Runtime: 88 minutes
Directed by: Ishiro Honda
Starring: Akira Kubo, Jun
Tazaki, Yukiko Kobayashi, Yoshio Tsuchiya, Kyoko Ai
From: Toho
This is like The Avengers of kaiju movies.
Returning to the nice, widescreen subtitled prints that Starz has on Amazon, I saw this film... one that Toho tried to make epic as this has scenes in outer space, aliens using mind control on both humans and monsters, and oh yeah... plenty of kaiju madness. Besides Gojira, there's Mothra, Rodan, Gorosaurus, and Manda, among others. Oh, and there is also Godzilla Jr. and a popular critter that surprisingly shows up in the final act.
When the creatures aren't on screen wrecking miniature sets as they're being controlled by the Kilaak aliens-which believe it or not at one point reminded me of T2 after a key scene-the human story is also interesting. Some astronauts get involved and they all wear amazing yellow spacesuits w/ helmets that look like overturned buckets... it's tremendous. You may not want to think too hard about the actual plan the Kilaaks have for conquering Earth but that did not bother me too much; worse IMO was how not all the critters got equal time and some I would have liked to have seen more of (or just seen, period) during the big finale.
In any case, the villains are fine (while they naturally look like attractive young Japanese women, they aren't as memorable as the ones from Invasion of Astro-Monster but what can you do?) and there was enough kaiju action spread out to where I never got bored. Plus, unlike what was erroneously promised in the American posters for Godzilla vs. Megalon, the Big G actually attacks New York, albeit briefly. I sure as heck don't count Godzilla '98 as besides the film being a giant pile of dung, “Zilla” is a pale imitation of the real thing.
Returning to the nice, widescreen subtitled prints that Starz has on Amazon, I saw this film... one that Toho tried to make epic as this has scenes in outer space, aliens using mind control on both humans and monsters, and oh yeah... plenty of kaiju madness. Besides Gojira, there's Mothra, Rodan, Gorosaurus, and Manda, among others. Oh, and there is also Godzilla Jr. and a popular critter that surprisingly shows up in the final act.
When the creatures aren't on screen wrecking miniature sets as they're being controlled by the Kilaak aliens-which believe it or not at one point reminded me of T2 after a key scene-the human story is also interesting. Some astronauts get involved and they all wear amazing yellow spacesuits w/ helmets that look like overturned buckets... it's tremendous. You may not want to think too hard about the actual plan the Kilaaks have for conquering Earth but that did not bother me too much; worse IMO was how not all the critters got equal time and some I would have liked to have seen more of (or just seen, period) during the big finale.
In any case, the villains are fine (while they naturally look like attractive young Japanese women, they aren't as memorable as the ones from Invasion of Astro-Monster but what can you do?) and there was enough kaiju action spread out to where I never got bored. Plus, unlike what was erroneously promised in the American posters for Godzilla vs. Megalon, the Big G actually attacks New York, albeit briefly. I sure as heck don't count Godzilla '98 as besides the film being a giant pile of dung, “Zilla” is a pale imitation of the real thing.
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