Godzilla vs. Gigan (1972)

I am a big fan of Godzilla movies, especially the older ones. Having said that this movie failed to keep my attention for most of it. There were a couple of places so utterly ridiculous that I did crack up laughing, but much of the movie dragged for me.

Once again, aliens are looking to take over the earth using monsters to help them defeat Godzilla and the puny humans. In this movie they summon King Ghidorah and Gigan, two formidable enemies. Their base is a children's theme park with a Godzilla tower supposedly to promote peace but like Nick Fury said in The Avengers, we know they mean the other thing. The humans working against them are an oddball bunch including a clutzy, inept manga artist, his black belt girlfriend, a weird hippie guy and a scientist and his sister.

The funniest and most surreal bit in the movie is when the good guys get hold of one of the alien computer tapes and play it. They can't figure out what it means but Godzilla and Angilas hear it on Monster Island. Using cartoon bubbles, Godzilla asks Angilas to go check it out and they have a short "conversation". It happens again later in the movie as well. Weird even for a Godzilla movie.

After KG and Gigan stomp through Tokyo, Big G and Angilas enter a tag team match with them. The movie intertwines clips from earlier movies and they don't always mesh very well. I'm all for the monster grappling matches but this had to be one of the longest ones in Godzilla history and honestly, was a little boring. Angilas was pretty useless as a partner and Godzilla spent most of his time on the ground and seemed to forget he had that destructive atomic breath. Godzilla's design and size also didn't seem formidable reflecting how ineffective he was for much of the movie.

Godzilla vs Gigan had it's entertaining moments, too bad they came few and far between.

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