godzilla & friends, part 3: the heisei era

the return of godzilla

“godzilla is the son of the atomic bomb. he is a nightmare created out of the darkness of the human soul. he is the sacred beast of the apocalypse.”

-tomoyuki tanaka

gamera & friends, part 1: the shōwa era

gamera, the giant monster

“gamera’s a good turtle.”

i love me some gamera but his first movie is just kind of okay, and i remember feeling that way about a lot of the shōwa era gameras, but i’m super open to having my mind changed! i do enjoy the symmetry of gamera being launched into space at the end and the next godzilla movie being invasion of astro-monster. i know that was probably completely unintentional on both studios’ parts, but it’s still pretty cute.

godzilla & friends, part 2: the later shōwa era

invasion of astro-monster (1965)

“on earth, you gave this terrifying monster the name of ghidorah. everything is numbered here. the monster is zero.”

apparently there are a lot of complaints about the special effects budget being noticeably smaller in this one, as well as quite a bit of footage from previous films being reused, but i honestly wasn’t even a little bothered? and like, that brief little godzilla and rodan vs. ghidorah fight at the end is actually a drastically better fight than the bigger, longer one in ghidorah, the three-headed monster? (on a more personal/thirsty note, there’s a moment in the brief fight on planet x where godzilla just runs full speed at ghidorah, jump-tackles him, and briefly straddles him, and i am so fucking jealous of that three-headed bitch.)

in addition to that pretty worthwhile fight at the end, we get a pretty extended sequence of godzilla, rodan and ghidorah just kinda stomping around destroying buildings and it kinda super works for me. this sequence has a ton of closeups of godzilla destroying things by stepping on them or just carelessly thrashing his tail around if you’re into that kind of thing, not that... not that, uh, i am or anything *nervous laugh* the uh absolute helplessness of the humans’ massive artillery barrages to do anything to even so much as slow the monsters down is... uh... also definitely not a huge turn-on or anything. ok but seriously this sequence definitely doesn’t only work for me because i’m a thirsty bitch (... though it certainly doesn’t hurt), it’s also just pretty effective in spite of the alleged constraints on the special effects budget.