Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.
Easily the most hated entry into the Japanese Godzilla series, Godzilla Vs. Megalon recieves a hell of a lot of stick from basically everyone. Despite this, it's a movie I actually look upon rather fondly, possibly because of my quest to see it. My introduction to Godzilla began one christmas, when Channel 4 decided to hold a 'Godzilla Season', showing a selection of the movies very late at night. After talking my parents into taping Destroy All Monsters,Terror of Mechagodzilla and Invasion of the Astro Monsters, we went on holiday to Austria, meaning I missed the final movie aired, Godzilla Vs. Megalon. What made it worse was the fact that the end of my recorded copy of Terror has a short promo for this film, making me even more desperate to see it.
I did finally get my hands on it some time a little later, on a double bill with another Godzilla movie I hadn't seen at the time, Godzilla Vs. Gigan, and it's this, very dated Polygram PAL print of the movie I'm reviewing. Missed out by both Columbia Tristar's 50th Anniversary releases and SMV's Classic Media series, this, along with Ghidrah the Three Headed Monster and Godzilla Raids Again is easily the toughest Showa era movie to come accross these days.
For this movie, we have an inventor for a main character. Goro Ibuki(Katsuhiko Sasaki - Godzilla Vs. Biollante) lives with his little brother Rok-chan(Hiroyuki Kawase - Godzilla Vs. Hedorah) and constantly chums around with a race-car driver named Hiroshi(Yutaka Hayashi - Dirty Hero).
Goro's greatest invention is a man-sized robot named Jet Jaguar, and one day, after a series of bizarre Earthquakes drains the local lake, he returns home to find two mysterious men snooping around. They escape, but they leave traces of a sand that can only be found in two places, one of which is Easter Island, and the other is at the bottom of the ocean.
It isn't long before they are back, and make off with Jet Jaguar, and we learn that they have been sent by a man named Antonio(Robert Dunham - Dogora), and that they are from an underwater continent named Seatopia, who are tired of Earth's nuclear testing in the oceans, and are planning to destroy us all by unleashing their fearsome guardian Megalon upon the surfaceworld.
However, as it turns out, Megalon is pretty stupid, and requires Jet Jaguar, who is no under alien control, to guide him to the cities of Japan for him to smash them up. When Goro regains control of Jet Jaguar, via a remote control, he sends him to Monster Island to find Godzilla to help. Without a guide, Megalon bunny-hops around the countryside, occasionally stumbling upon a city which he uses his many [stock footage] weapons to destroy, or occasionally fighting [stock footage of] the Japanese Self Defence Force.
When the Seatopians catch wind of Goro's plan to get Godzilla, we learn that they are also apparently buddies with the Nebula Spacehunter M aliens from Godzilla Vs. Gigan, because they phone them up(!) and request that they send Gigan to come help Megalon out.
Jet Jaguar, after making clear to Godzilla the situation, flies ahead, and somehow grows to Godzilla size, before keeping Megalon and Gigan occupied with some martial arts moves he apparently programmed himself to do. Godzilla then arrives, and the weirdest tag-team battle the world has ever seen is about to take place.
Now, viewed as a serious picture, or stacked against the first movie, Godzilla Vs. Megalon would recieve a well deserved thrashing. Europeans who live in an underwater continent between America and Japan, who happen to know what every two-bit inventor is working on, as well as maintaining constant contact with aliens? inventors who are smart enough to make robots that can fly, do karate and grow in size, but make other such useful devices as a terrifying dolphin water vehicle and televisions hanging from chains? very little in the movie makes sense.
However, ragging on Godzilla Vs. Megalon is actually a rather futile passtime, because the fact is that it's pretty clear the film wasn't intended to be taken seriously. The irritating kid and uber-heroic Godzilla are more Gamera-like than, well a Gamera movie, and the whole endeavour seems more like some form of utterly crazy acid trip than anything else.
As a kid, I loved the film, it was action packed, had 4 cool monsters, and was light-hearted monster-mashing fun. As an adult, I love the film, because it's the most utterly bizarre, caution to the wind slice of hilarious Science Fiction I've ever seen. Some of the sheer bizarre goings on, especially those hanging TVs, are just surreal, and Antonio complete with toga, huge sideburns and tattoos, is quite possibly the most brilliant leader of an advanced civilisation below the sea the world will ever see.
Come to think of it, it's a wonder it took Toho so long to put this movie out. They didn't waste time in incorporating plot elements(ie remaking with Godzilla inserted) The Mysterians, so it's a wonder why it took so long for Atragons plot to get the Godzilla treatment.
The movie's most entertaining feature is that it never lets up the action. From the heroes flying remote controlled airplanes into Seatopians faces, or the epic tag-team battle, director Jun Fukuda and the gang really didn't seem daunted by their complete lack of plot, and blasted on with an absolutely brilliant low-budget movie.
Not only does it feature easily Godzilla's most ridiculous move since Godzilla Vs. Hedorah granted him flight, where he performs a drop-kick to Megalon, with his tail dragging along the ground, but the film also gets some hilarity points for the sheer balls it has in trying to pass off some of the stock footage it does. Megalon has drills for hands, Gigan has hooks. This information didn't stop them showing scenes of hooked hands chopping down fighters, when Megalon was the monster doing the damage. Come to think of it, Megalon also shoots a yellow ray out of his horn, a yellow ray that looks like the one Ghidorah shoots from each of his 3 mouths. Funny that, because in one shot, you can quite clearly see 3 beams at once, with no monster on screen.
The sheer looting of scenes from Godzilla Vs. Gigan makes you wonder exactly if Gigan's inclusion was made simply so they could throw in about half an hours worth of that film in stock footage.
Now, I've never been a fan of the TV show Mystery Science Theater 3000, I thought it was an awesome idea, but the jokes were more often than not as bad as the movies themselves. Not, however, the Godzilla Vs. Megalon episode, where they were spot on, especially in pointing out Jet Jaguar's bizarre likeness to Jack Nicholson.
Speaking of the kaiju in the movie, we have 4, technically 6 on display here. At the start of the movie, we see Rodan and Anguirus on Monster Island, but the only contributing monsters are Godzilla, Jet Jaguar, Megalon and Gigan.
The Godzilla suit is finally a unique one, but it's not one popular with many fans. His face is very squashed up, and almost cute, but this is really to signify his completely un-menacing personality this film, and my only major suit complaints are that this was where his spines got far too puffy and wave about, kind of ruining the effect of bony plates jutting from his back.
Gigan is much the same as in the last movie, only his blue parts are a little darker, but most of his role is stock footage anyway. His suit still looks in decent condition.
Megalon is, despite what anyone says, really damn cool. He's like a big beetle, with drills for hands and a metallic star-shaped horn on his forehead. He can burrow underground, shoot electric beams from his forehead and spit balls of napalm. This is a pretty cool suit from the Toho crew, although where his drill-hands connect to his arms causes a bit of a sag in the rubber, which is a shame.
Jet Jaguar, where to begin. Originally a fan-created character which won a competition, the character began it's life as Red Arone, a cross between TV's Ultraman and Mazinga Z characters. A few changes were made, but not enough to warrant Ultraman's creators not investigating copyright laws, but to be honest I think they were overreacting. Jet Jaguar isn't any worse than Spectreman or Zone Fighter or any other Ultraman rip-off. However, with that said, try to picture a cross between Jack Nicholson and Ultraman, who has had a bucket of paint spilled accross him. While he looks quite nice from the front, he definitely costs the movie dear in terms of special effects, for the fact that they did not even attempt to hide the seam where the suitmation actor entered.
As for the non-monster effects, it's really a void subject, given that all of them are lifted straight from other movies. Even though these miniatures are well made, they weren't well made for this movie, and on many occasions, it's blatantly clear it's stock footage.
Before I try to talk about acting, I should talk about the dubbing. As you can probably expect, it's pretty bad. While the two protagonist men, as well as the Seatopian agents, have decent voices, Rok-chan's is so high pitched and irritating the neighbourhood dogs will hate you, and as for Antonio, well I dare anyone not to laugh at his attempts to wake up Megalon.
With that said, I'm sure you can forgive me for not wanting to go too deep into the acting talents of the cast. Come to think of it, that would be pretty hard when you consider the miniscule roles they have to work with.
Easily the greatest, or worst, depending on how you look at it, aspect of the movie is it's soundtrack. The sweeping militaristic marches of Akira Ifukube? the bouncy themes of Masaru Sato? eh, not exactly. First of all, Godzilla's arrival is signalled by a horn section going crazy, although that happens in a few 70s movies, so it's not the standout. What is the standout is the hilarious psychedelic music that comprises, most, of the the rest of the score. We have the tension building psychedelic track, the creepy psychdelic track and the general happy psychedelic track. It, as you have probably gathered, adds a real psychedelic feel to the movie.
However, easily the best soundtrack element, so good it deserves a paragraph of it's own, is the Jet Jaguar song. Dear god I don't think anything as brilliant as this funky track, possibly played on a banjo or a yukelele or somethig, complete with Japanese lyrics, something about punching, has ever been composed, before or after this song. Words actually cannot do it justice. If they released this today, on 2 CD singles and vinyl, I would buy all three, even though I don't have anything to play the vinyl on.
At the end of the day, Godzilla Vs. Megalon is the type of movie that you can only really give one of two scores, either 1/5 or 5/5. While it's completely inept as any form of serious movie, hampered by relentless stock footage, a hilarious story and several scenes of surreal stupidity, the film is really quite a bomb. However, the fact remains that it is quite easily one of the best bad films ever, and is physically impossible not to find at least slightly amusing. I was always going to recommend the film, it's too much fun not to, but I'm going to go with my head over my heart here, and issue it the 1/5, so to keep some continuity with my other reviews.
Godzilla Vs. Megalon is a horrendously silly film, yet it's also an epicly entertaining film. Contrary to what many say, it's a hell of a lot better than Godzilla's Revenge anyway.
Year: 1973
Titles: Gojira tai Megaro
Godzilla Vs. Megalon
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