Alternate Titles: Counterattack of Mechagodzilla, Terror of Godzilla, Monsters from an Unknown Planet
Year: 1975
Director: Ishiro Honda
Special Effects Director: Teruyoshi Nakano
In The Suit: Toru Kawai (Godzilla), Ise Mori (Mechagodzilla), Tatsumi Nikamoto (Titanosaurus)

Ishiro Honda returns as director for what will turn out to be the final Godzilla film of the Showa era (if you find yourself saying "Technically, 1984 Return of Godzilla is part of the Showa era, please see our About page). Surprisingly, despite the change in directors, this movie is the most direct sequel of any movie of the era. Many Showa movies seem to vaguely acknowledge the events of the last film while at the same time acting like we're seeing repeat monsters for the first time, and most don't look back at all. This one, however, starts off with a recap of the fights with Mechagodzilla from Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (in the American version, anyway, and poor King Caesar is completely but understandably cut out) and even uses the same aliens as the human-sized bad guys as the last film, and even uses the same actor as the leader of those aliens. It's a real rarity. That's not to say there are some continuity questions raised between the two films, but it's a lot more linear than usual.

We do have the American version, and it's dubbed and pan & scan. So if the return of Ishiro Honda also means an uptick in quality, we definitely don't see it. The bad dubbing does mean an uptick in hilarity, though. The poor quality dubbing is extra special for this one.

We start with this lady, to which Min immediately upon seeing says, "Oh no...!".

We then switch to some people in a submarine. They are from Interpol, and are searching for the remains of Mechagodzilla.

Min: I hope it sinks.
Fnord: If it doesn't, everything we believe in is wrong.

The guy without the hat was our marine biologist action hero from the last movie. He's playing a different character this time, though.

The searches say that the wreckage of Mechagodzilla must be around here somewhere, and that they should look especially for the head.

What are you talking about? He shattered into a million pieces. We JUST SAW IT in the recap at the beginning of this movie.

The dialogue is just terrible. Incredibly staggered lines, like a Pinter Play. "Look... especially... for the... head."

Our faith in the Tohoverse does not fail us. Lurking beneath the ocean is a giant monster.

The ocean is a lot smokier than i had previously thought. And lavender.

He attacks the sub, and when it surfaces he rises to the surface too, jumps out of the water, and bodyslams it.

Min: He knows he's a giant monster fighting a tiny submarine, right?
Fnord: You don't hold back. You always give it your all.

It turns out that this sub was still in the experimental stage, and back at Interpol there's a little contest for who can be the humblest and take the most blame for it failing. It was body-slammed by a giant monster, guys. Not much you could do about that. The Interpol guys are then joined by someone from the Ocean Exploitation Institute (OEI).

The OEI guy played the scientist that created Jet Jaguar in Godzilla vs. Megalon.

Interpol plays the audio logs from the submarine explosion. (With terrible emphasis in the dubbing. "HeadQUARTERS! HeadQUARTERS!" And why was no one answering the poor guy?) When they hear the sub captain reporting that they are being attacked by an aquatic dinosaur, the Interpol guys turn to the OEI guy and ask what he thinks about that. And he says, "I can't believe it.". Well, he's just going to have to.

What? Where did you get your scientist credentials? Scientists always believe the monsters exist. They're usually the first in line to tell us how they suspected this all along. You, sir, are no scientist!

There's a werid, almost subliminal flash of a picture of a UFO, before switching to our next scene. Which shows us the people who are obviously the bad guys. Sunglasses and facial hair.

The bearded guy is complaining about how much airplanes suck. "One hour is worse than a thousand in space travel." (You don't know how good you have it.) The sunglasses guy, the leader, then explains how Tokyo is typical of Earth cities, full of chaos and pollution. And that's why they have to destroy it and replace it with a city of their own design.

As mentioned earlier, the sunglasses guy is the leader of the ape aliens from the previous movie.

Behold the simian utopia. You'd think there'd be more jungle gyms.

These ape aliens want to fix pollution and make it better. In Godzilla vs. Gigan we saw cockroach aliens who like the pollution. It seems there are more aliens than humans on Earth. They should all fight it out.

In the Thunder Dome!

Last movie the ape aliens introduced themselves as the third planet in the black hole, as if it was just where they were from. But in this movie we learn that the black hole is actually a problem, and their planet is falling into it. So that's why they want to come here. The bearded guy tells sunglasses guy that he's found a professor that he thinks will be a good ally. In fact, he's already apparently taken the initiative and saved the professor's daughter's life. And as we'll learn later, this happened some time ago. So it's a wonder that the boss is only finding out about it now. But maybe that explains why the boss felt the need to kidnap a different scientist in the last movie.

In addition to being loyal to the aliens because they saved his daughter, he's also said to hate humanity anyway.

Back at Interpol and the OEI, we find out why as they delve into the guy's history, and we're shown a series of still shots. Professor Mafune, who is played by our long term Godzilla friend Akihiko Hirata, was a member of the OEI but he was thrown out for his advanced science. He started with a "theory of undersea exploitations", specifically about using submarine farms to grow food. And at that point he was well respected.

But then he moved on to experimenting with controlling undersea life (and mice, apparently).

It's said that his desire to control undersea life extended to "all manner of fish" as he's shown holding a picture of Titanosaurus.

I think he got kicked out cause he didn't understand the definition of "fish".

He became increasingly aggressive about his Titanosaurus picture, shoving it into the faces of his colleagues.

He eventually had to be wrestled to the ground, and kicked out of the institute. At which point he stopped shaving.

Who's taking all these pictures?

The OEI chief being interviewed concludes, "As far as we were concerned, he studied too hard." Let that be a lesson to you kids.

There's no such thing. Here, do more dittos.

The main Interpol agent (Jiro, played by Katsumasa Uchida) and his OEI partner (Akira, played by former Jet Jaguar scientist Katsuhiko Sasaki) go to see if they can find Professor Mafune. They track him to a decrepit castle on an island, which judging by the noise, must be covered in crows. They find his daughter, Katsura (played by Tomoko Ai) at the door, but she claims that her father has been dead for five years and that she burned all his notes.

But Mafune is still alive, although Toho is doing the best they can to disguise him by putting him in a corny mad scientist wig and mustache.

And by this point he is hanging out with the simian aliens from the third planet of the black hole (although i should note that there is no hint of them being secretly ape-men going by this movie alone).

And it turns out that the aliens have already recovered Mechagodzilla and are working on its repairs.

Mafune is helping with the repairs (it should be mentioned that the same actor played the scientist that repaired Mechagodzilla in the last movie, too), and he suggests that only living brain cells can be used to solve the problem of controlling the giant robot. The alien leader agrees, politely not mentioning that they had no problem controlling it in the previous movie.

That was before they had to reconstruct it from a billion tiny shards scattered all over the place.

We next see our marine biologist action hero turned submarine captain escaping from the captivity of the aliens, doing an amazing jump flip as he runs across the island (action hero). The aliens manage to catch him, but we'll later see in a flashback that before he was captured, he handed a chunk of space titanium to a random maintenance man who happened to be nearby (in the middle of the wilderness on a remote island). We'll also see that the sub captain had been surgically muted by the aliens. The maintenance man will later go to Interpol with the titanium.

Meanwhile, someone at Interpol has found a notebook that says that Titanosaurus is a gentle creature, not aggressive by nature.

I want to see that notebook. Is it a children's book?

Then Katsura shows up to visit OEI agent Akira. When he meets her, we swear that the poor shut-in of a girl has an orgasm after being alone with a man that isn't her father for the first time, ever. When Akira first talks to her, she literally can't speak; she just makes this satisfied grunt along with a weird expression.

Akira: Hey. Hello. I'm sorry to trouble you.
Katsura: Unnnnhtahh!
Akira: Thanks for coming.
Fnord & Min: PHRASING!

The other weird thing about this scene is that while Katsura and Akira are talking, we keep flashing over to this old guy in a car.

And Katsura and Akira actually move around while they're talking. They're indoors in the scene above, and later they're out on a dock somewhere.

But no matter where they are, we keep flashing back to the old guy. It's meant to be that he's spying on her, and he reports back to Katsura's father that she was talking to outsiders. But the old guy must have really good vision to see the entire conversation. Like x-ray vision. And super-hearing.

Anyway, Akira has called on Katsura to tell her that they're going on another submarine mission to look for Titanosaurus. And he invites her to come along with him. No matter that the first submarine was destroyed; go ahead and invite the young lady along. She smartly declines. But she's pleased that Akira believes her father's theories.

Katsura is very, very strange. The old man, who continues to leer at Katsura in later scenes, is also very, very strange. And of course Professor Mafune is mad. It's a messed up family. But Katsura is the weirdest, all full of weird emotional facial expressions and noises. It turns out that she has the ability to control Titanosaurus. And her father wants her to be able to control Mechagodzilla the same way. Which is weird. Controlling an organic "dinosaur", presumably via an empathetic bond, is very different than controlling a mechanical giant robot. And again, it's not like the aliens had any problem controlling Mechagodzilla in the last movie. Preventing it from getting its head ripped off from Godzilla, sure. But not controlling it.

Frankly, though, the aliens are too busy being awesome in their awesome hats to worry about consistency between movies.

I bet they have trouble getting in and out of cars.

Eventually Katsura has a total freakout and the aliens need to shoot her in the head with a laser and then reprogram her. See, she's actually a cyborg herself. She died helping her father on an earlier experiment (a flashback shows her in a child's skirt and with a buoyant personality to demonstrate how long ago it was).

Nothing says "young" like pigtails.

And then the aliens brought her back to life, except as a robot with a mechanical heart.

"Your heart is frozen and dry.", the aliens tell her. "Who'd love a cyborg?"

That is certainly one tactic to use when trying to convince someone to help you in your cause...

Note that in the flashback scene, Professor Mafune had yet to grow his mad scientist hair. And the aliens came in right after that (if they weren't already working with Mafune, since their arrival is kind of sudden). So Mafune was definitely working with the aliens prior to the events of the previous movie. Odd that the bearded alien didn't tell his boss about it until this movie.

Mebbe he's the new boss who just transferred in from the black hole to replace the old boss who got deaded. They just happen to have the same face.

Anyway, the submarine expedition does find Titanosaurus.

Not that they should be happy about it since, at the reprogrammed Katsura's direction, it attacks them. But then something happens, causing Titanosaurus and Katsura to have a freakout.

Back at Interpol headquarters, a war room is put together. They bring in another Toho regular, Kenji Sahara, to head it.

And the conclusion is that it was sonar that stunned Titanosaurus. The conversation that stemmed from that was too impossible to convey with transcription alone, so here's an audio clip.

"The next point... we must bear in mind about supersonic waves... is that it's direction is the same as light waves! AND, WITH A PARABOLIC LENS(!)... we can concentrate the entire beam."

So basically the plan is to zap Titanosaurus with a sonic beam. Dumb Aikiro gives away the plan to Katsura, who repeats it to her father. As they discuss it, Titanosaurus is seen sitting on a rock underwater, leisurely stroking his neck. Mafune can't believe that sonar would be effective, but he decides to send Titanosaurus on a rampage now to punish humanity. Katsura disagrees with this, saying "You'd release the Disaster Monsters again? Like King Ghidorah, mighty Rodan, and terrible Manda?" (actually in the English dub she uses the Americanized names Ghidra and Radon). This is accompanied by clips of those monsters but unfortunately our awful pan & scan version fails to show them all on screen at once.

Mafune is undeterred by his daughter's plea. So Titanosaurus, the aquatic dinosaur, is sent out on land for a rampage, where apparently he can breath just fine.

Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla was notable for the lack of reused footage, but we're back to some old favorites with this film.

But of course Titanosaurus is new.

The aliens didn't authorize Mafune launching the attack, but when the leader finds out about it, he's as laid back as he was in the previous movie. He tells his bearded lieutenant to chill out and leads him through a Socratic dialogue. Who was Mechagodzilla's biggest enemy? Godzilla. And who is swimming towards Tokyo right now? Godzilla. He wants to fight Titanosaurus. So let them fight, and then we'll send Mechagodzilla in to kill the winner. Ha ha ha. Ah hahahahaha! HA! HAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHA! MWAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAHA!!

As we saw in the submarine bodyslam scene, Titanosaurus is a leaper. So planes for once are attacking from a seemingly safe distance, but Titanosaurus is still able to jump up to destroy them. The military is basically unable to stop Titanosaurus' attack. At one point, we were extremely surprised to see Titanosuarus fall down, but when we rewound to get a screengrab of it, we notice a little patch of blue light in the top corner.

And it turns out that is Godzilla's breath. Fucking pan & scan.

So yeah, Godzilla has arrived. It's a little dark, but you'll notice that Godzilla's face is looking a little meaner and less adorable than in recent films.

And now the taunting can begin.

Then the fighting.

But then suddenly, we cut away to humans? HEY! Don't you do that! Don't be an American Godzilla film. We are here for the monster fights, and you know it! What? Don't you care about all the human drama? The drama! But it turns out the human scenes are actually relevant to the plot. Katsura is running around with the old man. And she's spotted and chased by soldiers. She flees at first, aided by some very odd clips in the film that make it seem like she just disappears. But they eventually catch up to her. She turns and zaps the soldiers with her atomic eyes.

But she is nonetheless shot. And at that point, Titanosaurus just turns around and casually walks away, leaving Godzilla to be like, DUDE?!.

Somehow Katsura winds up back with the aliens, who repair her again.

And i just want to note how committed the bearded alien guy is to his look. Sure, he's wearing sunglasses. But that doesn't stop him from wearing a helmet with a tinted visor.

Can you even see?

Mafune gets a stern talking to from the alien leader, who rants a little about being "the Second Coming". But he's a forgiving guy, and Mafune is contrite. The leader then sends Mechagdozilla and Titanosaurus on a second rampage, together this time. An announcement goes out. "Mechagodzilla and Titanosaurs are controlled by spacemen". This wasn't something i thought anyone knew at this point, but i guess the maintenance worker handing over the space titanium gave it all away.

Our normally mellow alien leader is pretty excited by the rampage.

Now what happens is a little competition between the two monsters. Mechagodzilla, as we know, has a huge arsenal of weaponry.

Compared to that, what it Titanosaurus?

Is he gonna do Tai Chi at them?

The answer is that at the end of Titanosaurus' tail, there's a membrane that he can open up.

Ah, the old wind attack. His relatively tiny membrane is not nearly as impressive as the wings of Rodan, Mothra, or King Ghidorah. But it seems to have the same effect. And Titanosaurus is certainly pleased with himself.

It's still not good enough. Mechagodzilla doesn't even need you. Titanosaurus is the Anguirus of monster villains.

Here's the tail membrane closed up again.

It takes a while for Godzilla to show up, but in his defense it's not like the military had been doing anything either. The two monsters seem to have been given free reign.

What do you want them to do about it? They're only the Defense Force. Sheesh.

Godzilla charges and tackles Titanosaurus. But Titanosaurus' wind is very effective against Godzilla.

Hey, what is this wind crap? Do i look like Zone Fighter?

After he knocks Godzilla down, Titanosaurus launches him through the air with a mighty (ridiculous) kick.

And Titanosaurus starts laughing evilly.

He's supposed to be mind-controlled, so does that mean Katsura is actually getting a kick out of this? Or was the notebook saying that Titanosaurs is a gentle creature just wrong.

The military seem to be banking their entire defense on Godzilla, but when they see that "Godzilla might lose", they start getting the move on their sonic canon.

In these movies, the military guys are constantly asking the engineers how long it will take to fix or build something. And when the engineers say "Three days", the military guys always come back and say "You can have one!". If you don't want to know how long it will take, don't ask me!

In addition to the devastating wind attack, Godzilla's other problem is that he's fighting two opponents and doesn't even have a King Caesar or Anguirus to tank for him. So while he's awesomely picking up one opponent to slam him into the ground, the other can blast him with rainbow lasers.

Bullies!

The army does send some planes to briefly distract Mechagodzilla.

While that's happening, Titanosaurus bites Godzilla in the mouth and lifts him up and down repeatedly.

Mechagodzilla then gets back in the game and blasts Godzilla with rockets.

The poor guy is looking punch drunk.

Fried.

Godzilla is knocked out and buried under the earth. Titanosaurus finds it all hilarious.

At this point Akira has gone to try to talk to Katsura, but he finds that she's now an unfeeling cyborg, and he's imprisoned.

The parabolic sonar gun is completed. It needs a receiver to be implanted in Titanosaurus' neck, which they do from a helicopter with a bazooka-harpoon.

And now they can blast Titanosaurus and i guess guarantee that it will hit him.

This causes a backlash in the aliens' computer system.

Mechagodzilla is about to shoot the copter down but Godzilla comes bursting back out of the earth, breathing radioactive fire.

So Mechagodzilla returns to his relentless barrage on Godzilla.

It's said online that some of this footage is reused from the previous film and that you can even see the rock that King Caesar was hiding behind. Not sure if that was in our American version or not, but i actually didn't notice.

What we did notice is that Godzilla gets set on fire. The Godzilla suit, i mean. The man in the suit is on fire. Someone help him.

Despite the assault Godzilla makes it to Mechagodzilla and attacks.

Oooh! He's going for a joint break!

Katsura watches all this with an increasingly twitchy face. When Akira continues to try to reach her, grabs a gun and tells him "I may look like a girl, but I'm not. I'm a cyborg."

She goes to shoot him but Interpol Agent Jiro shoots her. In the resulting confusion, the alien leader grabs Mafune, getting him shot as well, and then escapes. As Katsura dies, Akira tells her that none of this was her fault and "even if you're a cyborg, Katsura, I still love you".

Who knew cyborgs were so easy to kill.

With no one controlling Mechagodzilla anymore, Godzilla is able to decapitate him again.

But the aliens were prepared for that this time, and it turns out there's a smaller brain-head underneath.

Ew.

This pisses Godzilla off and he angrily tosses away the head.

Then he charges Mechagodzilla and learns that the mini-head has laser capabilities...

...and can still control the usual weapons as well.

But Godzilla has had enough of this shit, so he charges Mechagodzilla and tosses him, glass-brain first, into the ground.

Meanwhile, the alien boss is cornered by Interpol, but he just laughs and says, "Go ahead and shoot. You can't kill me anyway, so what do your bullets matter?" Because if they shoot you you'll just turn into a gorilla, right?

But no, he jumps off a cliff into the sea, where it turns out that UFOs were waiting for him.

Godzilla, who is in the middle of wrestling with Titanosaurus, looks up, annoyed, and blasts the UFOs out of the sky.

Tsk. What the fuck are those things?

Godzilla then turns his breath on Titanosaurus, who also falls over a cliff into the sea. Ass over tea kettle.

I actually expected that after Katsura was out of the picture, Titanosaurus would switch sides and help Godzilla against Mechagodzilla. But he remains a bad guy all the way through. I guess the evil laughing all along should have been my clue.

The last frontal shot we get of Godzilla is when he's in the water, and therefore using an older suit.

Kind of a terrible final image of him from the Showa period. But the majestic shot of his back as he prepares to swim away is better.

Despite the atrocious English dub, i thought this was a decent movie. Maybe not as good as the first Mechagodzilla but less schlocky than the other late Showa films (and yes, i say that fully aware that the plot of this movie involves aliens and cyborgs). It is definitely more of a Titanosaurus movie than a Mechagodzilla movie, and maybe it should have been named as such, at least just to avoid confusion, like "didn't we already see that one?". In any event, per Wikipedia, this was the "least-attended Godzilla film in Japan and also one of only two Godzilla films to sell less than one million tickets. As a result, the series was put on hold. Toho had no intention of permanently ending the Godzilla series." But that is what ended up happening, and this is the last Godzilla film until the series is rebooted in 1984.

Godzilla Drinking Game
	Someone thinks it's a good idea to drag a giant monster across the ocean on a raft (giant eggs count).
	Attacking planes fly directly at a monster, with no possibility of avoiding a crash even if the monster didn't swat them down.	Titanosaurus is a leaper, so the planes are flying at what seems like a safe distance until he jumps.
	People refuse to believe in the existence of a giant monster even though they've already acknowledged that Godzilla exists.	I was surprised to get one of these so late, but the OEI guy totally can't believe that a submarine could have been destroyed by an aquatic dinosaur. I mean, we know Godzilla exists and he's an aquatic (or amphibuous?) dinosaur. So seriously what's the problem?
	A submarine explodes.	You got it.
	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.
	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.	Sonar, not radar, in this case. But both submarines, who are specifically searching for giant monsters, are surprised by Titanosaurus' attacks. Also the military seems completely unaware of Godzilla until the very end of the film.
	A scientist suddenly figures everything out with little-to-no information and explains it all to everyone.	Mad super-scientists like Professor Mafune are excluded from the competition on this one. But whatever's going on with the parabolic lense deserves a drink and/or head smack.
	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.	We scientifically determined that the military's hit rate during the lumbering Titanosaurus' initial rampage was 25%. Which is not terrible for a Toho film, but it's enough that we count it here.
	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.	Need we say more than Titanosaurus, the gentle fish-dinosaur? It's nice to have Ishiro Honda back. We haven't had any bad dinosaur science in a while.

Monsters Appearing: Godzilla, Mechagodzilla, Titanosaurus