Alternate Titles: Godzilla on Monster Island
Year: 1972
Director: Jun Fukuda
Special Effects Director: Teruyoshi Nakano
In The Suit: Haruo Nakajima (Godzilla), Kenpachiro Satsuma (Gigan), Koetsu Omiya (Anguirus), Kanta Ina (King Ghidorah)

After the controversial madness of Smog Monster, Toho hands the directorial reigns back to Jun Fukuda, who delivers a more traditional monster bash. The original plans for this movie included even more monsters, but it was scaled back for budgetary reasons. However, (not counting stock footage in the beginning) the movie does feature four monsters, with Godzilla and Anguirus teaming up against King Ghidorah and the new and awesome Gigan, who i think may be my favorite Godzilla villain, at least in terms of character design. I should also note that this film is the last with the original actor, Haruo Nakajima, in the Godzilla suit.

We open with a scene of Godzilla, who turns to the camera and blasts us in the face with his radioactive breath, and also the title card. Then, during the opening segment, we're treated to an endlessly scanning camera showing us endless amounts of random high tech buttons an dials.

It's like the dashboard scene in Airplane!

We're not shown at this time what the devices are for. And after the credits we get down to business, introducing our cast, starting with Manga artist Gengo Odako (played by Hiroshi Ishikawa) trying to get a job as a comic book artist. He's got the slight problem of having drawn a comic without coming up for a design for his monster, but that doesn't deter his friend/girlfriend and/or sister. Min says it's his sister, but i don't see anyone in the credits with the same last name (if i have it right, she is Tomoko Tomoe, played by Yuriko Hishimi). I originally assumed it was his girlfriend. Either way, she takes a very domineering attitude about his career plans, basically arranging job interviews for him. Whoever she is, she's not his mom. But Gengo doesn't really stand up for himself either, in part because she's a black belt in karate.

Gengo's such a doofus, i just assumed she must be his sister and that's why she puts up with him.

Gengo's next job interview is at World Children's Land, an amusement park featuring a life-sized (50 meter) Godzilla statue...

...and other less giant-monster oriented stuff, including a library, a science observatory, and cool looking mushroom things.

During the job interview, the World Children's guy says that the goal of the amusement park is "absolute peace" As Gengo notes, combining monsters and absolute peace "doesn't seem to make sense". But then the park guy goes on a weird rant about how he intends to destroy all the monsters on Monster's Island in the name of peace. We're treated to some stock footage of the monsters during the rant.

You might think that an amusement park owner having such delusions of grandeur is a little weird. I mean, World Children's Land isn't exactly Disney. But all of this barely registers to Gengo, who goes home to tell his sister/girlfriend that his new employers are just a little "stiff".

Why does the park want to hire a comic book artist? To design new monsters for them. So he finally gets to creating the designs for the monsters he's been pitching to comics editors. Shukra, the homework monster...

...and Momogan, the monster of strict mothers.

OMG,Tomoko needs to step up and tell Gengo some home truths. Dude is terrible at comic creation. She needs to get him focusing on something he's at least not horrible at or else she's never going to get rid of this albatross.

Very literal-minded (Shukra is created from the telepathic energy of all the children that hate homework), but i've read the worst Marvel comics of the 1970s, so i am unfazed. I'm more alarmed by the fact that Momogan is wearing the same shirt as Tomoko. Dude! I don't know if she's your girlfriend or your sister or what, but if you're feeling like she's an overbearing mother, you've got to grow up and get a hold of yourself. It's not a healthy relationship, whatever it is.

You might think that an escape from that relationship comes in the form of Machiko Shima (played by Tomoko Umeda), who Gengo runs into on the way to visit Children's Land's headquarters the next day. But there's actually no romance in this movie, so Gengo is stuck with Tomoko (the character, and yes, it must have been confusing on the set that she shares a name with the actress playing the other female lead). Machiko is fleeing the building holding a tape reel, which she drops when she bumps into Gengo. Gengo picks it up and pockets it as goons run out of the building chasing Machiko. Gengo points them in the wrong direction and then enters the building to meet Children's Land's chairman, who is actually a teenaged boy. His name is Fumio Sudo, and he's played by Zan Fujita.

The chairman is currently working on complicated physics problems, and he has no problem sharing that they relate to the orbit of Nebula M space-hunter. When the head goon (the guy that initially interviewed Gengo for the job; his name is Kubota and he's played by Toshiaki Nishizawa) returns to the building without Machiko, he's chewed out for letting her get away with Action 2 Tape, also in front of Gengo.

It's unclear what Gengo is doing at the building at this time. He's not there to drop off his designs, since we'll see him do that later. So he leaves, and gets held up by a hippie.

The hippie, Shosaku Takasugi (played by Minoru Takashima) is working with Machiko. It turns out that Shosaku didn't actually have a gun, just a cob of corn. But it was enough to cause Gengo to faint (*rolls eyes* Do you see why there's no way Tomoko can be his girlfriend? He has anti-mate-attracting attributes.). He wakes up in his apartment with Shosaku and Machiko.

Machiko's brother has been kidnapped by Children's Land, and she's found hints in his diary that they are up to something menacing. We cut away to the brother to confirm that he's been kidnapped.

Gengo and friends then play Action 2 Tape to see what's on it. All they hear are a series of strange bleeps and bloops, but the Children's Land bad guys are able to detect that they are playing it. And so do Godzilla and Anguirus, and (according to the bad guys) they can understand it, too. The bad guys react by, er, changing Plan 3 to Plan 6, and then we cut away to Godzilla and Anguirus having a conversation about it.

But what about Plans 4 and 5??? We spent months working on them!

There are a few different versions of the conversation between Godzilla and Anguirus out there. On our disc, on the Japanese audio track, there are just a lot of weird backwards record scratchy noises. The two are clearly having a conversation, but we aren't privy to it. On the English audio track, there is audible dialogue between them:

Godzilla: Hey Angila!
Anguirus: Whaddya want?
Godzilla: Something funny going on. You better check.
Anguirus: O... K...
Godzilla: Hurry up!

Best. Thing. Ever.

It seems that on the original English release (which we don't have, but which you can find on Youtube; here for now until Toho finds it and makes them take it down), there were also word balloons in addition to the speech:

Even in the least outrageous version of this - the Japanese version with no translations for the monsters - it's still pretty unusual to see Godzilla and Anguirus clearly communicating with each other, and Godzilla ordering Anguirus around. I love in the translated version how belligerent Anguirus is about it, even as he complies. Whaddya want? I'm also not sure that Anguirus is the best scout for Godzilla to pick. Mothra is currently in larva form based on the opening scenes (which implies direct continuity with Destroy All Monsters since she was in moth form in Sea Monster, but i guess she could have already laid another egg and hatched again), but we saw that Rodan was on the island, and he can fly really fast. Instead, poor Anguirus has to swim all the way to Japan from Monster Island, and when he finally gets there he's faced with the usual toys from Japan's Defense Force.

And of course, lots of reused footage of the army and of civilians being evacuated. And the usual 80% miss rate.

The army manages to repel him with bright lights (something that used to attract him, if i recall correctly)...

What are you people doing? I'm here to investigate!

...and so he has to turn around and swim all the way back to Monster Island again.

In the meantime, the human good guys investigate and find that the chairman and head goon of Children's Land are actually supposed to be dead. Then, in a series of shenanigans involving Gengo pretending to drop off his monster sketches and tracer bugs in cigarettes, the bad guys show up at Gengo's place to retrieve Action 2 Tape. The good guys manage to not get captured thanks to the timely arrival of karate sister/girlfriend. However, they fail to convince the police to do anything about World Children's Land. My advice would have been to keep the information given to the police pretty limited, basically narrowed down to "My brother has been missing for three days and his diary indicates that he's being held at World Children's Land" (that sure sounds more convincing than "The owners of World Children's Land are an evil cabal intent on bringing absolute peace to the world" but what do i know). But in any event, the police are unable to help at this time, and they're soon going to be occupied because it's reported that Godzilla and Angirus have broken out of Monster Island.

Broken out? What's keeping them in? And I want to know what Anguirus reported back. "Yeah, they're still shooting at any giant monster that climbs ashore."

So the good guys try to make their own attempt to rescue Machiko's brother, and Gengo and Karate Girl wind up getting captured.

The bad guys are happy that Godzilla and Angirus are coming, and now that they have their tape back, they set their plans in motion. Which makes one wonder what the whole point of the theme park was, and especially why they hired Gengo to design new monsters. That all seems irrelevant to their plans.

That's cause all that stuff was part of Plan 3.

What their plan actually involves is summoning two space monsters. The first, we know as King Ghidorah. The second is new.

It's Gigan!

And the Children's Land people are actually space aliens themselves. They use dead bodies as "uniforms". "We solidify the afterimages of you humans and reflect them." Well, whatever the hell that means, i guess it sounds better than saying that they crawl inside dead bodies and walk around in them. They cast cockroach shadows.

Kubota does something really weird and creepy with his mouth in that scene above.

Tomoko faints after seeing the bug shadows, which is pretty disappointing for the otherwise take-charge karate-using character.

It's said that pollution killed Nebula M, and we're shown footage of pollution from Smog Monster to prove it. Earth is headed to the same result, and the surviving species of Nebula M - the cockroaches - want to take refuge on Earth. To get things ready, they are using King Ghidorah and Gigan, who are being controlled by the Action Tapes.

Min: I thought King Ghidorah worked for the aliens of Planet X.
Fnord: Well, they "escaped to the future".
Min: Man, Ghidorah just gets passed around from alien race to alien race, doesn't he?
Fnord: He's mind controlled!
Min: It's always something.

When the two space monsters get to Earth, they are sent on a rampage.

By the way, it takes a loooooong time for Godzilla and Anguirus to swim to Monster Island. We cut to them a few times to remind us that, yes, they are coming. One of those times includes another "conversation" like the one where Godzilla sent Anguirus from Monster Island the first time ("Hey Angila, hurry up. There's a lot of trouble ahead."). For the water scenes, Godzilla is wearing the terrible costume used in Son of Godzilla, but luckily he's back in something more reasonable when he eventually (and i do mean eventually) gets onto dry land.

During the rampage, we get this shot from, um, inside a doll's house? Like, with dolls, that, if i understand the scale correctly, are the size of people? Are we supposed to think they are actual people? Or was it a well known store in Japan in the 70s with life sized dolls that we just don't know about? Anyway, it's just weird, and i'm glad that Gigan kicks the building in shortly after this screenshot was captured.

More rampaging. We're focused on Gigan, the new character. I'm fairly certain most of Ghidorah's footage is reused from other movies anyway.

The military is really slow to show up, and the tanks and stuff are all reused footage and we never actually see them interact with the space monsters.

Fnord: The military took their time getting here. I mean, where are they?
Min: Well, considering that was from another movie...

So the Space Monsters get to rampage unimpeded for a long time. Tipping over big shipping freighters and igniting oil depots.

What kind of insurance do you have to get in the Toho universe?

Finally, the military makes it to the same film that the rest of us are watching, and begins attacking with jet planes that shoot red lasers. Now that's something! Totally ineffective, and with the usual miss rate, but still. Laser planes.

Of course they still dive-bomb the monsters.

That's a drink!

Yep, that's it guys. KEEP FLYING STRAIGHT AT HIM. YOU'RE SHOOTING LASERS! YOU'VE GOT TO GET REALLY CLOSE TO USE THOSE, THEY DEFINITELY DON'T WORK FROM A DISTANCE.

Do we drink for each plane? Six or seven of them went down in the first 2 minutes.

A Roliscian canon does manage to knock Gigan down but then King Ghidorah destroys it and the other canons. They are really a good pair.

Godzilla & Anguirus still in the water, by the way! We hear on the radio, "This is the latest monster news", and then a casual report of the arrival of two space monsters plus Godzilla and Anguirus having escaped from Monster Island. It's just Tuesday in Japan from the reporter's perspective.

Finally, Godzilla and Anguirus arrive.

Now the taunting begins.

Then some tackling, with Godzilla charging at Ghidorah and the two of them go tumbling. Gigan tries flying but not with Godzilla's breath weapon at the ready. King Ghidorah indiscriminately shoots his lasers.

Meanwhile, i guess the human good guys escape. Something to do with helium balloons and zip lines. The car they were using gets destroyed by a laser from the Godzilla statue, but the good guys anticipated that and weren't really in the car. They go to the Defense Force general and inform him that space-cockroaches are controlling the space monsters. The general literally says, "What do you want us to do? We've tried everything." And then goes into a litany about how the space monsters are immune to their rockets. Yeah, ok. But didn't you hear what we just said. The monsters are being controlled by the guys in the Godzilla statue. So, like, send some bombers to blow it up, or some ground troops to infiltrate it? Something?

No, the plan is to send civilians armed with boxes loaded with TNT to take down the tower themselves. They do lend some soldiers to help carry the boxes.

Meanwhile, Anguirus is having trouble with Gigan's stomach saw blade and scythe hands.

Help me out, bro!

But Godzilla has his hands full fighting Ghidorah. Gigan switches opponents. His flying is now more effective, and he repeatedly cuts Godzilla with his stomach blade.

After taking a lot of abuse from the space monsters, Godzilla groggily gets up and sees the Godzilla tower for the first time. He stumbles towards it, outraged, and is cut down by its lasers.

Luckily, the good humans have arrived with their boxes of dynamite.

Fnord: Doesn't look army issue to me. Looks like boxes of fireworks.
Min: They should have "Acme" on them.

Apparently Gengo has taken the time to draw up a big picture of the group. So they head up to the (unguarded) elevator, load it up with TNT, hang the picture, and send it up to the top.

This destroys the Godzilla tower and kills all the aliens. Poignant cockroach death scene.

But Godzilla is still losing this fight. Gigan claws at him, poking him with his pointy claws, making Godzilla bleed out of his head.

Godzilla, come on!

But all of Min's urgings aren't enough, and Godzilla is picked up and tossed into the remains of the Godzilla tower.

Space monsters are such assholes.

Suddenly, inexplicably, one of the humans announces, "Godzilla's strong again.", and indeed he's back in the fight, first sitting on Gigan and pounding him like it's a schoolyard fight.

That's how i would fight.

Lord knows how poor Angirus has been holding out all this time, but he manages to sneak around behind King Ghidorah and bite his tail. This turns out to not be such a good move, just like it wasn't the first time Angirus did the same thing in Destroy All Monsters (literally; it's the same footage). Ghidorah flies up in the air and drops Angirus to the ground, although Angirus did manage to bite one of his necks first.

But now Godzilla comes charging in. Gigan is hot on his heels, but Godzilla ducks at the last second, causing Gigan to crash into Ghidorah instead (if this sounds like it's happening quickly in your head, picture it again but with more lumbering). Ghidorah reacts by attacking Gigan. Remember that they're no longer being mind controlled now that the tower is destroyed, so they probably don't know what's going on.

There's more of the backwards record scratching noises as Godzilla and Angirus form a plan, but this time there's no translation in the English audio track. Anguirus sneaks up behind Ghidorah and does a back flip, impaling his back spikes into Ghidorah. This happens several times.

Do it again!

Then Godzilla starts tossing Ghidorah around like a rag doll.

And then they go back to stomping on Ghidorah's injured head. Same footage as in Destroy All Monsters.

Min: Ok, this time he loses the head and has to be remade as Mecha-Ghidorah, right?
Fnord: No. Not until the Heisei era.
Min: I hate the Heisei era.

At this point Ghidorah and Gigan flee...

...as Godzilla does our favorite mouth-wiping taunt, unfortunately impossible to replicate here without video.

And that's the movie. This is a fun one, although it's kind of short on Drinking Game items, which also makes it a little boring. I feel like they could have cut a good half hour from the movie by getting rid of some of the human scenes, but of course i feel that way about every film. I think Gigan is awesome, and i like seeing Anguirus team up with Godzilla. The "conversation" scenes fill our insanity quota for the film, and it's nice to have a straight alien invasion plot with no deeper messages.

Godzilla Drinking Game
	Someone thinks it's a good idea to drag a giant monster across the ocean on a raft (giant eggs count).	During the interminable swims back and forth from Monster Island, you'll wish that someone would come along and pick up the monsters in a raft, but it doesn't happen.
	Attacking planes fly directly at a monster, with no possibility of avoiding a crash even if the monster didn't swat them down.	We have photographic evidence of that plane flying directly at Gigan's claw. And that's just one of several.
	People refuse to believe in the existence of a giant monster even though they've already acknowledged that Godzilla exists.
	A submarine explodes.
	Teens have a dance party on a boat. Two drinks/head smacks if they get attacked by a monster during the party.
	The government is completely ineffective when faced with a corporation doing something illegal.	After hearing that the World Children's Land group were cockroach-aliens that kidnapped Machiko's brother, and - this is key - believing it, the general of the Defense Force basically says "Well what do you want me to do about it?" He doesn't "basically" say that. He literally says that! What the hell? Isn't that the entire purpose of the Defense Force?
	A humongous lumbering monster manages to sneak up on someone. Two drinks/head smacks if it's the army and they're supposedly using radar.
	A scientist suddenly figures everything out with little-to-no information and explains it all to everyone.	Hey! There are no scientists in this movie!
	A monster suddenly grows in size just because.
	People expose themselves to major amounts of radiation with no concern.
	Everyone suddenly knows a monster's name. Two drinks/head smacks if everyone else nods appreciatively and repeats it.
	Army missiles can't seem to hit a 150+ foot monster and instead explode harmlessly around it.	The initial attack on Anguirus is the most egregious example, but you'll get yourself a drink or two when the Defense Force tries to stop Gigan and King Ghidorah too.
	A woman falls down for no reason.
	Bad dinosaur science. You have to give a little leeway for the time period, but pretending a children's picture book is a scientific journal is always worth two drinks/smacks.

Monsters Appearing: Anguirus, Gigan, Godzilla, Gorosaurus, Kamacuras, King Ghidorah, Kumonga, Minilla, Mothra, Rodan