As the original era of Godzilla movies was nearing it's end, mainly due to a huge decrease in ticket sales, Toho studios had to pull something out of the hat to ensure that the next movie, the punultimate in the 'Showa Era', would be something special and exciting. Apparently learning their lesson from Godzilla Vs. Megalon, the majority of the juvenile aimed elements were scrapped, and while this film sticks to the standard 'Alien Invasion' plot that Toho had been doing a little too much for many viewers liking, they were going to introduce two new monsters into their rapidly growing stable of Kaiju, and one of them was their greatest triumph yet.

As with many of the original Godzilla movies, the film that Japanese audiences know as Gojira tai Mekagojira has been referred to under many titles in the Western market. Instead of immediately going with the translated and sensible Godzilla Vs. Mechagodzilla, the company that owned the US rights to the movie decided to play a little game of title recognition, and it was originally scheduled for release as Godzilla Vs. The Bionic Monster. Naturally, Universal Studios, the guys behind The Bionic Woman, weren't too pleased about this move, and threatened legal action unless the title was changed. While the movie was never released as Godzilla Vs. The Bionic Monster, a lot of promotional material was printed, which had to be scrapped, and the title replaced with the new one of Godzilla Vs. The Cosmic Monster. This is the title the movie went by in US cinemas, and it wasn't until it's home video release in America in the 1980s that it recieved it's more accurate title of Godzilla Vs. Mechagodzilla. To be honest, I'm not sure if it was available in the UK until the Tristar debacle lead to a few unseen since cinema Godzilla movies hitting home video in 1998. This, along with Godzilla Vs. Hedorah and The Return of Godzilla were 3 movies that may have been released in the 80s, but were long out of print until 1998.

The movie's two new monsters weren't exactly new ideas, first of all there is the Okinawa Lion-God King Seesar. Originally concieved as 'Majin Tuol' for use in the movie that would become Godzilla Vs. Gigan, Tuol was switched from a simple Daimajin clone into a giant monster version of the komainu Lion statues of Okinawa. One of the biggest debates is to what the hell the real way to spell his name is, it's more ambiguous than Anguirus. Personally, all reference material I've read, as well as the title of the Bandai action figure, uses King Seesar as opposed to King Caesar or King Shisa, so it's what I will go with.

Mechagodzilla's roots can be found in King Kong Escapes, for which Toho created an enemy for King Kong in the form of Mechanikong, a giant robot designed in his image, co-designed by US Cartoon makers Rankin Bass. While Mechanikong was a pretty silly and cartoony looking robot, and Mechagodzilla is pretty clearly a sleek and menacing instrument of evil, it's pretty clear that Mechanikong was the inspiration for this movie's titular villain.

If there is one thing that this movie makes blatantly clear, it's that Godzilla is the hero. Not only is he found on an ancient prophecy as being such, but everyone seems shocked when 'he' appears and starts causing havoc. He is now supercharged by lightning, and is more mythical beast than Atomic Metaphor. He has also gained a new ability thanks to his friendliness with lightning, as he can now turn himself into some form of giant electrical magnet, a power which he uses to his advantage when Mechagodzilla tries to escape.

This would be the final Godzilla movie that both director Jun Fukuda and his constant collaborator composer Masaru Sato would work upon, and quite ironically, it's probably the best the pair combined to work on. Fukuda is often cited as being behind the downfall of the series, a sentiment even backed up by Roger Corman, but personally I can't say I've hated any of the man's work in the series, it's just that it often isn't as good as the original movie's director, Ishiro Honda's movies were. Even then, what many people don't seem to mention is that Honda was responsible for a movie that even Fukuda's outtakes would be better than in the form of Godzilla's Revenge.

Personally I applaud Fukuda for taking the rational step of turning hero-Godzilla into the full blown mythical hero he is in this movie. I love the first movie more than any other in the series, but the fact, that Fukuda himself oftens states, is that had they tried to keep Godzilla as a somber and destructive force of vengeance, chances are the series wouldn't have got very far, and while I'm sure they strongly deny it now, I'll bet you that the majority of G-Fans enjoyed Fukuda's movies when they were younger, and seeing as they were aimed at younger viewers, I would say that makes them quite successful in their goal.

So in this 1974 series entry, we meet our main character, Keisuke(Masaaki Daimon - Terror of Mechagodzilla),a construction worker who has been doing business in Okinawa lately. His men have recently stumbled upon some form of ancient temple with what appears to be a prophecy painted on the walls, and a small statue of a komainu, with strange red eyes.
A beautiful female archealogist named Saeko(Reiko Tajima - Gamera Super Monster) appears to pick up the statue, but their actions are being watched by some shady characters. She begins to transcribe the prophecy on the walls, but can't quite work it all out, so takes some photos as well before heading back to mainland Japan.

Anyway, Keisuke's younger brother Masahiko(Kazuya Aoyama - Conflagration) is looking about a cave on Okinawa, and stumbles upon a scrap of a very strange metal.

Keisuke is returning to Japan for a holiday, but bumps into Saeko on the plane, where they both witness the first part of the prophesy, and one of the only parts she could translate, take place as the clouds appear to form a giant mountain. It turns out that the expert Saeko is going to visit is Professor Wagura(Hiroshi Koizumi - Dogora), who happens to be the Uncle of Keisuke and Masahiko, so they all converge upon his house, where he unravels the prophecy, declaring that a giant monster will appear to try and destroy the world, and only the emergence of two other monsters, one of whom is guardian of the Azumi royal family of Okinawa, will save the Earth.

This seems dangerously familar for Keisuke, who, just before leaving Okinawa was witness to the last remaining girl of the Azumi clan(Beru-Bera Lin - Turn Me On!) have a horrible premonition of a giant monster attacking Tokyo and killing hundreds of people.

Anyway, remember Masahiko? he takes the mysterious metal to a friendly professor named Miyajima(Akihiko Hirata - Atragon), who identifies it as 'space titanium'. He wonders where it has come from, and asks Masahiko if he can take him to the cave one day.

As things turn out, the prophesised evil monster appears...yet it's Godzilla, whom nobody can understand the sudden change of personality he's taken. He even brutally assaults his old buddy Anguirus, who mysteriously appears out of ground, which is just as out of character as his bizarre roar and change of ray colour from blue to yellow.

Anyway, the group of heroes realises that they must raise King Seesar to stop the threat, but they are getting constantly undermined by mysterious assailants who really seem to want to stop the King's awakening. Things take a turn for the more bizarre when Godzilla attacks and oil refinery and another Godzilla emerges to challenge him.
As the new Godzilla battles the destructive one, it becomes clear that the monster who attacked Japan isn't Godzilla at all, but instead a giant robot covered with skin to look like Godzilla. This deadly machine issues Godzilla a fearsome blow, and the bloodied King of the Monsters is knocked into the sea.

It turns out that his machine, dubbed Mechagodzilla, is actually the handiwork of a group of aliens from the 3rd planet of the Black Hole. They are really simian in appearance, and simply adopt human disguises, and it has been them who have been trying to stop King Seesar being roused. Their leader takes Professor Miyajima's daughter and Masahiko hostage, and forces him to repair the Mechagodzilla, which was damaged in the battle with Godzilla. He tells him that she will be released upon completion of the task, but naturally it isn't that straightforward, and the aliens try to steam them to death.

Thankfully Keisuke, who is suspicious of the length of time they have been away, has teamed up with an Interpol agent and storms the aliens base just in time to free the Professor and the other prisoners. You see, the Alien base is located in the cave where the space titanium was found, so that's how they knew where to look.

Upon escaping, the group splits into two, with half going to rouse King Seesar and the other half going to see if they can sabotage Mechagodzilla. The former succeeds, but the latter group gets there too late, and gets caught anyway, and forced to watch as Mechagodzilla pounds King Seesar to a pulp anyway.

However, in the midst of the alien's gloating, Godzilla, who has been biding his time and gathering his strength, appears out of the sea, and you can bet he is pretty annoyed that his robot doppleganger is tarnishing his name...

While the majority of my thoughts towards it are positive, mainly because it's at least watchable for elements other than unintentional humour, unlike Godzilla Vs. Megalon, but it would be utter lies to try and claim that Godzilla Vs. Mechagodzilla has a great plot. While this is the umpteenth time the 'Alien invasion' plot has been used in a Godzilla movie, it personally doesn't really bother me. It's not like there are hundreds of plots that can be used to explain all of these giant monsters, and at least this lot, Planet of the Apes wannabes or not, are a lot cooler than the cockroach people of Godzilla Vs. Gigan. I mean the plot has it's very silly elements, like exactly why a Professor would make a pipe that separates into two halves that mess up the frequency of anything that comes between them(this is an important plot point) and the fact that at no point it's explained exactly why the aliens made Mechagodzilla look like Godzilla, but to be honest, as far as cheesy 70s Sci Fi action goes, it's a likeable enough plot.
I mean we have our cliched group of scientist heroes, although I think archeologists may be new to the series. What makes the human element of this film a little more interesting is that it's blatantly trying to be a spy movie, probably to cash in on the fact James Bond movies were big in Japan at the time. What makes this a little amusing, is the fact that the spies couldn't really look any more like undercover guys. They wear sunglasses at night, and polo necks and overcoats on sunny days. Surprisingly it works quite well. I mean the last two entries gave us bad comic book artists and their hot karate girlfriend fighting alien cockroaches who run an amusement park, and some...inventor or something and his kid helping out fighting people from under the sea. All of a sudden a group of archaeologists, scientists and interpol agents fighting aliens who have built a ruddy great robot doesn't seem that bad.

My main problem with the movie's plot, is that it actually seems like two movies stuck together. The whole 'prophecy' element was an awesome idea, it's just a shame the movie didn't base itself around it more, and it doesn't really suit the Mechagodzilla character. The whole factor of the prophecy made me think more of some kind of ancient, flesh and blood monster, more along the lines of Ghidorah than an alien built robot. This is further reinforced by the fact that for some reason the Azumi girl's premonition actually shows Ghidorah, who doesn't feature anywhere else in this movie, doing the damage, and the fact that he was made into a legendary beast in later day Godzilla movies.

The whole aliens have built a Godzilla is also a good idea, but not totally good in it's execution. For one, actually explaining why they made it look like Godzilla would have been a good idea. However, the thing that bothered me most was that we never really saw much of Godzilla fighting Mechagodzilla. This should have been about the flesh and blood fighting the metal and oil, monster vs machine. We only briefly see that. I would much rather they had Godzilla fighting him alone than with King Seesar, who it's pretty clear was designed for another movie and just lumped in here to add running time.

This is a shame because we have two good starts to stories, but they never really gel into one solid plot. I really think Toho should have made two movies, one focusing on the supernatural, King Seesar related plot and one with more of an eye on the Sci-Fi Mechagodzilla elements.

What doesn't help the movie is the pretty bad dubbing job it's got. The DVD of this was the only one of Columbia Tristar's recent 50th Anniversary Region 1 DVDs I couldn't find, so for this review I'm using a PAL released Carlton Video VHS tape of it.
While most of the voices aren't really that bad, not as far as dubbing in a Godzilla movie goes, some of the things they say are just stupid. "reach for the sky" from an alien from 'the third planet of the Black Hole' was pretty amusing. As was basically every word the interpol agent's said. I'm sure, or at least I hope, the Japanese version also offers a slightly better explanation as to why Akihiko Hirata's character knows what Space Titanium is, or has such 'a powerful pipe'.
When I said 'most of' I wasn't referring to the Interpol agent or the Alien Leader's voices, which are quite frankly hilarious. The worst thing about the movie though, and this applies to all old dubbing jobs on Godzilla movies, is the way the monsters names are pronounced. Apart from the usual "godziller" and "gidyiller" to represent Godzilla, the movie also has a field day with every dubbers nightmare, Anguirus. To be perfectly honest, I don't know the correct way to say his name. Some say it like it looks, others say it more like Angillies or Angilas. What I'm pretty sure of, is that it isn't is "anqueerass" as they say it here.

Speaking of Hirata, his, along with Koizumi, were welcome faces as veterans of the series. The last few movies had eschewed the established Toho stars in favour of less famous young stars, many of whom lacked the presence of the stalwart actors of the 1960s. While Hirata is once again a scientist whose work is turned against him, and once again seems to perform well(it's hard to tell through the dubbing) his character is pretty minor. A fairly similar sentiment is relevant to Koizumi.
As I mentioned, the dubbing makes it pretty tough to fairly judge these people's acting abilities, but nobody really seems to do badly expression wise, it's just the odd lame dubbed voice that lets things down.

Godzilla Vs. Mechagodzilla was actually the 20th anniversary of Godzilla, and to celebrate, Toho did everything in their power to try and grant the movie a bigger budget. This was tough, given that cinema attendances were at a low, and many Japanese studios were in major financial trouble with Daei, makers of the Gamera, Daimajin and Zatoichi movies going bankrupt, and Nikkatsu, makers of Gappa switching their productions to money makers, like porn.

So while cash was tight, and any major-scale city sets of Eiji Tsuburaya standards were a laughable suggestion, the film was granted a decent budget, and was allowed to go free of stock footage, something which plagued the other 70s Godzilla movies.
While Teruyoshi Nakano isn't as fondly regarded as Eiji Tsuburaya or Koichi Kawakita, his work in the Godzilla series was always good for the budget, and it was nice to see that he actually got something to work with for this movie.

While the Godzilla suit is near enough the same one used in Godzilla Vs. Megalon, minor changes were made to the head of the monster, to try and make it look a little more fearsome. This doesn't really work, as he has the squashed up, almost dog-like face still, and his spines are far too large and puffy. Granted he still looks passable, and a hell of a lot better than he did in Godzilla Vs. Gigan, it was never the best Godzilla costume.

Anguirus, last seen in that movie, is in the same pretty bad shape, although thankfully they have wiped the paint off his forehead, and thankfully has pretty sparse screen time, most of which sees him getting smacked about anyway. This was his final appearance in a Godzilla movie until last year's Godzilla Final Wars, and to be honest, I don't think the suit would have held up any longer anyway.

King Seesar is much maligned for being too dog like, but personally I kind of like him, His matted fur over some nice armour-like stone skin looks pretty cool. And while it isn't Toho's best suits, I'm surprised they didn't make a series for him, he's that sort of character.

The show stealer is easily the Mechagodzilla. Not only does he look really nasty, sporting weapons all over his body, but this is also a really, really awesome suit. It actually looks metallic, moves nicely, and I think it's better and more robotic than the goofy thing in the 1993 remake.

While the monster battles mostly take place in the countryside, the battle of the Godzilla's at the oil refinery is really impressive to watch, and easily Toho's best work in terms of night footage in the original series, with the only light coming from the flames.

The only complaints I really have effects wise, are that when Godzilla meets disguised Mechagodzilla, the MG uses a different suit, used for promotional purposes. The suits are visibly different, but that doesn't stop the movie cutting between footage of the two suits, both to represent MG. It's really frustrating, and it just makes it a relief when his flesh is burned off.

Sato's score can be as brilliant as it can be frustrating. He creates a really nice exotic, yet oriental sounding theme for King Seesar, and a pretty bombastic horn-driven score for the final battle. What really frustrated me was Godzilla's appearance at the final battle, which lacked any real musical input. This was a pretty cool scene to watch, as he emerged, eyes first out of the sea and over a mountain. However, it sorely lacked a good musical piece to go with it.
Also of note when talking about the soundtrack, is that the Azumi girl has to sing to wake King Seesar, making this, as far as I can remember, the only Godzilla movie that doesn't feature Mothra, to have a musical number in it.

At the end of the day, Godzilla Vs. Mechagodzilla is one of those films that is 'good for a Kaiju Eiga' but in general not exactly good. While it's probably Fukuda's best Godzilla movie, in fact it definitely is, it was marred by the fact it feels like they had two good ideas, and figured throwing them together would make for a super movie. And it doesn't. While it has a fairly disjointed feel to it because of this, it has to be said that when the monster action does kick off, it's really pretty entertaining, and the spy/invasion human plot also moves along at a nice pace, meaning the movie never lets up on the action front. Indeed, while watching the film, it was well en route to at least a 4-Star score, but it's when you take a step back and think about it, that you realise how unfinished and unrelated the two plot elements were.

Godzilla Vs. Mechagodzilla is still a fun movie, even if it isn't flawless, and for any Godzilla fans, I would rank it as a must see, if only to witness Mechagodzilla's first appearance. It does enough to warrant 3/5 in my eyes, and it's Jun Fukuda's best contribution to the series.

Year: 1974
Titles: Gojira tai Mekagojira
Godzilla Vs. Mechagodzilla
Godzilla Vs. The Cosmic Monster
Godzilla Vs. The Bionic Monster

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King Kong Vs. Godzilla
Godzilla Vs. Mothra(1964)
Invasion of the Astro Monsters
Ebirah: Horror of the Deep
Son of Godzilla
Destroy All Monsters
Godzilla's Revenge
Godzilla Vs. Hedorah
Godzilla Vs. Gigan
Godzilla Vs. Megalon
Godzilla

Games
Godzilla: Domination for Gameboy Advance
Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee for XBox
Godzilla: Save The Earth for XBox

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV