a Jaguar solo and decided to add Godzilla to the plot of the popular monster. In the plot, at the same time, again bring the space robot penguin Guygan ... the most ridiculous opponent of Godzilla of all possible.
Special effects were done again by Teruyoshi Nakano - he has a kind of mania for making monsters without arms - what Guygan has, that Megalon has blades and drills in their places, and also create jaws of four wings for monsters. The megalon is molded according to Guygan's patterns, but it looks even more decent.
The film is very bad with the story part, it's just some kind of tinkering poorly related scenes. No sooner does the film even somehow introduce the characters, as there is a fault in the lake, robbers suddenly appear at home, then chases, kidnappings begin, meaningless and merciless action with a cut from other Toho films, and the characters say occasionally stupid replicas and somehow interact with each other, explaining the chaos taking place on the screen.
The underwater civilization is dissatisfied with nuclear tests and sends its deity Megaro - a giant kaiju beetle to deal with humanity. And at the same time, a couple of their agents intend to use the robot Jet Yagura for their mysterious purposes.
The main characters are the three characters - a little boy, again the same annoying Hiroyuki Kawase from Khedora, his older brother - the inventor of the robot and their mutual friend. The picture is again spoiled by the music of Riichiro Manabe, who has already written silly themes for Godzilla for Khedora. Well, on the final credits again sounds a children's song, more suitable for the opening of some anime.
The costume here is simple - Godzilla made a charming cutie. But at the same time he is cute, but still does not look so stupid and ridiculous, as, for example, in “Son of Godzilla”.
Jet Jaguar and worse. His stupid “smile” carved on his face makes the image completely ridiculous. Various Japanese superheroes like Ultraman had no such appearance problems. Moreover, the robot itself here is humanized even more than Godzilla - moments with dizziness or the threat of Guygan to cut his throat - simply do not fit into his head. And the ability to increase in size and have your own thoughts is simply beyond the line of good and evil.
Guygan hasn't changed from the last movie. It's still an armored chicken with penguin features, equipped with a circular saw in its belly. Megaro - aka Megalon is made not by example worse than all other Toho arthropods.
However, in this film, Megalon is still the best thing there is. If he were serious about the TV series and an enemy of some Ultraman, he could even become one of the best Kaiju rivals, since there were even worse monsters on TV screens. I also want to open up to admit that Megalon is many times superior to most of the stupid enemies of Gamera from the studio Daya – Toho’s main competitor in the field of Kaiju franchises.
Cinema could go on an abundance of action - chases, fights, shootouts, battle of four giants! Two monsters - Godzilla and Megalon, as well as two robots - Jet Jaguar and Guygan. But all this is very lazy and not expressive.
The union of a robot and an atomic lizard looks ridiculous, and although it does without stupid comic clouds and voiceovers in their dialogues with each other, it is still full of ridiculous scenes, like handshakes!
Usually, arguing which film is still worse than “Attack of Godzilla” or “Godzilla vs. Megalon” fans operate, they say “Godzilla’s Attack” consists of pieces of other films and new footage there is nothing. Hah, an attentive viewer will notice that just this film also completely consists of borrowings and repetitions, sometimes even their own!
Jun Fukuda, back in Godzilla vs. Gaigan, shamefully popped up a bunch of scenes from early Toho films. He even copies the episodes from exactly the same place, although there is only a year difference between the films! The nightmare of all, when the eye begins to cut from the uneven gluing of footage of military equipment from a variety of studio paintings - of different quality, shot at different times of the day, Fukuda cut almost in the spirit of "the best of" - using here shots and scenes not only from films about Godzilla, but also various other projects.
For the purpose of cheating - for the film, no new scenery was even reproduced except the episode with the truck on the dam! For the whole film there is not a single mashup scene with monsters against the background of buildings or military equipment, with fleeing people and an impending monster.
Everything is filmed with wild gags, all through the alternation of early material - whether it is an evacuation, a parade of military equipment or firing from cannons, tanks, masers ... Megalon even made a yellow lightning beam, so that under his alleged attack on the city to mount in the film absolutely all scenes of the attack of King Gidora, exactly the same beam blowing up houses in previous films.
In general, the old frames here are hardly less than in “Godzilla Attack”. Exactly like that wretched film, this weak movie is completely molded from the moments of other films, and “Attack” is mounted at times less than “Megalon”, although there are their shoals with the time of day, but here they are just with such frequency and so sloppy that it remains only with the hands to divorce.
The film failed at the Japanese box office, but it was a resounding success in the United States, collecting unthinkable for Godzilla films of that time money at the box office and even got on the TV premiere to such a giant major as NBC, where even Belushi Sr. in a Godzilla costume was invited to host the show before the screening. Even the criticism of the film was positive.
Godzilla vs. Megalon is deservedly considered a terrible Godzilla movie. The monster itself appears only at the end, but the movie was shot, in general, and not about him. Everything is simply bad here - the script (and its almost complete absence), costumes, staging stunts and battles, here shamefully insert pieces from other films, crookedly trying to fit into the final product, reinforce all this with terrible music and frankly ridiculous, stupid and wildly childish scenes.
Yes, there are as many as 4 kaiju, a lot of action without respite on the characters and plot, explosions, blood, posters from Playboy with Diana Baker and Gloria Root - but this does not pull the film out of the abyss of poor production, stupid story and frankly shameful presentation of material. Fukuda has never made such a bad movie!
3 out of 10
Original