Godzilla X Kong - The New Empire

Peanuts Gal For
Monkey Magic

Godzilla X Kong -
The New Empire
Directed by Adam Wingard
USA 2024
Warner Brothers
UK Theatrical Cut

Warning: Mild spoilers.

Last week I went to the cinema to see Ghostbusters - Frozen Empire (reviewed here) in which a centuries long imprisoned creature is released and aims to turn the Earth into a new ice age. This week I saw Godzilla X Kong - The New Empire which, apart from having a superfluous X that makes it the most ridiculous and childish title for a Godzilla movie ever, deals with a centuries long imprisoned creature who is released back into the mix with his followers and big ice creature, with the intent of conquering the Earth by turning it into a new ice age. I bet the makers of this one were pretty miffed that the new Ghostbusters had a better title that they could have used themselves.

This one is, by my counts, the fifth in the sequence of the US Monsterverse franchise, comprising Godzilla (reviewed here), Kong - Skull Island (reviewed here), Godzilla King Of The Monsters (reviewed here), Godzilla VS Kong (reviewed here) and now this one. Not to mention the relatively recent Monarch TV series, which I haven’t got around to watching as yet. It carries over three characters from the previous movie, as played by the great Rebecca Hall reprising the role of the main scientist, the extremely cool Kaylee Hottle as her deaf/mute adopted Skull Island daughter and Brian Tyree Henry, providing comic relief as the vlogger who was helping out Millie Bobby Brown in the last movie.

And, not only is this installment in the franchise way better in most respects than Godzilla VS Kong, it’s also a very fun watch and I really rather enjoyed it. Now, given the critical and commercial success of the Academy Award winning Japanese movie Godzilla Minus One (reviewed here ) a few months ago, I was fully expecting to be able to say that the aforementioned movie was way better than this one. And... yeah okay, I am saying that... no comparison. I’d take a film like that one over this any day of the week. However, you have to remember that you really can’t cant compare the two. Godzilla Minus One is very much a serious film similar in tone to the original 1954 Gojira movie (reviewed here) and uses Godzilla as a surrogate for the post survivor trauma of the ‘failed’ kamikaze pilot who is the film’s main protagonist. It’s carrying a lot of weight and it does it beautifully.

In contrast to that, Godzilla X Kong - The New Empire is very much in the style of the fun, mid 1960s to mid 1970s Toho Godzilla ‘monster romp’ movies... and as a lover of both kinds, I am quite happy with what the US filmmakers are able to achieve here, to be honest. It’s a different flavour of Godzilla but they are doing a much better job of that kind of brief here.

Now, the movie almost totally takes place in the Hollow Earth world discovered in the last film, asides from a few sequences where Godzilla and Kong manage to wreck part of Egypt and Brazil between them. And also one memorable moment where the movie’s other main protagonist, a monster veterinarian played by Dan Stevens, extracts Kong’s infected tooth with his helicopter and gives him a new, super duper tooth. Also, after a sequence where Kong suffers from frostbite in his right arm, due to reasons I won’t disclose, he cures it and gives him a new armoured glove so he can punch things better. So yay!

Also, Kaylee Hottle’s character ends up fulfilling the same role as The Peanuts did in the original Mothra films from the 1960s. She is the new human envoy to Mothra and she wakes her up to help out when Kong is trying to lure Godzilla into lending a hand in tackling their bigger problem. It’s nice stuff but, alas, she doesn’t sing the famous Mothra song... which would have been a nice touch.

And was that a shop sign depicting Gamera I saw for a second before Godzilla smashed through it? I’m pretty sure that’s what I saw... can anyone else confirm in the comments?

And it’s a film filled with good action, much better acting than you would expect and a fun storyline. My only real criticism is that the score by Antonio Di Lorio and Tom Holkenborg is bereft of any of the iconic Godzilla themes from the Toho series and, just fails miserably on that level. Every time you are expecting there to be a big Ifukube moment, the score does something which seems, I dunno, like a melody falling just short of the original to evade copyright payments. Which is a shame because, even the great Godzilla Minus One, which had a far superior score to this one, recognised the value in popping in Ifukube’s melodies into certain scenes. And to add insult to injury, the score to this one seems to be unavailable on a proper CD (which is a first for the films, it would be the only live action Godzilla theatrical release without CD representation to date). Shame on Watertower Records for not releasing it in the only physical format that real music lovers want. I hate this backwards decade, ignoring the essential physical media releases which should accompany these films.

Apart from the ‘knock off’ sounding scoring though, Godzilla X Kong - The New Empire was way more entertaining than I was expecting it to be and, if you liked Kong VS Godzilla (I kinda didn’t think it was all that), then you should definitely love this one. Don’t expect to be seeing the same kind of story substance present in Godzilla Minus One though... two very different kinds of films.

Godzilla VS Megalon

Maim, Jet & Scratch

Godzilla VS Megalon
aka Gojira tai Megaro
Japan 1973
Directed by Jun Fukuda & Yoshimitsu Banno
Criterion Blu Ray Zone B

This is another one of those films which I loved in my twenties but, looking at it now, just seems like one of the lesser and most disappointing entries in the Godzilla series, although there’s also lots to enjoy and it’s still a heck of a lot more interesting than the previous movie, Godzilla VS Gigan (reviewed here).

Okay, so we hear that those pesky humans have been testing bombs again on a remote island.. the consequences of which can also be felt on Monster Island. You might ask why this would be the case and the answer seems to me to be two fold. Firstly, Godzilla doesn’t properly turn up in this movie until almost 50 mins into the 80 minute running time... so it’s kind of a way, I believe, of pacifying the audience, showing that it really is a Godzilla movie they have come here to see. There have been a lot of rumours that, in response to a young boy who won a design a creature competition for Toho, that his drastically changed creation (to the point that the crying young prize winner was inconsolable at the changes Toho made to the design), renamed Jet Jaguar, would be the sole headliner of the movie. Although that makes sense in many ways, there is apparently no real evidence to suggest that was the case, from what I understand. So yeah, they show Godzilla to remind the audience and, the other thing the studio gets to do is to use old footage from Monster Island at this point to pad out the running time.

Then, after this footage we have the opening credits and a kid in a wonderful little robot boat in a lake, which looks like three colourful dolphins, with the two side dolphins acting like paddles. However, his inventor dad and his friend almost can’t get the kid back after a fissure is opened in a series of earthquakes, one of which drains this lake. Luckily, the inventor friend has his handy “rope launcher” with him on the picnic because, yeah, this is just what you would take on a picnic, right? Anyway, the three escape the disruption and go back to the scientist’s pad where they fail to stop two thugs who are interested in the father’s latest project, the robot Jet Jaguar. But they do leave behind a red button and some red sand which, on scientific investigation... and I’ve no idea how this is science but I’ll suspend my disbelief here... they figure out comes from 2000 miles beneath the sea and is similar to sand found on Easter Island (which, as I said in my review of Gamera VS Jiger - right here), was all the rage at the time.

It turns out that survivors of the ancient cities of Lemuria and Mu (Atlantis), which were swallowed up by the Earth’s oceans, have built an underwater kingdom called Seatopia, complete with silly costumes and dancing girls. They are fed up with the horrible land dwellers testing bombs which have disastrous consequences for them, so they unleash Megalon... a giant bug with a star on his head that makes him look like a badly dressed Christmas tree that can spit bombs out of its mouth... to destroy humanity (later on, he accidentally swallows one of his own bombs when it fires straight up at Godzilla but lands back in his own mouth, which slows him down for a bit).

For some reason, the Seatopians need Jet Jaguar to tell Megalon what to do for about a quarter of an hour and there’s also a sub-plot where the scientist and his little nipper are kidnapped and driven in a container to be dropped in the cracks where the sunken lake... um... sank... only to be rescued by their friend in a highly non-sensical car and bike chase. Actually I have to ask how ocean dwellers suddenly got so proficient at riding motor bikes and cars. I mean, not quite so good that they can stop the guy they’re chasing but, still, pretty good for people who lived for thousands of years under the sea.

Finally the scientists regain control of Jet Jaguar but then, because he’d had his mechanical brain ‘stimulated by battle’, he gains free will and battles Megalon himself while waiting for Godzilla to arrive, whom he summons for aid. However, the Seatopians have also summoned help, this time from space, as the previous movie’s main villain, Gigan, arrives to help Megalon destroy humanity and its defenders. This is also, of course, in order that lots of footage of Gigan fighting Godzilla could be recycled from the previous films, along with various building carnage which, perhaps not surprisingly, is hardly ever in the same shot as the monsters inflicting the damage. Well, at least day and night footage doesn’t fluctuate so dramatically like it did in the previous movie but budgets at Toho were really stretched by this point in the cycle.

At one point, to make the ‘big fight’ more interesting, Jet Jaguar suddenly grows to giant kaiju size. Now I thought we were going to get some kind of bizarre pseudo-scientific explanation of how he manages to change size at will, such as organic metal or redistribution of molecules but, no, according to his creator... and I quote... “His determination made him grow this big.” Oh, well that’s a neat trick then. Must make a mental note to be more determined.

The fight scenes themselves are ludicrously bad, with Godzilla and Jet Jaguar teaming up to fight Megalon and Gigan and with all the beasts making signs and waving at each other etc like they’re human. A lot of the footage is recycled and spliced in with new stuff but it’s all just a bit dull to watch for any real amount of time, truth be told. It doesn’t help that Megalon’s signature move is to jump instead of walk. A really terrible, bizarre looking, series of progressive two legged hops which look about as credible as... insert least credible thing you’ve seen here...and which will probably make your eyes roll out of their sockets while you laugh at the unintentional hilarity. Things took on more poignancy about the sad state of affairs at Toho when I was researching this after watching it and found that the Megalon suit was extremely heavy and so it took the suit actor and the technicians huge efforts to manage those stupid looking jumps.

Later on, when Godzilla is throwing Megalon around, it’s pretty obvious that there’s no actual actor in the Megalon suit because every time The Big G throws him onto the ground, his floppy legs bend the wrong way. Other than this, when the military get involved, it’s just the usual live fireworks fired at the suit actors as a stand in for the shells of the cannons and, yeah, it just doesn’t look great.

One last thing I’ll menton is the music. Riichirô Manabe’s score doesn’t recycle any of Ifukube’s old themes and it’s not anywhere near the masterpiece of a score that the same composer supplied for Godzilla Vs Hedorah (reviewed here), although it does recycle a Godzilla theme from that one. It’s also interesting in that it’s a lot lighter in tone and, for a lot of the time, really doesn’t match the drama of the action, instead playing through the scenes with a kind of elevator pop muzak style. It does, however, have an interesting theme for Jet Jaguar which gets expanded into a full blown song for the film’s final minute or so. Which for me was probably the best part of the movie... a song very much in the style of the Gamera song found in rival Daiei movies around this time.

And that’s me just about done with Godzilla Vs Megalon. It’s not a film I could recommend to most people but, obviously, you can’t miss this one if you are into Godzilla movies. It’s definitely not Toho’s finest hour and their would be only two more films in the series before the first cycle of Godzilla films had run their course.

Monster Hunter

 

Gates Of Meow

Monster Hunter
2020 Directed by Paul W. S. Anderson
Germany/China/Canada/Japan/South Africa/USA
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Some spoilerage but, it’s not really that kind of movie.

So, once again, director Paul W. S. Anderson teams up with his wife, Milla Jovovich to make another movie adapted from a video game series. Now, I have slight issues with their Resident Evil series of films because... well, they were nearly all absolutely brilliant with the exception of two of them. The second one was kinda let down by some of the prosthetic ‘man in suit’ effects but the real disappointment was the sixth film in the series, Resident Evil - The Final Chapter... which totally failed to make any kind of sense and contradicted the running story of the films up until that point with absolutely no attempt to explain the complete lack of continuity, effectively negating everything we’d learned in the second movie.

So, yeah, I was always going to go see Monster Hunter, although, I hereby make the usual caveat that I haven’t played the game so really don’t know if it’s any good as an adaptation or not. Although the film has been freely available for a while in HD from ‘the usual web sites’ (and I believe that’s where at least one of my friends saw it), I decided to wait for half a year and see if it got any kind of cinema release in the UK. Since I’d seen the Resident Evil films at the cinema, I wanted to do it right with this one because, whether you like them or not, Anderson always tends to make huge spectacles of his movies and so I booked a local screening, even paying a little extra on top of my Cineworld card to see the film on a big IMAX screen.

The film itself... well, I firmly believe that with a few tweaks this could have been a really great movie but, I did have an issue with it and I think, all in all, it’s an okay and relatively entertaining movie and, at the very least, has the potential to be a long running franchise, if it gets the box office take to make that happen.

Okay, so the film is almost but not quite plotless. There are two worlds, one of fantasy style sand ships and big monsters and... also our world. After a brief prologue on the other world where the leader of a band of ‘yo hos’, played by Ron Perlman, gets in a skuffle with a big monster on his sand galleon and has to leave behind one of the monster hunters of the title to fend for himself, played by the ‘legend in his own lifetime’ Tony Jaa (who I though t had retired to become a buddhist monk or some such but, apparently not)... we join the main US protagonist of the movie, a ranger played by Milla Jovovich. She and her band of hard core military types are taking their heavily armoured transport to look for a scout team that have gone missing (in our world). Then, some archaic markers in the sand they pass by suddenly go all pyrotechnic and they are transported into the world of the prologue... and come face to face with various giant beasties.

It would be true to say there’s not much plot development after that. The film becomes one big action set piece after another and, within half an hour, Jovovich is the only one of both her team and the original team she was looking for, left alive... and only because Tony Jaa has tried to help out on occasion. When the two leads finally meet, after she manages to escape from a load of quite vicious giant spiders, everything gets a bit Hell In The Pacific meets Shelob for a while as the two, who don’t speak each other’s language, work through their issues with the tried and true movie clichés of violence and mistrust followed by, eventual, mutual respect.

And there’s also a double climax to the movie... one set in the other world and then one set in ours... both of which involve some large, ‘almost but not quite unkillable’ giant dragons and Ron Perlman, whose character can speak English due to a twist in what little of the plot there is, as he brings his team in to help out in our world after another dragon crosses over.

Okay...so the film is nice to look at, has some great actors, some not bad special effects and is quite pacey but, alas, that last thing is also the big problem with the film, for me at least. There’s no let up. The first half an hour is quite relentless, driven and harrowing, as Jovovich’s team all die big, monstery deaths but, it just carries on and on. There’s no real calm before the next storm... even the scenes where Jaa and Jovovich meet up for the first time are full of sequences where they are continuously brawling for way too long. This film, in my opinion, makes the one big mistake that a lot of modern action picture directors tend to make and that is... falling into the trap of giving the characters no real downtime before they face the next peril... thus giving no contrast within the tone of the scenes and, by the end of the film, it all seems just a little bit dull. Indeed, even the double climax seems like something of a let down because there’s no real build up to it... just conflict after conflict with the only really nice moments involving a cat... which I won’t spoil for you here but, make sure you stick around for an extra scene mid way through the end credits. I actually think that, in the case of this movie, it might have been more effective if the director had made it a little longer and put more pauses in the film to help liven up the action scenes. As it is... yeah, it feels like a ‘pretty good’ kind of movie rather than a truly great one, to be honest.

Even so, I think people who are into big monster movies will still find a lot to like in Monster Hunter and, like I said... the cat, man. We need to see more of the cat! I’d be quite happy if some more of these were made because, like I said, the director is a bit hit and miss and I’m sure he could make some decent follow ups which surpassed the original, if given half the chance. I might grab this one on blu ray once it goes into the sales and, I guess I’m still relatively happy that I waited to see it on the big screen. Hopefully there will be more to follow.

King Kong Escapes

Kong Voyage

King Kong Escapes
Japan/USA 1967
Directed by Ishirô Honda
Toho/Universal Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: This one has spoilers.

So I took some time out from the Criterion Godzilla set to pop this one in. King Kong Escapes is a muddled but entertaining movie... alas, entertaining for all the wrong reasons. Now, I’ve no idea what the proper Japanese cut of the film is like but I suspect it’s not all that different because, although the film has actors like Rhodes Reason and Linda Miller in it, it was an American co-production and they all appeared in scenes with many of the Japanese actors such as Godzilla veterans Akira Takarada and Mie Hama (Hama was also a big star for the Bond film You Only Live Twice, reviewed by me here, by this point). Hama plays the main female villain who, in a fit of conscience towards the end, double crosses the main male villain of the piece, Hideyo Amamoto as the nefarious Dr. Who. Yeah, okay... not that Doctor Who. Another one, although, it has to be said, the costume and look of the character seems very much based on the William Hartnell incarnation of everybody’s favourite timelord at the time.

That being said, Who is a carry over from the source material of this film... which isn’t really, as many may suspect, a sequel to King Kong Vs Godzilla (which it’s often marketed as and which you can find reviewed here). Instead, it’s a big screen adaptation of a Rankin/Bass King Kong cartoon of the time... it’s also the last time Toho had the rights to use the character, unfortunately.

The film is... well it’s kinda terrible, despite being directed by Godzilla veteran Ishirô Honda and having a, somewhat slow and ponderous score by Godzilla composer Akira Ifukube. It’s fun though but, alas, the humour on this one is completely at the expense of the cast and crew, it has to be said. The dialogue and plot are... well I guess like something you’d find in a cartoon of the time and the effects work is, surprisingly, mostly abysmal.

I mean, take the ‘not so bad’ actress Linda Miller (she only appeared in three movies and one TV episode but, one of those movies was The Green Slime... reviewed here). Here she is being picked up by a badly 'matted in' giant hand against a live action plate but, as soon as we see her in the hands of the, truly ridiculous looking King Kong man in suit (possibly even worse than the version from King Kong VS Godzilla) in long shot she is a lifeless, plastic doll which, throughout the movie, only has one costume. Now, Ms Miller gets picked up by her new pal Kong fairly frequently throughout the movie, it has to be said but, although one of her costumes does look a  little like the one on the rigid doll in the hands of the ‘suit-mation’ Kong, most of the time she’s wearing something different. It doesn’t matter to the special effects guys though... if she’s wearing white or some other colour, when it cuts back to the doll in the hand... she’s back to wearing yellow. Not only that but, through the course of the movie (and depending how wet she gets in a scene... she takes a dive into the ocean before being picked up by Kong at one point), she has a kind of ‘dirty blonde’ hair. However, when she’s seen in long shot in Kong’s fist, that really is going to change to a vibrant redhead on the doll, for sure.

Other things about the ridiculous effects are the fact that, when our heroes go to check out Kong’s island near the start of the movie, the strange hover ship they use is nicely designed but, honestly, you can clearly see the wires as it’s lifted over the tank of water standing in for the sea. Added to some truly boring fight scenes and this iteration of Kong really is nothing to write home about. The fight Kong has with a dinosaur is fairly ludicrous but I think that one, at least, was played for laughs. However, there’s a big set up battle in the movie and you’re waiting for it to happen and, when it does... well, more on that in a moment.

So the other big hangover from the cartoon series was the invention of the giant robot Kong facsimile, Mechani-Kong. He’s introduced into the plot line to mine for ‘Substance X’ for the villains before the ‘real’ Kong even enters the movie and, all the way through you’re just waiting for the battle between these two titans to unfold. When it does... well it takes place in Tokyo, mostly with a kind of ‘climbing dual’ as the two Kongs climb something which looks remotely like the Eifel Tower (except we’re in Tokyo) and... well... it’s a bit anti-climactic, it has to be said. But, even so, there’s a lot of fun to be had about the idea of this head to head and, ridiculously bad as it is, it still holds a curious entertainment value (this is like the fourth or fifth time I’ve watched this movie in different formats over the decades).

The Mechani-Kong from the cartoon show and made flesh... err... steel here was presumably the inspiration for the similar looking, semi-regular villain Mecha-Godzilla who made his first appearances in the Showa Era films Godzilla VS Mecha-Godzilla in 1974 and the final film in that first cycle, Terror Of Mecha-Godzilla. So some good came out of this movie in regards to that element at least and, either way you look at it, Mechani-Kong certainly looks great and makes for some good photos and artwork. More than his hairy co-star at any rate... who seems to have a permanently manic look about him with his huge, staring eyes.

And... yeah, that’s really all I’ve got to say about King Kong Escapes. A fun but insubstantial piece which has so far been given, it has to be said, a truly insubstantial Blu Ray release. The transfer is okay but you can only watch this in the English dub and, talk about bare bones. I’d moan about the extras if there were any but... remember some of those early DVDs which, when you put the film in the player, didn’t have any kind of menu and just went straight into ‘the movie is now playing, deal with it’ mode? Well let’s just say that this is the first Blu Ray I’ve had which does just that. No menu, just a quick copyright notice and then the film starts playing. Universal really should take a leaf out of the book of Criterion, Severin, Arrow, Indicator, Blue Underground and various other labels who know how to market films like this. I’m hoping somebody will get the smart idea of releasing limited edition kaiju sets with the proper Japanese versions of films like this and Frankenstein Conquers The World in them, crammed with extras pertinent to the subject matter. Until that time comes, alas, we’re stuck with what I would call substandard releases like this and, yeah, I’m glad I only spent £6 on this edition is all I’m saying. If you can get it cheaper, it’s worth a quick look.

Invasion Of The Astro-Monster

Crouching Eiga,
Hidden Dragging

Invasion Of The Astro-Monster
(aka Godzilla VS Monster Zero
aka Kaijû daisensô)
Japan/USA 1965 Directed by Ishirô Honda
Toho/Criterion Collection Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Some spoilers in this one.

So the next in my watch through of the newish Criterion Spine 1000, Godzilla - The Showa Era, is one of my all time favourites of this period... Invasion Of The Astro-Monster. It’s also a direct follow on, in some ways, to the previous film in the series, Ghidorah, The Three Headed Monster (reviewed here).

Once again directed by original Godzilla director Ishirô Honda, this film displays one of what I will more often than not describe as one of the strengths of this particular director working on the franchise (although sometimes also a weakness, as I have concluded in another of these reviews previously), that of having the monsters manifesting quite selectively, perhaps even at their most minimalistic in terms of screen time and only used as a way to fulfil the needs of the underlying story, rather than be an all out monster slug fest as many of the later ones could be considered.

So, for example, the film starts off with some absolutely brilliant music by classic Godzilla composer Akira Ifukube, taken from my favourite, secondary march from the very first film in the series, accompanying a sequence of still images from the movie which very much push the ‘astro’ part of the title... so the rocket that the astronauts fly, a flying saucer and shots of a giant radar dish (all of which are models) and absolutely no monsters here at all. Despite the trailer for the movie probably showing off that three of the main monsters from the franchise were back in action in this one, Honda is playing it real cool and not giving away his hand at this point that this is, indeed, a Godzilla movie.

In fact, it takes a while for the monster aspect to emerge as the story follows, like King Kong VS Godzilla, two plots... one involving the main action and one involving an invention which will eventually help save the day.

For the main part of the plot, we have two astronauts flying into space to check out a mysterious new moon of Jupiter named, perhaps demonstrating somewhat less imagination than one might hope for... Planet X. The two space aces are Fuji, played by Akira Takarada (who, like some of his co-stars in this movie, starred in many Godzilla films in different roles as well as films by Akira Kurosawa) and Glenn, the American played by Nick Adams. Presumably named Glenn to give a nod to real life space hero John Glenn, Nick Adams was good friends with both James Dean and Elvis Presley but his downwardly spiralling career in films like this and some of AIP's features (before all this stuff was re-evaluated by modern cineastes and nostalgia driven contemporaries) may well have contributed, among other things, to his probable suicide by drug overdose three years later.

One element about this film which is truly awesome is the special effects created by series regular Eiji Tsuburaya and his crew and, in particular, in the outer space settings. The rocket miniatures are awesome and there’s some really beautiful and very colourful stuff when the rocket lands on the brightly hued, textured surface of Planet X. There, in a plot far more convoluted than any of the previous films in the series, the ‘commandant’ (if the subtitles are to be trusted) of the Xiliens, the alien race native to the planet, offer up our species a cure for cancer in exchange for us allowing them to ‘borrow’ Godzilla and Rodan to fight the scourge of their own planet, Monster Zero... who it turns out, is King Ghidorah, fled there from the last movie (or recalled there, perhaps).

Meanwhile, Fuji’s sister Haruno, played by Keiko Sawai, also works for the Japanese equivalent of NASA... but Fuji doesn’t trust her new fiance. Her new fiance, Tetsu (played by Akira Kubo) is the other part of the ‘good guys’ plot, as he has invented a portable alarm system which nobody wants until a lady called Miss Namikawa (played by Kumi Mizuno), who also winds up as Glenn’s new girlfriend, buys it for her shady organisation.

And then, after a brief but entertaining interlude where Godzilla and Rodan defeat Ghidorah on Planet X (including a little victory dance by The Big G), the convoluted plot twists start to come as it turns out the Xiliens really just wanted to conquer the Earth, with the help of Godzilla, Rodan and King Ghidorah, so they can rule us and use our water. But luckily, before we are destroyed by the aliens, Fuji and his scientist friend construct weapons which will nullify the effects of the aliens... sorry, Xiliens... evil, electromagnetic control over Godzilla and Rodan.

Meanwhile, the other plot twist is gradually revealed as it turns out the organisation that bought Tetsu’s new personal alarm invention were just doing so to keep it off the market. The sound it emits completely sends the Xiliens into paroxysms of agony (and also short circuits a lot of their technology, somehow, it seems to me). So Tetsu and Glenn, after escaping from the Xiliens Earth, base, construct a super duper version to broadcast to radios and amplify around the world. You can’t blame them for being captured earlier on in the film though... after all, the aliens usually have a dark strip of a visor in front of their eyes and a radio antenna coming out of their head... which makes them all look a little like Alfalfa from Our Gang/The Little Rascals. When they’re undercover on Earth though, they dress just like us. Not easy to spot when you’re used to their regular look, I suppose.

The film brings in the usual monster showdown at the end, starting with all three kaiju stomping the country until the signals from the saucers are jammed and Godzilla and Rodan then re-team up to defeat King Ghidorah. Godzilla even tries some ‘float like a butterfly, sting like a bee’ boxing moves out on the three headed monster. And it’s an entertaining movie with some interesting moments and, given the amount of really good looking effects and beautiful sets, some obvious cost cutting exercises in other areas. Such as the various riots internationally following on from the Xilien’s ‘ultimatum’ announcement taking the form of documentary style black and white stills montaged together to try to hide the fact that... well... this was the cheaper way to do it.

For me, though, Invasion Of The Astro-Monster is one of the very best in the series... part of that is because the sequences on Planet X are quite bright and well composed... and partly because Ifikube’s score for this one is just so much fun that my toes tend to tap along most of the way through it. Not my absolute favourite but, certainly a runner up for me. Criterion’s new Blu Ray transfer is awesome when it can be but there are some fairly blurry moments too (possibly due to some of the stock footage from previous films in a couple of places). Either way, this was always one of the selling points of their new box set and it’s a great addition to any cineaste’s shelves... or even the casual viewer like me.

Ghidorah - The Three Headed Monster

Ghidorah With Excitement

Ghidorah - The Three Headed Monster
Japan 1964 Directed by Ishirô Honda
Criterion Blu Ray Zone B

So this next kaiju movie, which I am reviewing as part of Criterion’s lovely Spine 1000 box set of The Showa Era of Godzilla films, is very much a direct sequel to the previous film in the series, Godzilla VS Mothra (reviewed here). That’s not to say things haven’t moved on a little in this entry, Ghidora - The Three Headed Monster, as we’ll soon discover but some of the characters (human and kaiju alike) recur and many references are made to the original film.

This one is directed, once again, by Ishirô Honda... who was responsible for kick-starting the series with his original movie Godzilla (reviewed here), as well as directing other films starring both The Big G and a variety of other monsters, such as Mothra (reviewed by me here). And like his previous kaiju eiga, this one has a very slow build up but, where that really seemed to hamper the previous film in the series, this one has a very entertaining plot which is developed over a half an hour before the first monster even turns up... in the form of Rodan (or Radon as he was know  in Japan... wish a legitimate Blu Ray release was available for this monster’s debut feature). In fact, this is probably the best in the series so far since the original Godzilla movie and it never once gets dull.

The opening titles are a bit strange, showing a series of 'moving to freeze frame' monster moments from the forthcoming movie and I can only assume that this was done because of the slow build up on this one (much like the inclusion of ‘home video footage’ of Godzilla in Godzilla Raids Again, reviewed here). In this case, the decision is not the best because, as I said before, the plot development on this one is quite interesting and holds its own against the forthcoming attraction of battling behemoths.

Okay, so lets get to that plot then. Characters and their relationships with each other are established very economically with some nice, catch all lines which make any subsequent patter redundant, so it cuts to the chase very quickly compared to some of the other dialogue writing in the series... for instance, the line when a character is asked if there’s "anything up" is followed up with the answer... “If so, your paper would be on it before us cops.” Stuff like this really moves things along nicely and cuts a lot of extraneous material which might have been there in an alternate approach.

Primarily, the film centres around the princess of a fictional country called Sergina, played by Akiko Wakabayashi. She was in a few of these kinds of films but Bond fans may remember her for her performance as Aki in You Only Live Twice, three years later. Everybody in Sergina seems to dress with big Elizabethan ruffles around their necks, making them look totally out of place in the modern world in which this movie is set. Even their briefly glimpsed military look completely strange, as they all appear to be dressed in bright red Santa suits. Thankfully, not many of the princess’ scenes are set in her home country and she is the unfortunate victim of an assassination plot as her plane explodes from a bomb planted within. Or, at least she would have been if a strange alien voice in her head hadn’t urged her to leave and caused her to jump out into a bright light outside the aircraft before it explodes... could this have something to do with the mysterious UFOs that Naoka, the other female lead played by Yuriko Hoshi, has been researching for her job on the upcoming TV show, Mysteries Of The 20th Century? Pretty likely, I would say.

Confusingly, Yuriko Hoshi was in Godzilla VS Mothra playing a similar but totally different character. It’s puzzling since another of the main protagonists, Professor Miura played by Hiroshi Koizumi, reprises his role from that same film. He is studying one of the ‘mysterious meteors’ with strange properties that have crashed in the area. Meanwhile, the Princess resurfaces as an uncannily true prophet, who walks around in an almost trance-like state warning people to flee, as she believes she is a Venusian who can see into the future. Which she kind of is actually, because the Venusian light thing that rescued her from the plane is obviously controlling her actions.

She warns people to keep away from a mountain, for example, just a short while before Rodan busts his way out of it. Then, after Godzilla goes on the prowl again, out of the blue, she also warns about the creature that's the instigator of the destruction of the Earth, King Ghidora, the three headed monster of the title... who promptly hatches in a strange, phoenix like manner from the mysterious meteor.

Meanwhile (again), Mothra’s tiny guardians, played once again by the pop duo The Peanuts (their third and final appearance in a Godzilla film), are in town for a TV appearance and we are informed that, of the two surviving Mothras from the previous movie, one has passed away. Which is a shame. However, when Ghidorah starts his rampage, The Peanuts summon Mothra (who stays in larvae state for the entire movie) to talk sense into the warring Godzilla and Rodan, in a sequence in which we see Mothra talking to them while The Peanuts translate for the benefit of the audience... and so the stage is set for an epic battle at the end of the movie where Godzilla, Mothra and Rodan team up to battle King Ghidorah.

While all this is going on, we have the cop trying to protect the transformed princess from a group of hit-men who have been sent from Sergina... so we have a Godzilla movie with some proper gun battles in it too, which wouldn’t, it has to be said, look totally out of place in a Seijun Suzuki movie. The second half of the film also features legendary actor Takashi Shimura in his last appearance in a Godzilla film, as yet another new character, Doctor Tsukamoto.

And... it’s a really entertaining movie and a lot better than how I’d remembered it.

The special effects on this one are great and even the scenes where live action and miniature work are blended look pretty good (as opposed to the previous movie). There’s a lovely shot too, where Godzilla rising up out of the sea is preceded by the backs of fleeing whales rippling the surface of the water... this is really nice stuff.

The sound design is a mixed bag though. Nice work with the silenced guns of the villains, so the heroes louder gun shot sounds have their own signature and you can hear just who is doing the shooting at any one time in a gun battle. I’ll never understand, though, why Rodan always seems to sound like a jet engine. That just never works for me.

Akira Ifukube provides a magnificent score for this one and uses his big, ponderous Godzilla main theme a lot. There’s even something like a theremin used for some of the UFO/meteor moments. Curiously, though, his big Godzilla march still doesn’t make a reappearance here, at least that I could hear. There’s a wonderful musical build up when we first see King Ghidorah attack a city and we see the people shutting up shops and fleeing.

There’s a big musical misstep here though, as far as I’m concerned and, yes, I know selling records would have been a priority here... but there’s a brand new Mothra song which The Peanuts perform in two scenes and, well, it’s just not good... although matched visually by some nicely montaged shot compositions, such as the heads of the two blown up large on either side of the frame, superimposed with the chanting natives on Infant Island sandwiched between them.

All in all though, Ghidorah, The Three Headed Monster is a really entertaining and rewatchable entry into the series and brings in the concept of space aliens and space monsters to the films, acting as a great prelude/set up to the next movie in the series the following year, which was always one of my favourites, Invasion Of The Astro-Monster.

It also marks a great turning point in the series because Godzilla starts off as a menace but, when talking to Mothra and revealing his reasons for his former behaviour... and then agreeing to team up and help protect the earth from King Ghidorah... he finally takes on the mantle of heroic protector of Tokyo which would pretty much stick with him for most of the following films in The Showa Era. There’s also a hint at how whacky and comical the character would become as his laughter and amusement at Rodan getting equally covered with Mothra’s semen-like silk is plain old slapstick, pantomime acting... it’s quite hilarious, as are some of the reactions the monsters have to each other during the fights. This is one of the best movies in the series, for my money but... the best was yet to come.

Godzilla Raids Again

Fisherman’s Foe

Godzilla Raids Again
aka Gojira no gyakushû
aka Gigantis The Fire Monster
Japan 1955 Directed by Motoyoshi Oda
Toho/Criterion Collection Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Very minor spoilers not worth worrying about.

Okay, so on to the second main feature of the new Godzilla - The Showa Era Blu Ray box set from Criterion (more like ‘book’ set, actually) and a film which used to be one of my favourites from the series, Godzilla Raids Again. Now, I’ve seen this a few times in the past, just not recently and, I have to say, this is so not the film I remember. There’s stuff in here I didn’t recall at all and I remembered my favourite of the two main ‘pilot’ protagonists, played by Minoru Chiaki, surviving at the end and somehow saving the day. Instead, the last quarter of an hour or so plays without him because he dies before the film’s final resolution. I just don’t remember this at all.

Chiaki, of course, will be remembered by fans of the great director Akira Kurosawa as he’s in a lot of his films (such as Seven Samurai, Rashomon, The Hidden Fortress and much more) and, here, he plays comic relief to the other romantic lead played by Hiroshi Koizumi, who was in a lot of Japanese keiju eiga including some more Godzilla movies... just not playing the same character in any of them. Here, the two play pilots for a fishing company and they go out in their small seaplanes to spot schools of fish out at sea and then lead their big fishing vessels to those locations. Of course, it isn’t that long into the story before they spot something much bigger than fish, when Chiaki’s character has to go down on an island and wait to be rescued by Hiroshi. When the two are on the island, they come across Godzilla having a fight with this movie’s first guest monster, an ankylosaurus named Anguirus.

Anguirus would, of course, later star in a number of Godzilla films over various era franchises, including the recent American films (during the corona virus era, it’s uncertain now if the new Godzilla/Kong film will actually be released this year or not but, if it is, he’s scheduled to appear in this one too). This film marks not only his first appearance on film but it also makes this the first film in which Godzilla has to fight another monster. A tradition which would continue in, not quite all but certainly most other Godzilla films which came after it.

This film starts off really strongly with a series of establishing shots setting up the character of the main romantic lead... a long shot of the shadow of the seaplane on the water before cutting to a shot of the plane in the air (which I believe, like most shots of this ilk in the movie, is a model shot), followed by a studio shot looking in through the window of the cockpit where the live action inside the plane takes place. It’s nicely done, as is the second and final fight between Godzilla and Anguirus around about halfway through the movie... which amounts to a 'building obliterating' wrestling match where Godzilla kills Anguirus by biting into his neck in a dead spit of Christopher Lee doing much the same thing in the Hammer Dracula movies.

However, even though this is more 'story based' in terms of human characters, there really isn’t enough monster action in the movie and also, compared to the first movie, the special effects seem to look really ropy throughout... especially on the bits of film where they’re trying to fuse live action with inserts of the bigger effects in the same shot. In fact, this film was rush released and hit Japanese cinemas six months after the phenomenal success of the first film... so I’m guessing the deadlines were a hindrance here. Everything looks a bit cheap and underdone. The wires can clearly be seen on a lot of the fighter planes (especially on this new Blu Ray edition... the format is not kind to old special effects in general anyway) and there’s even a shot where a plane pulls up and does a kind of loop the loop but... the clouds in the sky loop with it, indicating that the camera operator is just twisting the camera around to get the effect. Hmm.

The rushed schedule and the lack of major monster action might also explain, perhaps, the one scene in this movie where a character from the first film returns. Kurosawa alumnus Takashi Shimura (one of my all time favourite actors) reappears in what amounts to a cameo scene as Dr. Yamane, the paleontologist geezah from Godzilla. Although, it’s almost an embarrassing cameo because it seems to be there only to serve two functions...

The first being to remind the audience that Godzilla actually died at the end of the last film, due to Dr. Serizawa’s Oxygen Detroyer and that, as Yamane had prophesised at the close of the last movie, there are probably other Godzillas around somewhere (and I really don’t like Godzilla being used as a plural like that but, what can you do?). So yeah, people often forget that this is a second Godzilla who went on to shoulder the rest of the Showa era and not the original.

Secondly, the good doctor brings a silent cine camera film of Godzilla causing destruction in Tokyo to remind the audience where this story is set and show the authorities just what they’re up against. This amounts to an extended sequence of compiled ‘highlights’ from the first movie which are left to play out in silence for a few minutes. I got quite a bit outraged that the ‘footage’ actually included a shot inside a train hurtling towards ‘destruction by The Big G’ because, of course, they couldn’t possibly have that shot in a POV movie surviving this. I suspect this whole extended sequence is merely in here because the producers probably recognised that they didn’t have enough monster action in the movie and needed to get a little extra spectacle in there somehow.

Just in case you forgot, Godzilla is still very much the villain in this at this point in the cycle. Indeed, one of the characters refers to him as “The bastard spawn of the hydrogen bomb.” The shift from destroyer of Japan to defender would not come until a few more films down the line.

Masaru Satô’s score is fine but there’s not much of it. Of course, it doesn’t gel musically at all with Ikira Ifukube’s majestic scores for Gojira but Satô did do some great scores for the series, kind of alternating on an almost film to film basis with Ifikube for a while. However, like I said, there’s not a heck of a lot of it and it’s even more sparsely spotted than the first film. Which is a shame because there are some sequences in this which could really benefit from some kind of musical lift, for sure.

This film as it’s presented here also shows up a bit of a disappointment with this new Criterion set. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a truly astonishing set and we are incredibly lucky to have it but it would have been really nice to also get the terrible, bastardised Gigantis The Fire Monster, dubbed American version as an extra... with voices by the likes of George (Mr. Sulu) Takei and Keye (Number One Son) Luke. After all, they included the American version of the first film on the previous disc.

Either way, if you’re a fan of Godzilla then Godzilla Raids Again is certainly a necessary entry in the series because it bridges the eight year gap between this film, the last in the series to be in black and white and in a standard, non-widescreen aspect ratio... and all that comes after, in that Godzilla himself is more or less where they left him at the end of this movie. So, you know, an inferior but invaluable film in the history of the series.

Gojira 1954/Godzilla King Of The Monsters (1956)

Radioactive Tokyo Calling!

Gojira (aka Godzilla)
Japan 1954
Directed by Ishirô Honda

Godzilla - King Of The Monsters (1956)
Japan/USA 1956
Directed by Ishirô Honda and Terry O. Morse

Criterion Collection - Godzilla - The Showa Era Box Set  Blu Ray Zone B

This Big G Criterion Collection box set of The Showa Era wave of Godzilla films is probably one of my more pricier Blu Ray box set purchases of recent years. It’s kind of worth it though because, for this specific wave of films lasting between 1954 and 1975, it’s very nearly the Holy Grail of Godzilla releases that fans and admirers of the movies have been waiting for over the years. Not quite the release we wanted, for sure and... I’ll explain one of the reasons why that's so in my review of the second and third films in the series but... well, it’s damn near to being the perfect set of these films and, in addition to some beautiful Blu Ray transfers, the packaging of an oversized hardback book with absolutely beautiful new commissioned illustrations for each title is nothing short of being an absolute work of art. Yes, it’s an expensive set but Criterion have really lived up to their usually exemplary standard with this release.

 Gojira is, of course, a combination of the Japanese words for gorilla (gorira) and whale (kujira), which is how the creature was originally conceived, gaining a more dinosaur-like appearance as pre-production continued. It was apparently the first Japanese film to be properly storyboarded but, knowing Kurosawa’s attention to details on his own films for Toho (he was doing Seven Samurai with one of the main cast members of this, somehow, while this was being shot), I’m not one hundred percent that the storyboard thing is true, to be honest.

The original Japanese version of the film is definitely one of the highlights of the series. Unlike many of the later movies, Gojira is not Japan’s defender against attacks by other giant monsters or alien invaders. Here’s he’s definitely the antagonist of the movie and the film starts with a scene inspired by a real life disaster (where a Japanese fishing boat strayed into an American testing zone for nuclear bombs and the crew were irradiated) but with the light and heat of the ‘as yet unseen’ Gojira boiling the water around a full crewed ship and sinking it... pretty much killing everyone.

After a couple more downed ships and a subplot involving an ancient Gojira legend, with some folks living on an island who are attacked in the night by the titular creature, it is up to my favourite actor Takashi Shimura, as palaeontologist Dr. Kyohei Yamane, to advise the military of just what to do as Gojira, a supposedly Jurassic era beast reawakened by H-Bomb testing, starts tearing down Tokyo and generally having a ‘gorilla-whale’ of a time. He is aided by the three who make up the love triangle of other main protagonists of the film... his daughter Emiko, played by Momoko Kôchi (who would return to this role in the 1980s in her last film appearance), her new almost-boyfriend Hideto, played by Akira Takarada and her fiance, the self sacrificing Dr. Serizawa who, played by Akihiko Hirata, invents the ‘oxygen destroyer’ that kills Gojira and which would make an appearance in some of the later films in the other two waves (heck, the oxygen destroyer was still being used as a narrative device in last year’s big  budget US production, Godzilla - King Of The Monsters, which I reviewed here).

The film starts strongly with the footsteps and roars of the creature playing over the long opening titles, even obscuring Akira Ifikube’s tremendous score as the opening plays out and then into the terrifying nautical scene described above. There’s some great stuff where Dr. Yamane finds a trilobite in the radioactive footprint of Gojira and some nice details such as how, just like the corona virus, the appearance of The Big G also affects the local economy when the fishermen find their nets empty as all the fish in the area have been eaten or scared off by this behemoth.

The film is quite grimly told with no punches pulled. Gojira’s ‘heat breath’, here depicted as steam when, as in later incarnations, the fins on his back light up, is saved until almost an hour into the 96 minute film but the grimness comes not from his rampages, which are few in number... but from little details such as the radioactive poisoning of all the kids in a hospital. Or the moment where we see a mother sitting by a soon to be destroyed building, clutching her three infant girls to her and telling them they will be joining their, presumably very dead, daddy where he is very soon now.

And the tone holds. Yes, there are some silly bits too, like when Serizawa reveals the horrors of his ‘oxygen destroyer’ and Emiko asks him what would happen if his discovery is used for some awful purpose but, mostly it's quite dark. It’s at this point in the proceedings that I have to question what the heck positive, 'non-awful purpose' there could possibly be for a substance that destroys all the oxygen in a body of water, disintegrating all life there. This is a weapon, despite the protests of its troubled creator.

It’s perhaps not always noted but Honda has some nice shot compositions in here too, when he’s not having to deal with ‘man in suit’ destruction of miniatures, such as a wonderful moment when four characters are seen in a multilayered set with a dining room as the middle layer from the camera and another room in the background, all the actors framed with an almost square box made up of multiple verticals and horizontals thrown up by the different depths of the rooms we are looking at. Nice stuff.

For the record, some of the effects work is still quite impressive, with some almost seamless blending between the shots of people fleeing Tokyo stitched together with the same shots as Gojira wrecking the miniature Tokyo above them. Quite spectacular for its time, no doubt and... still holding up very well by today’s standards, as far as I’m concerned.

And, of course, there’s the ‘Japanese John Williams’, composer Akira Ifukube, who worked on several Godzilla scores and whose themes from this series are still being used today (again, check out Bear McCreary’s use of them in last year’s Godzilla - King Of The Monsters release). The score is a mixture of ‘terror cues’ which play like extended stingers and strident, jaunty marches which are full of melody and charm. The film is well ‘spotted’ too, with long passages with no music and some of Ifikube’s memorable melodies being held back until just the right moment to let loose, the main Gojira march re-occurring when the military mobilise, for example. A great score which has been reissued many times over the years.

Courtesy of this new Criterion box, I was also able to revisit this movie in the very first version I would have seen it in, when I was five or six, on early 1970s British TV. This is the famous... or possibly infamous... 1956 recut intended for American audiences. Lots of new footage was shot with Parry Mason actor Raymond Burr (his footage was all shot in six days) playing reporter Steve Martin. Even though a lot of footage is added, the US version still manages to play a quarter of an hour shorter than the original cut and... well it’s not the same film at all. It’s a lot faster and somehow very clumsy while at the same time having some very creative, if often hilarious, ‘solves’ to re-pitch the story in a form the distributors obviously thought would play better in the US.

It starts off quite dramatically with Burr pulling himself out from under a collapsed building, covered in blood, as he begins narrating the story and often integrating with.... the back of other peoples heads who speak the lines before cutting to a face on view of the actor from the original version. The American dubs are often quite hilarious and quite often reminded me of a clumsier version of the movie Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, where the real life comedian Steve Martin (not to be confused with the character of the same name who Burr plays here) is inserted into old film noirs.

And it’s amazing the lengths they go to in order to make Burr look like he belongs in the film. He always seems to be waiting on the sidelines of any particular scene, on replica scenery, with his Japanese friend who can translate for Burr and the audience just what is going on when all the actors are speaking a different language. He even rings up his ‘old mate’ Dr. Serizawa and when we see Serizawa, who wears an eyepatch on his right eye, pick up the phone... it’s obviously another completely different actor in profile, with his eye patch towards the camera in the hopes the audience won’t notice this, perhaps less than blindingly clever, deception.

It’s an interesting version too because scenes are literally deployed in a completely different order, with scenes from towards the end of the picture coming in very early and vice versa. They even split one scene in half and run the second half later as if it’s taking place days or weeks after the first half of the sequence. And even Ifikube’s score is sometimes clumsily redeployed, scoring different scenes to those it was written for.

The result... a different film which, despite the grim and somber expression on Burr’s watching face for most of the movie, never gets close to having the gravitas or impact of the original Japanese cut, which is easily the best version of the movie and the one it should be remembered by. Burr would, of course, reprise his Steve Martin role for a similar bit of recutting tomfoolery on the first of the 1980s Godzilla films when it was released in US theatres.

So, yeah, not much else to say on either of the cuts other than, you can probably, quite happily ignore the American version unless you are curious. If you want to watch Gojira as it should be seen... and that should frankly apply to anyone who is in love with the art of cinema... then the original Japanese cut is the way to go and it’s still a pretty great film.

The Criterion version also has commentaries for both cuts and interviews with some of the key cast and crew, including an almost hour long interview with Ifikube about the music which I haven’t had time to watch yet. The new Showa Era set from Criterion looks beautiful and so do the films in it. This is a very special set and lovers of cinema will want to grab this before it sells out for good. It’s not quite a perfect set but... it’s probably as close as we’ll ever get, I think.

Gojira Mon Amour

Godzilla 50th Anniversary

Soundtrack Perfect Collection Box 6

Various Artists Toho Music (THM)

No: 0304 of 1954

Well. That was a bit of a monster to get through!

The sixth and final volume of Toho’s Godzilla 50th Anniversary Soundtrack Perfect Collection is finally released 6 years after the inaugural box set and, like the 4th and 5th in the series, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. This 9 disc set covers the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th films in the “third wave” of Japanese Gojira movies plus a re-issue of La La Lands 2 disc limited issue of David (007) Arnold’s score for the US Godzilla movie. Plus there’s a special bonus if you ordered your copy, along with the previous 5, from Ark Square Soundtracks in Japan... but more on that later.

The box opens strong with female composer (they’re a comparatively rare breed in soundtrack composing circles for some reason) Michiru Oshima’s pretty cool score to Godzilla X Megaguirus: The G Extermination Strategy. This is some nice work and the main theme seems to me to have a distinctly British sound to it... kind of like Goodwin’s 633 Squadron meets Knott’s Curse of the Wererabbit. It works really well as a kind of throwback to Ifikube’s old Gojira theme... which they keep splicing back into these movies anyway so it does its job.

The second score in the set, Kow Otani’s Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack is pretty ropey but this is followed by two more Michiru Oshima scores, for Godzilla X Mechagodzilla and Godzilla X Mothra X Mechagodzilla: Tokyo S.O.S which stylistically and thematically cover the same ground as her first Big G score but aren’t quite as punchy... although the latter has a couple of interesting new renditions of Akira Ifikube’s Mothra song in it.

Then we have the score I was most interested in hearing... Keith Emerson’s score (of Emerson, Lake and Palmer fame) to the last, to date, Japanese Godzilla movie... Godzilla: Final Wars. If they were to list every monster that makes an appearance in that movie (including the US Godzilla from the Emmerich production who gets demolished by the Japanese Godzilla in three seconds flat) then the title of this movie would go on for pages. Just be thankful that they called it Final Wars.

Ok, so the three Emerson discs for this score were a bit of a disappointment for me. I really admired his work on various giallo and horror scores (his score for Argento’s Inferno being a particular favourite of mine) but this one leaves me a bit cold... until you hear his original demo cues on the third disc. These have all the vibrancy and playfulness that I feel was missing in the actual score. So that third disc will definitely be getting respun in the future.

The last score is Arnold’s score for the US “reimagining” of Godzilla and all I’m saying on this one is just that it reiterates one thing really well... just how professional Arnold is as a composer when he delivers this fantastic score to a dreadful movie that didn’t deserve it. Possibly the best thing in this sixth set.

If you order the box from Ark Square in Japan and provide the numbers on your personal editions of the previous boxes, you also get a bonus Region 2 DVD of a lecture by Akira Ifikube (shame they didn’t put any subtitles on it) and some footage from some scoring sessions of Ifikube’s scores. A nice little extra for those of us who have been scraping the money together to buy these bloody expensive sets since 2004.

In summation, the sixth box set is nowhere near as consistently listenable as the Akira Iikube and Masaru Sato scores which made up the first three boxes of the 50s, 60s and 70s Godzilla films comprising the First Wave... but it’s got some nice stuff in it and if you’re a fan of the Big G’s music, probably a bit of an essential purchase.