Original title: Chikyû kogeki meirei: Gojira tai Gaigan
The 70s weren’t kind to the Godzilla films. After the surreal nonsense of Gojira tia Hedora/Godzilla vs the Smog Monster (1971), director Jun Fukuda returned to the kaiju fold and oversaw the series final decline, with the series creator Ishiro Honda returning for the not-quite-so-final death knell in 1975 with Mekagojira no Gyakushu/Terror of Mechagodzilla. Fukuda had form with the franchise, having previously directed Gojira, Ebira, Mosura Nankai no Daiketto/Ebirah, Horror of the Deep (1966) and Kaiju-to no Kessen: Gojira no Musuko/Son of Godzilla (1967)
Insectoid aliens from a dying world in “Space Hunter Nebula M” (Nebula M is name checked in Gojira tai Hedora/Godzilla vs the Smog Monster (1971)’s tour of the universe sequence where it is said to have exploded) arrive on Earth with plans to colonise the planet. The set up base in the World Children’s Land theme park, assuming the forms of dead humans and bring with them space monsters Gigan and King Ghidorah who arrive in a huge diamond and a meteor. Summoned by one of the aliens’ “Action Signal Tapes”, Godzilla and Anguirus turn up to take on the interlopers.
Gojira tai Hedora had turned its back on the multiple monster narrative that had driven Kaiju Soshingeki/Destroy All Monsters (1968) and Gojira-Minira-Gabara: Oru Kaiju Daishingeki/All Monsters Attack (1969), preferring instead to pit Godzilla against a single adversary but we were back in all too familiar territory here – multiple monsters, some of the under the control of invading aliens. It was a plot we’d seen far too many times already and sadly Chikyû kogeki meirei: Gojira tai Gaigan adds nothing new of its own. For all its impressive armoury – it has a buzzsaw embedded in its chest – the alien cyborg Gigan is a disappointing addition to the Toho menagerie but was popular enough to warrant encore performances in Gojira tai Megaro/Godzilla vs Megalon (1973) and Gojira: Fainaru Wozu/Godzilla Final Wars (2004) as well as turns in the television series Ryusei Ningen Zone/Zone Fighter (1973) and Gojira Airando/Godzilla Island (1997-1998).
Once again, footage from earlier entries pressed into service and someone somewhere thought it would be a good idea for Godzilla and Anguirus to have a conflab to discuss battle tactics. This wasn’t a particularly new development – we’d seen Godzilla chatting to Mothra and Rodan in San Daikaiju: Chikyu Saidai no Kessen/Ghidorah, the Three Headed Monster (1964). But here the already ridiculous notion is taken one step further – in the English dub we get to hear their voices but in the original Japanese cut, their dialogue is presented as comic book style speech bubbles, a new low for the series.
The story is utter rubbish, revolving around the bizarre idea of reproducing the monsters in mechanical form at the theme park and then destroying the originals. It has the air of a story being made up was it went along and very little about it makes any sense. It’s not clear why the Japanese Self Defense Force initially choose to attack Anguilas when it’s clear that it’s en route to help battle Gigan and Ghidorah. All it does is force Anguilas to return to Monster Island to look for sympathy from Godzilla and given that it takes the monsters an age to get fro the island to Japan it just adds to the padding and the amount of time that we don’t see Godzilla on screen.
Elsewhere we have to put up with some stupid comic relief hippies, a half-hearted attempt to revive the ecological message of Gojira tai Hedora (the aliens reveal that their home world died after they polluted it) and another outbreak of the stock footage that was coming to infest the series. In this case it causes one of the battle scenes to switch back and forth between night and day as the mismatched footage was culled from different films and gives Mothra an unintended cameo when the larval stage is briefly glimpsed when it wasn’t supposed to have been featured in the film at all. Worst of all, the new Ghidorah model is dreadful, incapable of moving its heads or flapping its wings.
There are some surprising moments of gore as the monsters go at each other and the James Bond feel of recent films can be detected again running through the silliness but it doesn’t really amount to very much. Astonishingly, this wasn’t even as low as the Godzilla series would fall – there was still worse to come… Chikyû kogeki meirei: Gojira tai Gaigan was in one respect at least, the end of an era – it marked the final appearance in the Godzilla suit of actor Haruo Nakajima who had been one of the man in the suit since the very first film back in 1954. He retired from suit acting after this one when Toho began dismantling their studio system, severing his contract with just a brief turn as a chauffeur in Nippon chinbotsu/Tidal Wave (1973) left before he decided to retire from acting completely after a career that stretched back to 1949.
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