Horror Film Review: Godzilla vs SpaceGodzilla (dir by Kensho Yamashita)

Posted on October 14, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Poor Godzilla!

At the start of 1994’s Godzilla vs. Spacegodzilla, our favorite big green radioactive monster isn’t asking for much. Mostly, he just wants to live on his island and be left alone. He’s busy raising Baby Godzilla and he’s minding his own business. That’s one thing that people tend to forget when it comes to Godzilla. With the exception of the very early films, Godzilla is usually just minding his own business until he’s forced to go on a rampage by either aliens or humans. In this film, Godzilla has to deal with both.

There’s a SpaceGodzilla heading towards the Earth. Apparently, Godzilla cells were released into space during the epic battles that were featured in both Godzilla vs. Biollante and Godzilla vs Mothra. Those cells were exposed to the radiation of a black hole and the end result was SpaceGodzilla. SpaceGodzilla is coming to Earth to not only dethrone Godzilla as King of the Monsters but also to transform Earth’s core into a power source that it can use to do whatever it is that SpaceGodzillas do in their spare time.

After being warned by those two annoying little faeries that follow Mothra around everywhere, psychic Miki Saegusa (Megumi Okada) and some members of G-Force head to the island that Godzilla calls home. Unfortunately, the Yakuza follows them because the want to capture Miki so that they can use her psychic powers to control Godzilla and use him to …. well, I don’t know. I mean, yes, Godzilla is an awesome weapon but he’s really big and there’s always a lot of collateral damage whenever he gets into a fight and it seems like using him to commit any sort of Yakuza-style crimes would be a bit counter-productive. I mean, you can’t really extort businesses if they all get destroyed by Godzilla, can you? Plus, I just don’t see Godzilla agreeing to chop off the tip of his finger or get all of those Yakuza tattoos.

But listen, I’m thinking too hard about the plot here. Yes, there’s some stuff that goes on with the humans but that’s all forgotten as soon as SpaceGodzilla lands and abducts Baby Godzilla. Grown-up Godzilla is out for vengeance and it leads to some very dramatic fights. This film gives us a chance to see Godzilla fight, more or less, himself and it’s an entertaining sight. This is a bit of a campy film, even by Godzilla standards. It even ends with a warning that SpaceGodzilla might return if human don’t stop polluting space. (Uhmm …. talk to Mothra, she’s the one who sent all those cells up there.) But the important thing is that the battles are fun to watch and Baby Godzilla is adorable.

Who needs the Son of Godzilla when you’ve got this?

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Horror Film Review: Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II (dir by Takao Okaware)

Posted on October 10, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Mechagodzilla is back!

Well, not quite. While 1993’s Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II does indeed feature a giant robotic Godzilla who gets into a battle with the real Godzilla, this Mechagodzilla is not the same Mechagodzilla who appeared in the previous Mechagodzilla film. (Maybe I just like typing Mechagodzilla, who knows?) Instead, this Mechagodzilla is a robot that was built by G-Force, the military branch of United Nations Godzilla Countermeasures Center. (Booo! Thanks for wasting our tax money, UN!) This Mechagodzilla has been built out of parts left over from Mechaghidorah and it exists not to conquer the world but to protect it.

Wow, that was an exhausting paragraph to write. On the one hand, I appreciate the fact that the Heisei era Godzilla films actually made an attempt to maintain a consistent continuity. On the other hand, it’s difficult to keep track of all of these different monsters and robots. I have to admit that trying to follow the plots of these movies always tends to make my ADD go crazy. Really, the important thing is that Godzilla fights a giant robot version of himself and Rodan helps out!

That’s right. Everyone’s favorite Pterodactyl shows up in this film. (The previous film in the franchise reunited Godzilla with Mothra so it just makes sense that Rodan would eventually return.) Godzilla gets upset when he discovers that Rodan has a Baby Godzilla egg in her nest and, after an absolutely adorable mini-Godzilla hatches from the egg, the two of them fight over him. However, Godzilla and Rodan later team up to battle Mechagodzilla. The monsters may not like each other but they get even more annoyed with robot versions of themselves. One thing that I really appreciate about the Godzilla films of the 80s and 90s is that they show just how exhausting it is for these monsters to constantly have to fight each other. Godzilla and Rodan are both exhausted towards the end of this movie. At one point, it appears that Rodan makes the ultimate sacrifice to save Godzilla and I have to admit that I got surprisingly emotional at that point. But then I remembered that Rodan was going to show up in a later movie and immediately start fighting Godzilla again. Seriously, monsters are like cats when it comes to showing each other appreciation.

Anyway, the main attraction here is Baby Godzilla, who is absolutely adorable in a way that horrific-looking Son of Godzilla never was. It helps that Baby actually looks like Godzilla as opposed to looking like the bastard monster child of Godzilla’s mailman. There’s an awe inspiring scene where Baby Godzilla runs up to Godzilla and we see that Baby Godzilla is barely the size of grown Godzilla’s big toe. It’s both a cute scene and a reminder that Godzilla is beyond huge.

This was an entertaining entry in the Godzilla franchise. The plot is less important than the battles and the cuteness of Baby Godzilla. Try all you want, G-Force. WE LOVE GODZILLA!

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Horror Film Review: Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (dir by Kazuki Omori)

Posted on October 8, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“Godzilla has been erased from time …. but now, King Ghidorah is here!”

Whoops! I guess you all shouldn’t have traveled back in time and kept that dinosaur from mutating into Godzilla then!

1991’s Godzilla vs King Ghidorah was the 18th film in the Godzilla franchise and, because the Back To The Future franchise was very popular in Japan at the time that the film was made, it has a plot that revolves around time travel. A group called The Futurians appear in 1990s Japan. They explain that, by the year 2204, Godzilla will have destroyed all life in Japan. However, they have a plan. They’ve built a time machine and they will be going back to 1944 so that they can remove Godzilla from his island home before the nuclear testing begins. For some reason, the Futurians take a few people from the 90s back with them.

After witnessing a dinosaur stepping on a World War II American army platoon, the Futurians arrange for the dinosaur to be transported to the Bering Strait, where it won’t get doused with radiation. Meanwhile, they secretly leave behind three adorable baby dragons that, once nuclear testing begins, will end up being transformed into King Ghidorah.

It turns out that Futurians are liars! I’m shocked too. In 22o4, Japan is actually the most powerful country in the world and it is so economically strong that America, Russian, and Europe are dependent upon it for their survival. The Futurians were just jealous of what a great country Japan was destined to become so they decided to get rid of Godzilla and instead allow King Ghidorah to destroy the country.

Now, if the Futurians were smart, they would have actually destroyed the dinosaur. Instead, they just sent it to the Bering Strait. And if the Futurians were really smart, they wouldn’t have allowed people in 1991 to know what they were doing. To be honest, all of the mistakes made by the Futurians were self-inflicted. By taking people from the 90s back to the past and letting them see where the dinosaur was sent, they basically ensured that those people would immediately go to the Bering Strait in 1991 and give the dinosaur a dose of radiation so that it would become Godzilla and then battle Ghidorah….

WHAT!?

Yeah, I know. It makes no sense. This is one of the least logical Godzilla films that I’ve ever seen and that’s saying something. Godzilla vs Biollante was loved by critics but it was considered to be a disappointment at the box office. For the follow-up, the producers not only brought back a classic Godzilla opponent (and I did smile when the three-headed Ghidorah showed up because he really was the most awesome member of Godzilla’s supporting cast) but they also came up with a plot that was considerably more juvenile than the previous film. The end result is a film that makes no sense from a narrative point of view but it does at least feature a few good fights between Godzilla, Ghidorah, and a robot version of Ghidorah. And it was also a film that did well enough at the Japanese box office to guarantee that Godzilla would return.

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Horror Film Review: Godzilla vs Biollante (dir by Kazuki Omori)

Posted on October 7, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1989’s Godzilla vs Biollante, Godzilla returns and gets into a fight with a giant plant named Biollante. Created by mixing plant cells with Godzilla cells and the cells of one human who was killed in a terrorist attack, Biollante has the body of a monster, the head of a giant rose, and the soul of a human. In fact, because her cells were used to help create Biollante, the late Erika Shiragami (Yusko Sawaguchi) can telepathically communicate from inside of Billante.

Now, you might be tempted to laugh at all of that but, silly origin story aside, Biollante is actually a wonderful creation and a fierce competitor to Godzilla. As Biollante was created using DNA that Godzilla left behind during his previous rampage of Tokyo, Godzilla and Biollante have a bit of a mental connection. One could even argue that this film features Godzilla fighting a mutated version of himself. (This was a theme to which many of the future Godzilla films would return.) Biollante is not only capable of wrapping monsters, things, and people in its tendrils but it’s also implied to literally be immortal. Damaging Biollante just causes it to release spores that presumably will lead to the creation of a new Biollante.

How did Biollante come into existence? As usual, it’s all the fault of the government and the corporations. Following Godzilla’s previous rampage in Japan, the government of the Middle Eastern nation of Saradia demanded some of Godzilla’s cells so that they could experiment with creating plant life that could survive in the desert. Meanwhile, an American company called Bio-Major decided that it wanted the cells for itself and they even sent over terrorists to blow up a Saradian lab, leading to the death of Erika and the apparent madness of her father, Dr. Genichiro Shiragami (Koji Takahashi). Dr. Shiragami fused Erika’s cells with the cells of one of the Godzilla plants and Biollatne was created….

Yeah, it doesn’t always make a lot of sense. That’s to be expected of a Godzilla film, though. The important thing is that, no matter how ludicrous the plot, the cast delivers their lines with enough skill and conviction that the viewer is willing to accept what’s being said without worrying too much about the logic behind it. There’s definitely a political subtext here for those who want to find it. Japan once again finds itself saving the world from the mistakes made by America and, this time, the Middle East. For Japan, every Godzilla rampage is a tragedy. For America and the rest of the world, it’s an economic opportunity. Just as the rest of the world reacted to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by saying, “Cool, we’ve got to figure out how to do that!,” the world reacts to over 30 years of Godzilla-led death and destruction by trying to figure out how to create their own Godzilla.

There’s a lot going on in Godzilla vs Biollante. Psychic Miki Saegusa (Megumi Odaka) makes her first appearance in the Godzilla franchise. There’s a fear assassin named SSS9 (Majot Bedi) who pops up throughout the movie so that he can shoot people. There are scenes of corporate espionage and car chases and action sequences featuring a lot of gunfire. This is one of the more violent and fast-paced Godzilla films that I’ve watched. In the end, though, the main attraction is watching Godzilla battle a giant plant and both Godzilla and Biollante acquit themselves well. It makes for an exciting film, one that feels worthy of starring the King of the Monsters.

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