Godzilla vs. Gigan | aka War of the Monsters (1972) Review

“Godzilla vs Gigan” Japanese Theatrical Poster

AKA: Godzilla on Monster Island
Director: Fukuda Jun
Cast: Ishikawa Hiroshi, Umeda Tomoko, Hishimi Yuriko, Takashima Minoru, Fujita Zan, Nishizawa Toshiaki, Nakajima Harou, Satsuma Kenpachiro
Running Time: 89 min.

By Ian Whittle

Godzilla vs Gigan generally doesn’t get a good reception from G-fans, who dislike the Scooby Doo-ish human characters, the recycled music score, the frequent stock footage from earlier films, and the fact that the Godzilla suit (this particular one in its fourth film in four years) is blatantly falling apart in some scenes.

But I’m a rebel and a sentimentalist, and I can’t help but love this movie. Some of that understandably has to do with how I first saw this. When I was 10, the UK’s Channel 4 broadcast a “Triassic Trio” of Godzilla films in February 1997, at some ridiculous hour in the morning – Godzilla vs Megalon, Godzilla vs Gigan and Terror of Mechagodzilla (yes, in that order, even though Megalon is the sequel to Gigan!). Megalon was a bizarre experience, feeling like The Muppet Show on acid, but Gigan, being a more conventional (relatively speaking!) movie, quickly had me a confirmed Godzilla fan!

Gengo is a down-on-his-luck manga artist who can’t get a publisher to back his wild creations of Zukra (the monster of homework) and Mammagan (the monster of strict mothers, who looks suspiciously like Gengo’s karate kicking girlfriend). I don’t know why; I’d love to see a film where the psychic power of children’s’ hatred of homework beams into space and creates a monster (unless Power Rangers have already done that?). Then he gets a break at the soon-to-open Children’s Land, which has a full-size Godzilla tower as its centrepiece!

Of course, it’s too good to be true. Children’s Land is fronted by two sinister men in orange Nehru jackets who turn out to be cockroaches from outer space, Nebula M Space Hunter to be precise, who have taken on the form of two Japanese men who died hiking. And they have beamed a signal into space, drawing the space monsters King Ghidorah, a three headed dragon (in his fourth film) and Gigan, who can best be described as a humanoid chicken with steel claws for arms and a buzzsaw in his belly! Luckily, the same signals alert Godzilla, and he sets off from Monster Island to Tokyo, accompanied by his former foe, not best buddy Anguirus, who can best be described as an unholy cross between a Triceratops and a hedgehog! But the Nebulans have stacked the deck: the Godzilla tower is armed with deadly lasers that even the real Godzilla is no match for. The future of the Earth rests in the hands of a manga artist, a cute karateka, a scientist, his sister, and what can best be described as a hippy who wields corncobs as though they were guns!

The Japanese film industry was in free-fall in the early 70s, decimated by a population that had moved over to television. Although Godzilla vs Gigan may feel epic at a glance, the cost-cutting is very evident. The beautiful Ifukube Akira score is a compilation, utilising familiar themes from Destroy All Monsters (1968) and other kaiju classics for the majority of the action. However, and full credit to whoever decided this, the title music and select pieces comes from Ifukube’s majestic Mitsubishi Pavilion, a suite composed for an exhibit at Expo ’70. Free of the need to provide music from monsters, this music instead covered displays of Japan’s natural beauty (volcanoes, oceans) and futuristic designs of cities. When placed over the battling behemoths in this film, the effect is genuinely moving and epic.

By comparison, the padding out of the film with long footage from earlier films seems to have been designed with several motives: pad out the run-time, save money, and minimise the damage to the old Godzilla suit. At times, it is too obvious: the new footage is timed for night, but all the original footage was set in the daytime, with a filter overlaid on top to make it blend in better. The switch between different Godzilla suits isn’t too obvious, but the new King Ghidorah prop is very slow-moving, and when it cuts to decade-old footage of him squirming away, it sticks out like a sore thumb. And if you look closely, you can see (in a clip from the 1964 Ghidorah: The Three Headed Monster) the Mothra larvae sneaking past Godzilla and Ghidorah fight, not lifting a finger to help (metaphorically speaking!). This was actor Nakajima Haruo’s last performance as Godzilla (he had played the role since the first film in 1954), but in an unintentional changing of the guard, Gigan is played by Satsuma Kenpachiro, who would go onto play Godzilla in the 80s and 90s. And by then, they had replaced the costume! The monster fights are quite bloody, with Gigan getting to use his buzzsaw on Godzilla and Anguirus with Lone Wolf and Cub-style blood gushing everywhere (and red blood too, not the purple sort seen in the Gamera movies!).

And did I mention this film has a cute karateka in this? You know you need to see this!

Wait, I almost forgot. Godzilla talks in this! In the Japanese version, he has a weird electronic growl, accompanied by Japanese words in speech bubbles. The English version goes one better and has the marvellous tones of fellow Norther Englander Ted Thomas (veteran of a million kung fu films, and a telephone interview with Bruce Lee) layered on top. It’s unexplained, it’s incomprehensible, it’s…genius!

Ian Whittle’s Rating: 7/10 (Japanese version 8/10)