In short: Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1974)

Original title: ゴジラ対メカゴジラ, Gojira tai Mekagojira

There’s trouble brewing in that most exotic of places, Okinawa. A priestess has apocalyptic visions, something the film calls “space titanium” is found in a local cave, and an excavation opens up a treasure trove of objects, including a pretty apocalyptic sounding prophecy and a statuette of an Okinawan protector godhood with the somewhat culturally improbable name of “King Caesar”.

And wouldn’t you know it, very quickly, parts of the prophecy come true. Godzilla, with a very unpleasant new voice and yellow-coloured nuclear breath starts on a minor rampage, has a little bout with the always outclassed Anguirus (despite their friendship, human characters comment with shock), until another, correctly voiced version of Godzilla appears and fights the impostor. Said impostor turns out to be a Godzilla-shaped mecha and proceeds to kick our hero’s ass.

Afterwards, it’s time to spend more time with the humans, who uncover that Mechagodzilla is part of an invasion plot of evil alien monkey people and have spy fy adventures which will eventually bring us to the climactic fight.

By 1974, the second generation of filmmakers working on the Godzilla films, who were never as beloved as the simply brilliant bubble around Ishiro Honda, was pretty much on the ropes. Kaiju cinema was one of the genres having particular commercial difficulties with the competition coming from TV. That situation was certainly not helped by first generation kaiju people like Tsuburaya making arguably better kaiju and tokusatsu entertainment for the small screen than guys like poor Jun Fukuda did for the big one.

Fukuda never managed to really fill the footsteps left by Honda as Toho’s main director of kaiju cinema, his competent craftsmanship not really standing up to the comparison with Honda’s – often quiet - brilliance. But then, I don’t necessarily need a film concerning a silly alien invasion by mildly evil monkey people and Godzilla turning Magneto to fight a mecha version of itself to be brilliant. As cheap and joyful entertainment, I like Fukuda’s last Godzilla movie just fine.

It is of course a shame that the budget only left space for two relatively small scale monster sequences (I prefer lots of kaiju in my kaiju movies, strangely enough), but Fukuda and company do make the best out of what they have, trying to put at least a good silly idea into every thirty seconds of these fights. There’s obviously Godzilla’s sudden magnetic powers to mention there, but I’m also very fond of our hero’s jack in the box style appearance to the climactic fight, or that he’s literally screwing his bad copy’s head off in the end.

The light and pulpy invasion nonsense in the middle is entertaining enough too. Fukuda could by now probably shoot stuff like this in his sleep, but here, again, he does his best to provide something of entertainment value every couple of minutes, be it goofy monkey masks for the aliens, a cackling Interpol agent, or just some mild but not boring chases and punch ups.

There’s really worse things to spend one’s time on than Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, and if that sounds like a somewhat underwhelming recommendation, a recommendation it still is.