Monster King Godzilla

1980 (yeah, right!)

Directed by Who the Frak Knows!

It’s March of Godzilla 2011, so let’s get right into it with some weirdo Godzilla flicks you probably haven’t heard of!

Monster King Godzilla is a Godzilla movie mashup that is a very truncated version of the movie ESPy mixed with fight scenes of Godzilla from a bunch G flicks randomly inserted. Part of a couple of films (2, really) supposedly from a Hawaiian TV station that edited them for broadcast. Whether or not that is true, I am not convinced at all (this is discussed more in the upcoming Attack of the Galactic Monsters review) but it is probably just a clever fake. Good job trying to make this look like it came from a VHS tape, it might even have been copied onto one. FYI, the title Monster King Godzilla comes from the Japanese name for the 1956 Godzilla, King of the Monsters recut when it was released in Japan in 1957.

The best piece of research I have found on this is a blog entitled Monster King Godzilla that has one post, entitled Monster King Godzilla, that is just a scan of the supposed VHS jacket the bootleg is from with the same text you see everywhere. Huzzah!

Here is the text that accompanied this film:

“Very rare Godzilla film made for Hawaiin TV in 1980 by Filmways TV USA, 99% stock footage and a bizare wrap around plot involving physic powers make this a very strange film. AVI is from a VHS purchased at the Chiller Theatre convention in the mid 90s. I have never found any record of this film anywhere else.”

Ignoring all the misspellings, either this guy purchased what is probably a hoax and released it himself, or he just made up this story after creating the hoax and is feigning ignorance about the film ESPy.

Whatever the case, it doesn’t matter, as this is a frakked up Godzilla film so we’re gonna review it for March of Godzilla 2011!

First of all, since ESPy is used as a template for all the Godzilla mashup footage, let’s take a brief look at the 1975 Toho ESP/spy flick. It was part of their “mutants” series of films, back when Toho was making wacked out 1970s films that are rather freaky to watch today. The UN sets up an organization called Espy filled with psychics and ESP people, to stop a group called Counter Espy, who are evil psychics and ESP people. Why Counter Espy is named first I have no idea, having not seen the film, but I am guessing because they are psychic! Being psychic probably explains all sorts of plot problems with ESPy. How convenient! Counter Espy tries to kill the Prime Minster of Baltonia:

Espy stops them, and newbie Espy agent Jiro Miki (Masao Kusakari), his dog Cheetah, veteran Espy agent Yoshio Tamura (Hiroshi Fujioka), and girl Espy agent Maria Harada (Kaoru Yumi) must do battle with the evil Counter Espy leader Ulrov/Wolf (Tomisaburo Wakayama) to save the world from evil people who have special powers. No heads explode, which is a failing of the ESPy series, all one entries in it. Jun Fukuda directed this film along with War in Space, the other source film used in a Godzilla Mashup.

Godzilla flicks used in this film include
Godzilla vs. Megalon
Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster
Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla
Revenge of Mechagodzilla
Godzilla vs. Gigan

There are lots of quick edits and huge portions of ESPy is skipped as the film moves in in order to throw in all the Godzilla footage. So there will probably be some vary confusing things mentioned in the plot section, but it is accurate. Having not seen ESPy, I was at an even worse advantage, but I persevered because I’m awesome. You can be awesome too, all you need to do is read this review!

Who cares about the crappy humans, it’s Monster Roll Call!

Godzilla – Godzilla is the King of Monsters, and spends this whole film ruthlessly slaughtering all these throne pretenders. Megalon – Megalon is a drill-handed lame-o cockroach who gets what’s coming to him. The Smog Monster – Hedorah is all about the pollution and trying to kill Al Gore. Run for it, Gore! Mechagodzilla – Godzilla’s robot double is also trouncing around. Why doesn’t Espy use their ESP powers to go all ESP on him? Lazy Espy stock footage scenes. Titanosaurus – Titanosaurus proves you can be in more than one Godzilla film if some guy edits you into a fan film mashup. Keep dreaming the dream, Titanosaurus! King Caesar – Hail to the king, baby! Oh, wait, we already got a king… Hm… King Ghidorah – Hail to the.. We got way too many kings here! Jesus ain’t being born, we only got room for ONE king here, not three! Luckily, King Ghidorah gets beat up again! We’ll give King Caesar a pass because he’s awesome. Gigan – Gigan is a loser who sucks. I hate you Gigan. But not as much as your mom hates you. Anguirus – Yes, this blob is Anguirus who wasn’t quite edited out entirely. So now he’s in the Roll Call.

A psychic guy named Miki gets roped into ESP International (the name used for Espy in this dub) because of his paranormal powers. Despite them, he’s confused, because ESPy is very confusing. Godzilla is on the tv, and now the main characters are confused. Get a TV Guide, people! For all you young people reading this, TV Guide is a magazine that tells you what is on TV, it existed before TV’s just went ahead and told you what was on TV.

Meanwhile, a lady is driving a car when suddenly Megalon is destroying that dam! The damn dam! And some dude fights a dude in a church with bells. I have no idea what is going on. Monster King Godzilla, people! Godzilla leaps into the water to kick some Megalon butt.

Guys with ear protection arrive at the church with the bells to shoot everyone, the people inside are all disoriented by the ringing bells except psychic Espy Guy Tamura, who uses his ESP powers to disarm one attacker, then shoots the other. He’s so traumatized the first attacker gets away for a bit before he’s shot too. But there is more random fighting and I have no clue why the Espy guy is fighting everyone else. Maybe the Espy people are jerks?

Godzilla fights Megalon in scenes from Godzilla vs. Megalon edited that you can’t see Jet Jaguar in at all. BOOOO! Jet Jaguar is awesome. Megalon loses because he sucks. And because this is stock footage. The girl in the car uses her ESP power to do something and now Tamura gets captured by creepy bad guys on a boat. He doesn’t have ESP any more due to a 300 volt shock.

The bad guys are a paranormal gang and are demanding Espy Guy Tamura join them. They’re lead by a Bond Villain reject named Ulrov. The mutant baddies claim they are better than humans, and it is their duty to eliminate the human race. Currently there are far too many humans, like six too many, so they’re gonna have the humans kill all of each other. Hey, bad guys? I think humans are pretty good at killing each other. We don’t need your help.

The baddies beat him then chain him up and throw him overboard their boat attached to a weight. He sinks, but soon the chains are ESP snapped and two divers swim him off. Where the heck did these two extra divers come from? Did Tamura created them via ESP powers? Suddenly we’re in Godzilla vs the Smog Monster and a diver has a smogling chasing after him! Swim, diver, swim!

Espy Guy Tamura is put on the ESPy sub, where he begins to recover from his injuries. Maria is safe. We are told that. Now you are glad to know. An ESP mystic named Master Ceriban came down from the mountains to explain the baddies can teleport.

Meanwhile, Godzilla fights the Smog Monster. We got acid spitballs, leaky monsters, and kaiju jumping into the sea before the battle is over. ESPy guy meets Maria at a restaurant, she’s shell-shocked, seeing visions of skeletons and dead bodies (visions from the future…the future interspliced scenes of GvSM!) She’s not so traumatized that she’s showing bad fashion choices, as she’s decked out in a huge white hat, white fur coat, and huge glasses.

Maria saved Tamura in the fight by setting some guy on fire via ESP. Meanwhile Smog Monster is flying over people and sickening them. The Smog Monster blows up a power plant and Godzilla appears, ticked off because he’s the one who gets to smash up power plants, not some monster made up of Snicker’s wrappers. Godzilla gets sickened by sprayed poison, then Smog Monster flies over more people, skeletonizing them and this is edited into being the images Maria saw earlier. So we’re reusing stock footage now. Neat.

A lady with an earring somehow hypnotizes two pilots, who are flying the plane Tamura, Maria, and Master Ceriban are all on. Maria senses something bad, Master Ceriban then uses his ESP powers to save the day and refly the plane, but the effort kills him. Godzilla kills the Smog Monster and rips out its magic eyes and flames them into dust, which you might recall is how he wins in that film.

The Counter ESPys are gonna kill the Baltonian prime minister! Espy prepares to defend him at the UN conference. Miki is trapped in a building by blonde Japanese woman Julie, but he’s saved by his dog Cheetah. Godzilla trashes a city as scenes from Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla are used next. G-Fans will recognize that this is the fake Godzilla is later revealed to be Mechagodzilla. The real Godzilla appears and the two beasts fight.

Tamura saves Miki from something and gunfights break out. By the way, love is the driving force of ESP, just so you know. How do the evil guys use ESP if they got no love? I guess they have love for evil or something. I’d ask the Toho screenwriters, but I think they are all dead from all the drugs they were on in the 1970s.

Godzilla exposes Mechagodzilla, who then fight some more.

Tamura gets in a car and is trapped there via ESP with a bomb. Yeah. Counter Espy then takes over the mind of a speaker at the UN conference and declares that mankind needs to be destroyed, and the UN Conference gets treated like all the kids at Carrie’s prom and things fall on them and people scream as ESP mayhem wrecks the place. Good job, Espy, you totally saved that conference…from being a boring conference where no one was massacred in an ESP bloodbath! Maybe the UN should have called Reno 911 to do security.

Mechagodzilla and Titanosaurus are trashing up a city now because we’ve jumped into a new Godzilla film. Godzilla arrives and it’s a big battle. A titanic battle. With a Titan. Who is sore.

Tamura uses ESP to teleport out of the exploding car and into the conference just in time to slam into a gunman. ESP does the darnedest things! Teleporting, locking car doors, being blonde, taking over minds, going all Carrie, setting fires…but don’t try to fly a plane or you will die! The Counter Espy gunman is gunned down by like 30 dudes.

Godzilla and Mechagodzilla fight for a while, then Big G tosses Mechagodzilla around and blasts Titanosaurus. Hey, look! They forgot to edit out King Ceasar from this shot from Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla they’re using! So I guess he’s now in the cast. We have all the classic Mechagodzilla weapons – rainbow ray, chest blaster, finger missiles, toe missiles, twisted head, spinny head shield… But then Godzilla goes all electromagnet on Mechagodzilla!

Godzilla spins Mechagodzilla’s head right round, right round, when ya go down when ya go down down. So right round the head twists off! For some reason whoever edited also used the .WAV file of a creaky door opening over and over through this fight sequence, and also later as Espy agents Tamura, Miki, and Maria head to the bad guy Ulrov’s lair, as he has captured their Chief. Ulrov just laughs at them.
chief is captured and tied up behind traps

King Ghidorah! Awesome! Woooooo!!! And Gigan! Uh.. damn. This is just footage from Godzilla vs. Gigan. BOOOO!!! Godzilla pops up, upset that he can’t watch the Colbert Report in peace without all these stupid monsters invading the earth. He was soooo looking forward to this night’s The Word segment. Anguirus shows up for a few seconds during the fight sequences, looking like he was supposed to be edited out, so pretend you didn’t see him!

Ulrov goes on about how his ESP dad caught a murderer but then he was hung for the murder and therefore humans are dumb. FU, humans! “We’re all human beings!” says Tamura, right before they cut back to Godzilla.

Ulrov tosses everything in the house around via ESP to try to kill the heroes, but they start ESPing back. It’s a battle of the force and only the guy with the most midichlorians will win. As the fight winds down, Ulrov is set on fire, realizing love is the source of ESP as he’s aflame. Wait, how does this make sense at all?

Godzilla beats up the two monsters as the Espy heroes muse on if Ulrov was possessed by aliens because otherwise humans are evil. Newsflash: humans are evil. Welcome to Earth, Espy! A song plays as the heroes look at Godzilla via the magic of editing.

This was an experience. And experience in confusion! But at least it was free…free confusion!

March of Godzilla 2011 will continue!

Rated 4/10 (Dance!, Die!, Energy!, High blood pressure!)

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