Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975)

Godzilla, after 21 years, had come full circle from an angry force of nature awakened from the deep by nuclear bomb tests to a defender of the earth.  Aliens, supervillains, corrupt government officials and a virtual menagerie of monsters had attempted to bring him down.  They all failed, although Mechagodzilla came pretty close.

After the events of Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, those pesky aliens from the third planet of the black hole are back again.  Scientists pilot a mysterious submarine to find the remains of Mechagodzilla, only to be attacked by Titanosaurus, an aquatic reptile that had been theorized by Dr. Shinzo Mafune (Akihiko Hirata).  His theories about the monster, and attempts to control it, got him thrown out of the institute in which he worked. 

Biologist Akira Ichinose (Kastuhiko Sasaki) and Interpol Agent Jiro Murakoshi (Katsumasa Uchida) attempt to find the doctor, only to be told by the doctor's daughter Katsura (Tomoko Ai) that the doctor had died.  Truth is, the doctor is in league with Alien Leader Mugal (Goro Mutsumi), who saved Katsura's life by turning her into a cyborg.  Her transformation also made it possible for Mafune's attempts to control Titanosaurus to be successful, and now the aliens want him to do the same with a newly rebuilt Mechagodzilla.

Eager to prove himself right, Mafune pits Titanosaurs in a battle against Godzilla, which results in the former fleeing, but the point made.  The aliens ultimately plan, after destroying Godzilla, to use the same technology to control other monsters and destroy all the major cities of Earth, starting with Tokyo.  As usual, Godzilla is there to save the day, resulting in a three-way battle between the monsters.

Terror of Mechagodzilla brings the original series of movies to a close, after reaching a number of highs and lows.  Ishiro Honda is back directing, and this makes the fight scenes some of the best.  It is in fact one of the better Godzilla films that features him as a good guy.

There are still many problems.  The silly get-ups the aliens wear is laughable; they should have just stuck with the wraparound shades.  The dialogue, at least in the dubbed version, is laughably awful.  I don't know if this was done on purpose, but I would like to see the subtitled version so I could know if this was actually the real script.  In the past there have been some major differences in tone when it came to the Japanese versions of these movies, and I have a feeling that may be the case here as well.

The story has been done to death, but at least the original Godzilla retires with a bang.  Hopefully Titanosaurus makes an appearance again sometime in the future, as it is a pretty decent design, even if he doesn't breathe fire.

Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975)
Time: 83 minutes
Starring: Katsuhiko Sasaki, Tomoko Ai, Akihiro Hirata, Katsumasa Uchida
Director: Ishiro Honda

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Lawnmower Man (1992)

Image
Virtual reality has been one of the most hyped, and one of the most disappointing, promises of technology.  While it promotes immersion into a cybernetic world what it really provides are video games with 20-year-old graphics and the occasional bruise when one accidentally hits a closet door.  In the case of The Lawnmower Man  what it is promising is that something with graphics just a little bit better than Dire Straits's "Money for Nothing" video will somehow change the world and alter humanity. It was laughable then and it is laughable now.  The only person not laughing was Stephen King, who demanded that his name be removed from all future advertising for the movie because he never wrote this.  The story, of which a short film was made in the 1980s, involves a man unwittingly hiring a Greek god to mow his lawn and, after said god creates a spectacle, paying for the landscaping with his life.  It's only a few pages and, in my opinion, it is one of King's worst
Read more

Things (1989)

Image
Most of the time when I hear a movie is the worst ever I know that is hyperbole. There are few candidates and I would even say the famous book chronicling the worst movies ever made got it wrong.  Plan 9 from Outer Space is laughably incompetent, but enjoyable.  The worst kind of films are the ones where no joy can be found in the watching experience, for reasons ranging from unlikeable characters to just sheer boredom.  A truly horrible movie is something like  Things.   This is a 1989 direct-to-video horror film from Canada, filmed on 8mm and dubbed once it was completed and the makers realized most of the sound was unusable.  Director Andrew Jordan and writer Barry J. Gillis managed to grab porn star Amber Lynn for an hour to shoot her as a news reporter just so they could put her face on the video box.  Most of the music was done by Gillis, and some of it by a local band called Familiar Strangers.  It was filmed in large part in Andrew Norman's basement, and most of the props w
Read more

The Omen (1976)

Image
A movie does not have to be high art to strike a chord with the public.  The Omen was an attempt by writer David Seltzer to make some money and get a nice trip to the UK.  It just so happened that because of The Exorcist the public was hungry for more movies involving demons and such, and adding a veneer of Catholicism didn't hurt either.  The Vatican's secrets are most likely of more interest to scholars than anyone else, but a religion doesn't hang on over the centuries without creating a bit of mystery.  In this case, Seltzer settled on the Revelation of St. John, the low-fantasy portion of the Bible and, instead of an hilariously named (albeit historically correct) demon named Pazuzu, with The Omen we get the son of Satan himself.  When Robert Thorne (Gregory Peck) is informed that his child has died he visits a priest at the hospital in Rome where his wife is coalescing.  He is given an offer too good to be true: a foundling, whose mother died in childbirth, was born
Read more