Godzilla vs. Gigan

aka Chikyû kogeki meirei: Gojira tai Gaigan

1972

Starring
Hiroshi Ishikawa as Gengo Kotaka
Yuriko Hishimi as Tomoko Tomoe
Minoru Takashima as Shosaku Takasugi
Tomoko Umeda as Machiko Shima
Toshiaki Nishizawa as Kubota, Head of Children’s Land
Zan Fujita as Fumio Sudo
Kunio Murai as Takashi Shima
Directed by Jun Fukuda

Godzilla Freakin’ Talks!!!?!?!?! What the Monkey Slurm???

Excuse me, let me start again….

Before Godzilla vs. Megalon, Gigan fought Godzilla in his own headlining movie, Godzilla vs. Gigan! Actually, that isn’t exciting enough to warrant the exclamation point, but I’ll keep it in as it’s too much a bother to hit the back button. GvsG is amazingly similar to GvsM in monster fight style, as they both mirror the 2 vs. 2 scenario. We have Godzilla teaming up with another staple, Anguirus, to take on the Dastardly Duo, Gigan and King Ghidrah. Wait, King Ghidrah is working with people now? He first showed up headlining his own film, Ghidrah (or Ghidorah), and it took the combined might of Godzilla, Mothra, and Rodan to take him down. Ghidrah later reappears in the very next film, Godzilla vs. Monster Zero, and just Godzilla and Rodan take him down. For Destroy All Monsters, Ghidorah seemed to return to superpowered mode, as it took half a dozen or so monsters to make him pay. Now, we see how far the King has fallen, that he’s teaming up with an upstart, the buzzsaw-chested Gigan. Gigan (as discussed in the GvsM recap)is a cylon-looking freakshow. He’s got a beetle-shaped head, can fly, has huge hooks for hands (must make peeing hard) and a rarely used buzzsaw in his chest. Gigan’s single eye glows red, red with hate, hate for all things Godzilla. Unfortunately for him, but fortunately for us, Godzilla flows with far much more hate. Or is it love? After all, at this point Godzilla is a good guy. So it’s love. Yeah, love. Godzilla’s pal Anguirus makes his first appearance besides a bad cameo of stock shots on this site. Anguirus is based on an Anklyosaur, from back in the days when you didn’t need to be shooting lasers or energy beams or buzzsaw chests to be a cool monster. He’s from the second Godzilla film, which was released here as Gigantis, the Fire Monster but is now properly called Godzilla Raids Again. Godzilla’s suit here looks just plain awful, and in some of the scenes, you can see the arms are worn ragged, with pieces nearly falling off. As I only have the English version, that’s what will be reviewed, though the few differences will be highlighted as we hit them.

The plot involves two Godzilla staples, alien invasions and environmentalism. Space Cockroaches (spoiler!) invade disguised as humans, with a nasty plan that shows they failed to watch the dozen other films where aliens invaded, only to be beaten by Godzilla. Does the universe have no collective memory? Also, why are aliens always invading Earth, with the amazing plan of destroying it by one or two solitary monsters? At least in Final Wars they had dozens of monsters, but it’s still very inefficient. Enough of logic, it’s time to get this bug’s nest humming. Gigan. Anguirus. King Ghidrah. Godzilla!