Godzilla, King of All Media

Godzilla stomped ever onward through the early-1970s unbowed by tough economic times and a decline in audience interest in giant-monster movies. If 1969’s All Monsters Attack and 1971’s Godzilla vs. Hedorah were comparative oddities, 1972’s Godzilla vs. Gigan was a return to the predictable. After the previous 11 films in 17 years the Godzilla franchise had established its formulas, and the main challenge was trying to make those formulas work with smaller and smaller budgets.

Part of the answer was to plunder earlier films for recycled footage, soundtrack music, and plot elements. But director Jun Fukuda, who’d made two previous Godzilla movies, and screenwriter Shinichi Sekizawa, who’d written seven installments in the series, knew what they were doing. If things are threadbare due to budget necessities, Godzilla vs. Gigan is nevertheless entertaining overall. It’s something like a Scooby-Doo story: young people investigate sinister goings-on in a mysterious amusement park. It’s just that instead of the villain being a crusty old caretaker under a cheap mask, the culprits turn out to be alien cockroaches.

The story opens with an aspiring manga creator, Gengo Kotaka (Hiroshi Ishikawa), whose girlfriend gets him a job doing concept art for a soon-to-open amusement park, “World Children’s Land,” which boasts a massive tower in the shape of Godzilla. A chance encounter with a mysterious woman leaves Gengo with a peculiar audio tape; it turns out the woman, Machiko Shima (Tomoko Umeda) and her friend Shosaku Takasugi (Minoru Takashima) are investigating the park, which claims to want to teach children about peace. But after Machiko’s brother went missing at the park, she found evidence the chairman and director of the park are up to no good.

Gengo and his new allies uncover the truth: the men behind World Children’s Land are aliens from M Space Hunter Nebula, who intend to take over the Earth to replace their own dying planet. But Gengo’s already played the alien tape, which was meant to draw the space monsters Gigan and King Ghidorah to Earth. Instead it drew the attention of Anguirus and Godzilla, setting up a four-way brawl with guest appearances from the Japanese Armed Forces and the laser cannon hidden in the Godzilla-shaped tower of World Children’s Land.

It’s entertaining enough, though the movie wastes some of its better ideas. Gengo’s background as a manga artist is an interesting choice that doesn’t come to much, other than using his drawing talent in a particularly unlikely scheme at the end of the film. But then, as humans in a Godzilla movie, none of the homo-sapiens characters get any particular depth.

Neither do the aliens. They’re invaders exactly like every other set of alien invaders in the Godzilla films so far. They have a particularly odd scheme, but are here to do their bit for the plot and then be defeated.

There’s a sense of mystery that emerges as the humans investigate World Children’s Land, aided by visuals slightly more shadowy than usual. That approach doesn't last long, but enough to carry the early part of the movie. If the edge of tension goes out the window when kaiju show up, at least until then the film keeps its formulas fresh.

There are moments of technological fetishization, with the camera panning across 1970s-style computer consoles and lingering shots of machines with pistons and gears under glass. The aliens’ lair feels like a super-villain’s headquarters or the base of a James Bond antagonist. And there’s that undertone of Scooby-Doo, who’d first appeared only three years earlier. If it’s not outright mimicry, there’s at least a team of youthful mystery-solvers on a spooky adventure.

But there’s also a 1970s grimness to the movie, with its alien cockroaches and Godzilla bleeding for the first time when cut by the blades of Gigan. The choice to show blood apparently came after feedback from kids who couldn’t understand the lack of injury in earlier monster fights.

It more or less works because the creators understand what they’re doing. These are people who know how to make a Godzilla movie going about their business. They hit their beats, they stage their fight scenes, and it’s a solidly-constructed story that reaches its audience.

The design of the new monster Gigan is perhaps lacking, too human-like in general outline and too unnatural in specific elements—notably the giant buzzsaw embedded in his torso. The idea is that Gigan’s a cyborg, but it doesn’t really come off. Still, allied with the three-headed King Ghidorah, he makes a worthy opponent for the King of the Monsters.

Godzilla vs. Gigan isn’t one of the best of the early Godzilla movies. There’s a kind of metafictional view of Godzilla here, which has crept into the series at least since All Monsters Attack, whose central character was a young kaiju fanboy. Godzilla vs. Hedorah had its lead playing with a Godzilla doll, implying that kaiju are famous in the world of the movies. And here we have a theme park about world peace dominated by a Godzilla-shaped tower.

It recalls the amusement park that was a part of the plot of Mothra vs. Godzilla, but it’s also an acknowledgment that Godzilla’s as famous in the world of the Godzilla movies as he is in real life. Thus the image of Godzilla is, here, a sideshow attraction, a robotic simulacrum lacking the emotional power of the original, as seen in Ishiro Honda’s 1954 film. These movies aren’t lacking in self-awareness.