GODZILLA VS. MEGAGUIRUS (2000)

  This one is the 25th Godzilla film(but only the 2nd in the "millennium series" which ran from 1999 to 2004) or the 24th film if you ignore that terrible American one from the 90s. It does what most of the films in this series do and ignores all the movies that came before it except for the very first one. Godzilla's foe is pretty bland being just a giant flying dragon-fly bug but the humans do come up with a black hole-generating weapon which is kind of a cool idea. Not my favorite but not the worst Godzilla flick you could catch. 

KING KONG VS. GODZILLA (1962)

 Got to catch this monster-mash classic down at the drive-in over the weekend. One of my childhood favorite and still a goofy good time if you can deal with the Japanese rubber-suit monster flicks at all. Only the 3rd film in the original GODZILLA series and already they paired up the 2 most famous giant monsters. They also throw in a giant octopus for Kong to fight. Kong here being a very ugly squished-face version of the giant ape that is obviously not the original RKO monster since he's also way taller. Laughable dubbing abounds in the U.S. version, which is also shorter due to scenes being trimmed so they could add news reports with American faces. There's also a lot of familiar music from CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON that shows up.
 Godzilla would return 2 years later to fight MOTHRA and Kong would get a sorta-sequel 5 years later with KING KONG ESCAPES where he fights a giant robot ape.
 There is supposed to be a new version of this but since it will be a stupid CGI crap-a-thon I have little interest in watching it.

                                                                  Hammer meets Toho!:

Apparently King Kong was a lot more popular in Italy since the movie was re-titled THE TRIUMPH OF KING KONG there with no mention of Godzilla at all!:

SHIN GODZILLA (2016)

 Remake/reboot/resurgence? of the original GODZILLA that rolls things back to basics. It delves really deeply into the politics of Japan and answers the question of how Japan can battle a giant monster when it hasn't had any real army since World War II which is something that's never addressed in any of the early GODZILLA films that I've seen. It also shows the United States in not such a great light for the most part but I think the same can be said of how it depicts the Japanese government.
 Despite the use of C.G.I. instead of a guy in a suit the fx work looked pretty decent which was a shock to me. From what I've heard there was guy-in-a-suit fx shot but the director wasn't happy with the way that looked so they stuck computer FX in instead.
 While the whole movie does get dragged down in lots of dialogue and there's no Ghidrah or Mothra showing up to battle our monster god it's still worth watching especially if, like me, you were underwhelmed by the last U.S. version of GODZILLA with Bryan Cranston. This just shows again that Japan is the king of these types of films. AKA GODZILLA RESURGENCE

GODZILLA - MOTHRA - KING GHIDORAH: GIANT MONSTERS ALL OUT ATTACK (2001)

 This is the 25th Godzilla film and pretty much dismisses all the movies except for the very first one(which is what most of these Godzilla flicks of the 2000's have done). It keeps Godzilla as the bad-monster and switches King Ghidorah to a good-monster. In fact all the monsters except for Godzilla are these magical guardians of Japan. Big-eared monster Baragon also shows up even though he gets no title credit, guess it was too long already. The director, Shusuke Kaneko, made all the 90's Gamera films, which are pretty awesome and he does a similar job here with bringing the action and changing the story enough to make it interesting. Sadly it seems some Godzilla nerds don't like anyone fucking with their characters at all and many of them hate this movie because it's not the same exact plot as most of the other films. If you're not a nit-picky jerk though and just a fan of big stupid monsters(actual rubber-suit monsters not cgi-abominations!) fighting and killing innocent people you might enjoy this for what it is.

TERROR OF MECHAGODZILLA (1975)

This was the last of the goofy-looking 70's Godzilla films and it was directed by Ishiro Honda who was the guy who directed the very first GODZILLA back in the 50's. I saw pretty much all of these films as a kid growing up on TV in full-screen cropped versions but you can really tell now by looking at some of the great prints out there how this one really stands out as having been beautifully shot, especially when compared to some of the other lower-budgeted entries that came before it. Also the music cues(bringing back the original Godzilla-theme among them) really help set the tone. The plot is pretty standard with some aliens and a mad doctor using Mechagodzilla and a dinosaur/dragon with a little head named Titanosaurus to kill Godzilla and take over the Earth but there are some downer touches like a suicidal android lady and people actually getting killed by these terrorist ape-aliens. There are two different cuts of this(Japanese and English) with some small differences between the two. Also the Japanese version has some quick nudity which clearly Americans couldn't handle at the time. Check it out if you're either old and nostalgic like me and want to get sad, silly and nostalgic while watching your childhood end or if you're just a cool kid who digs watching giant monsters fight and break shit. AKA THE TERROR OF GODZILLA

 

U.K. poster:

GODZILLA VS. THE THING (1964)

 This is the fourth movie in the original GODZILLA series and follows KING KONG VS. GODZILLA(and I guess it's also technically the 2nd movie in the MOTHRA series following that film). In this one Godzilla takes on Mothra, the giant moth and his two kids who are a couple of grubworm-looking caterpillar things that hatch out of a giant Easter egg. The big G's 60's movies are pretty goofy and this one is no exception. They would get even goofier later on when he has a son and teams up with a giant robot and stuff like that. Probably one of the best things in this is the use of music by Akira Ifukube and the two little magical fairies who return from being in the original MOTHRA in 1961. This movie played so many times back when I was a kid that it's hard to judge it subjectively without nostalgia clouding my perception but if you dig Godzilla movies at all this isn't a bad one to check out. The fight scenes are definitely unique to this movie since Mothra and kids aren't your typical guy-in-rubber-suit sort of foes that usually populate these movies so that's something.
 The Japanese version of this, titled MOTHRA VS. GODZILLA, is 29 minutes longer and while I haven't watched that version yet from what I know it's mostly just missing some footage of the army fighting Godzilla.
AKA GODZILLA VS. MOTHRA

The American AIP release of this referred to Mothra as The Thing and kept his appearance a secret in the movie posters and trailers. Though they do show the two baby Mothras:


In Japan not so much of a secret:

  

GODZILLA'S REVENGE (1969)

 The 10th film in the Godzilla series and many people consider this to be the very worst of them all. It's hard to argue against that notion. The main problems here are that it's a kiddie movie, starring a little boy as our hero, which seems way more like a Gamera movie than a Toho film and it uses a whole bunch of stock footage from previous Godzilla monster bashes. Also all the scenes that take place on Monster Island are in the imagination of a little boy so in this reality none of these creatures even exist. If this isn't bad enough there's also a sub-plot about some annoying bungling bank robbers and the dubbed version has some of the most comedic-sounding bucktoothed Asian stereotypical sounding voices you might ever hear. The only positive thing I can say about this is when I was a very little kid I appreciated it as being a sort-of greatest hits package of Godzilla fights so it at least has nostalgic value for me but I doubt anyone who wasn't raised watching this movie multiple times would find anything that isn't cringe-worthy in it. Also the opening tune, in the American dub, is kinda cool in a wacky 60's kind of way. AKA MINYA: THE SON OF GODZILLA, GODZILLA, MINYA AND GABARA: ALL MONSTERS ATTACK and ATTACK ALL MONSTERS
 The movies this pilfers footage from include GODZILLA VS. THE SEA MONSTER and SON OF GODZILLA



Released in 1971 in the U.S. on an unlikely double-bill with a British Christopher Lee sci-fi thriller:

And then later on re-released on a way more appropriate double-feature:

GODZILLA AGAINST MECHAGODZILLA (2002)

 By the 2000's theses movies had left far behind the ultra-goofiness of the 70's good-guy Godzilla and gotten a bit more realistic. They did keep the guy-in-a-suit monster but upped the look of pretty much everything else in the FX department by using some basic CGI but not overdoing it like every American movie of this decade did. This is the 27th Godzilla movie but it's really only a sequel to the original '54 film. They also reference MOTHRA and WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS(at least one of them) so I guess technically it's a sequel to those as well. In this one, which is sorta/kinda a remake of the '75 and '92 movies with Mechagodzilla, a new robot-Godzilla is built around the bones of the original black & white monster and used to defend Japan against the king of the monsters. It's decent enough as far as these movies go, with the building smashing and monster grappling action, but it ultimately feels like there's no real ending to the film. Watch it only if you're a G-fan, which if you are I'm sure you already have.

GODZILLA VS. BIOLLANTE (1989)

 So this crazy scientist mixes some Godzilla cells with a rose and grows this new plant-monster named Biollante who dukes it out with the big green lizard even though they're sorta related. This is the 17th Godzilla film but if you go according to the plot it's really just a sequel to GODZILLA 1985 and the original 1954 one and it disregards all the goofy movies in between those two. This one goes along pretty seriously, at least as seriously as a giant monster movie can go. There's a bit more violence than many of the films including people getting shot by Middle Eastern terrorists and a neat bit where Godzilla gets spiked through the hand just like Jesus.  Unfortunately this was a pretty big flop when it was originally released in Japan so after this Toho went back to using the more classic Godzilla villains like Mecha-Godzilla and Ghidorah.  Still this is probably a pretty good one to view if you're at all a fan of these sort of Japanese monster films and they still stick to the classic guy-in-a-suit and real special effects which I'm sure will be disregarded when/if that new American Godzilla 2012,  2013, 2014 film finally gets finished.

GODZILLA VS. THE COSMIC MONSTER (1974)

 One of the sillier Godzilla flicks.  Not quite as silly as that one where he does flying dropkicks and teams up with a giant robot(this movie here) but pretty close.  In this one some aliens who look like they came from THE PLANET OF THE APES build a giant robot Godzilla(MECHA-GODZILLA!) to take over the Earth, or at least the Japanese part of the planet.  There's a giant floppy-eared dog monster named King Seesar and the spiky-backed monster from GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN(Angilas) shows up and gets his jaw broken in a bloody battle.  There's also a couple of secret agent/spy types running around and a lot of unintentional comedy.  This looks like it might have been one of the cheapest Godzilla movies ever made since everything looks especially super fake from the awful monster costumes(besides Mecha-Godzilla who looks pretty neat) to the Halloween-masked ape aliens but I think that's what makes it such a memorably awful film and a great throwback to my childhood of watching these movies on the 4 o'clock movie every day during Godzilla week here in New York.
  Watching this more recently in a theater was an interesting experience especially when myself and the group of friends I was with were told to not be so loud during the film.  I guess having a good time during a silly film is insulting to hardcore Godzilla fans.  What a bunch of assholes.  Maybe they should start showing these movies in churches where theses morons can sit in silence and enjoy their rubber-suit wrestling matches in peace.

This movie was originally released in the U.S. as GODZILLA VS. THE BIONIC MONSTER until THE BIONIC MAN T.V. show producers sued over the use of that word:


and later on it was rereleased as part of this monster-rific triple bill:

GODZILLA VS. MEGALON (1973)

Godzilla started out back in the 50's as a metaphorical monster that embodied the nuclear nightmare that Japan, with the help of some American bombs, knew all too well. The first film was a really serious portrait of disaster and an uncontrollable loss of everything. Of course by the time you get to the 12th sequel, almost 20 years down the road, Godzilla and his cast of zany co-starring monsters have all become these ultra-goofy characters. This one is definitely one of the goofiest and stupidest of the whole series. You get a superhero robot that's an obvious copy of ULTRA-MAN or any of the other giant robots which were super popular with kids in 1970's Japan, a cockroach-looking bad monster with drill hands and another alien monster with hook hands and a buzz-saw in its stomach. Unfortunately you also get an annoying little boy with a high-pitched voice to piss you off. I would only recommend this to people that get off on men in rubber suits wrestling with each other or if, like me, these movies have a really strong nostalgia factor and you enjoy laughing at the ridiculousness of it all. Oh, and they never fight on top of the World Trade Center, or even come to America, like the poster promises.