Review: Godzilla vs. Monster Zero

A rocket ship (containing astronauts Akira Takarada and Nick Adams) is sent to Planet X, home to a humanoid alien species who claim to need our help. See, they have a bit of a problem with King Ghidorah attack the planet’s surface, forcing them underground. They have a proposal to us; Allow them to use Godzilla and Rodan (Earth monsters) to help with their Ghidorah problem. In return they will give the people of Earth a cure for all Earthly diseases. Seems like a decent enough trade, right? Yeah, turns out things aren’t as simple as that. Akira Kubo plays a nerdy inventor who gets caught in the middle of all of this with his latest invention.

The Showa era of Godzilla films (i.e. The era starting with the original “Gojira”) tends to be my personal favourite. Sure, not every entry was stellar, but it contains my three personal favourite Godzilla films, “Destroy All Monsters!”, “Gojira”, and this 1965 outing from director Ishiro Honda (“Gojira”, “Destroy All Monsters!”) and screenwriter Shinichi Sekizawa (“Mothra”, “Godzilla vs. Mothra”).

We start off with a thumping music score by Akira Ifukube (who scored many a Godzilla film starting with “Gojira” and ending with 1995’s popular “Godzilla vs. Destoroyah”), which is easily one of the best in the entire franchise. Also classing things up is one of the best casts Toho assembled for the franchise: In addition to leads Nick Adams and Akira Takarada, we also get Akira Kubo getting to play a bit of a dork this time, as well as roles for Jun Tazaki (as a distinguished scientist) and Yoshifumi Tajima (as a General). Although cheap, the set design here is interesting and the alien costumes are actually really cool. In fact, no matter the budget there isn’t a lack of thought given to the film’s overall look (the spaceship exterior is an unfortunate exception. It looks like a toy, probably because it is a toy/model). Some of the shot composition selections by Honda and cinematographer Hajime Koizumi are particularly interesting.

I will admit that Toho went to the ‘monsters & humans vs. monsters & aliens’ plot a few too many times, but this is one of the better version of such a plot. Basically it’s “The Day the Earth Stood Still” with King Ghidorah instead of Gort and the aliens are just power-tripping dickheads this time. Yeah, it’s a bit weird that the aliens’ choice of monster here is King Ghidorah and the human characters act as if they already know about King Ghidorah…but it’s a kaiju film, not a Truffaut film. The aliens are incredibly deceitful and prone to disguising themselves as human here, which is kind of fun. I also like that despite having a perfectly decent plot and quite a few characters (human, alien, and monsters) the film is fairly quick and short.

This is probably King Ghidorah’s best showing to date in a Godzilla film. One of the coolest-looking monsters, Ghidorah has a tendency to be ungainly and ineffective in action. Here though, its yellow lasers do a fair bit of damage. Godzilla pretty much damages the fuck out of everything, even by Godzilla standards it’s showing no mercy on Tokyo or its very fine architecture. The monster footage here is awesome, shot quite close-up too. The only downside to it – in fact, the only downside to the film – is Rodan. In addition to being pretty unnecessary here, Rodan once again proves to be among the most useless of all kaiju. It’s special talent appears to be causing wind gust devastation flapping its wings. Hell, most of the time it doesn’t even do that, just standing around doing bugger-all. I’ve never gotten the popularity with Rodan, I’m afraid. On the plus side, this is the film to feature Godzilla’s infamous jig. And it’s awesome, one of the funniest WTF moments in cinematic history.

Weird, silly, and absolutely underrated. This is one of the best-ever Godzilla films in my opinion. Good cast, good look, great sound, great monsters…well, aside from Rodan. Rodan sucks.

Rating: B