MONSTER ZERO: Invasion of Astro-Monster

Invasion of Astro-Monster (original Japanese title, 1965); Monster Zero (original American title, 1970) – The 6th Godzilla Film – Directed by Ishiro Honda – Starring Nick Adams, Akira Takarada, Kumi Mizuno, Jun Tazaki, Akira Kubo, Yoshio Tsuchiya, and Haruo Nakajima.

Originally titled INVASION OF ASTRO-MONSTER, the film was re-titled MONSTER ZERO for its American release five years later. I’m reviewing the American version because that’s what Netflix played when I hit play. It’s not surprising, of course, that they’d play the American version of the film for the American audience, but it is a little weird that they don’t give you the option on which version to watch. Perhaps this is a right’s issue, or perhaps they’re lazy, or perhaps research tells them this is what people want. To be honest, I don’t really mind because it’s just nice that they have some of these films streaming since most Godzilla films are marked with the unfortunate “Short Wait” designation.

It’s also important, I think, to watch the American versions from time to time as these would have been the films I was raised on, if I actually watched these entire films growing up instead of just watching the bits where the monsters beat the monsters out of each other.

MONSTER ZERO / INVASION OF ASTRO-MONSTER is the sixth film in the Godzilla franchise and after the original GOJIRA, that this is my favorite of the lot, so far. This is an amazing, amazing, amazing, movie, hitting all sorts of proper notes. Once again, it shows just how amenable Godzilla is to all kinds of genres. This time out, we get Ishiro Honda’s version of a 1950s sci-fi invasion flick. Like the bulk of his Godzilla work, Honda gives us a simple, but compelling human story to support the monsters.

This time around, we get an American added to the mix. Nick Adams plays Glenn, an American astronaut sent with his partner Fuji (Akira Takarada), to investigate Planet X, a newly discovered planet just beyond Jupiter. When they arrive they find a 1980s New Wave rock band that opened for Devo on the New Traditionalists Tour. Glenn and Fuji are politely captured by the aliens, who tell them that they have a kaiju problem – Ghidorah. Glenn and Fuji recognize the monster from the last Godzilla film and the leader of Planet X, the Controller, tells them they need the Earth’s help to rid them of Ghidorah, or as they call him, “Monster Zero.”

What the Controller needs is Monsters 1 and 2: Godzilla and Rodan.

Glenn and Fuji think this is crazy, which is kinda silly because if I lived on Earth and had two massive monsters occasionally showing up to destroy a city and some New Wave playing aliens hiding behind Jupiter wanted them to help beat up a third monster … well, I mean, the aliens wouldn’t have to promise me a cure to all diseases to get me to let them borrow my monsters.

MONSTER ZERO succeeds, in part, for the sheer insanity of the plot – aliens want to borrow Godzilla and Rodan to beat up Ghidorah because they watched the last movie and saw Godzilla and Rodan beat up Ghidorah. (They don’t mention why they don’t want Mothra, but it’s probably because the Shobijn creep them out.) What makes all of the oddities work, though, is the very human relationship between Nick and Fuji.

The movie was filmed with Nick Adams speaking his lines in English and Akira Tarada speaking his in Japanese. Did either of them understand what the other one was saying? You’d be hard pressed to convince me that Adams and Tarada weren’t pals in real life because their chemistry is the heart of the film. More than any previous Godzilla movie, I feel like ASTRO-MONSTER survives and thrives based on personality. Where previous films have often given us characters that felt functional (which is not to say they weren’t often also excellent characters), MONSTER ZERO has personality oozing out of Americans, Japanese, and Kaiju.

Check out this exchange between Fuji and Glenn. After coming back from Jupiter, they’re sitting in a restaurant waiting on Fuji’s sister to arrive with her nerdish boyfriend, looking like two swinging dudes at a Vegas joint waiting for Danny Ocean to come fill them in on the night’s plan. Glenn tells Fuji he’s got a date of his own to get to.

“Japanese girl?” Fuji asks. “Not the wrong kind, I hope.”

“If you had to check up on a girl’s past every time you went on a date,” Glenn replies quickly, “you’d never fall in love.”

Glenn and Fuji have this type of back and forth chemistry throughout the film, with Fuji playing the straight man to Glenn’s more cavalier approach to life, but it’s not just the humans who get a dose of individuality in MONSTER ZERO, it’s the Kaiju, too.

When Godzilla and Rodan get taken to Planet X and beat up Ghidorah for the first time, Godzilla dances. Yes. Dances. It’s not an overly complicated number that you’d set to the musical accompaniment of “Suit and Tie” or anything, but Godzilla happily jumps in place. The film’s sound emphasizes the BOOM whenever he lands, but it’s pretty clear Godzilla is so pleased with what he and Rodan did that he’s dancing in place. Even better, however, when Glenn and Fuji climb into a rocket to head back to Earth, Godzilla and Rodan watch them go like they’re sad puppy dogs in the window not wanting to be left behind. The astronauts even make a point to mention it, and you can see the continuation of the theme from earlier films that there’s more to these monsters than being monsters.

The Controller and Planet X folks then pull the “Ha, ha! We’re actually interested in conquering you!” move, and now they’ve got Ghidorah, Godzilla, and Rodan under their control. It’s the Fuji’s sister’s nerdy boyfriend who comes up with the solution, thus saving the Earth and proving himself to Fuji. The aliens are defeated, the boyfriend proves himself, Glenn sees his lady friend get killed because she’s really an alien spy who loves him and love cannot be tolerated by the logic-driven aliens, and when it’s all done, Glenn basically slaps Fuji on the back and says, “Let’s go to the Playboy club. I heard Draper’s in town.”

But the scientist standing near them isn’t having it. “Oh, no,” he says in response to Glenn saying they need a vacation, “you’re going to be our first Ambassador to Planet X.” Glenn’s like, “Are you kidding?” but says it in a way that tells you his first thought was that there’s a whole phalanx of women on Planet X who are look-alikes for his dead girlfriend and he intends to enjoy himself. The best part, though, is Fuji laughing at him and giving him a thumbs down, the more restrained astronaut finally relaxing and enjoying himself.

There are few movies about which I would say that if you haven’t seen this film, your life is missing something, but INVASION OF ASTRO-MONSTER / MONSTER ZERO is definitely one of those films. I can’t wait to buy it and add it to the collection. This is an amazing movie.

This is why popcorn was invented.

MOTHRA VS. GODZILLA: Or Godzilla vs. The Thing, Or Godzilla vs. Mothra, or Godzilla Against Mothra

Mothra vs. Godzilla (Japanese release, 1964) – The 4th Godzilla Movie – Directed by Ishiro Honda – Starring Akira Takarada, Yuriko Hoshi, Hiroshi Koizumi, Yu Fujiki, Emi Ito, Yumi Ito, Yoshifumi Tajima, Kenji Sahara, and Katsumi Tekuza.

What’s most impressive about the GODZILLA movies to me through four films is not just their versatility, but their willingness to make you wait for what you came to see: monsters crushing monsters.

There is a real attempt to give you a story in these opening GODZILLA films, and what’s incredibly interesting about MOTHRA VS. GODZILLA (or whichever of the four names you prefer) is that it’s Godzilla who feels like he’s entering Mothra’s universe more than the reverse, but ultimately it feels like both monsters are intruding upon contemporary Japanese society.

Which is pretty impressive since it keeps happening.

Ishiro Honda expertly blends the two monster worlds together with modern Japan, merging the fanciful aspects of Mothra’s first movie with the darker aspects of the Godzilla films, and still keeping humanity’s story at the center.

MOTHRA VS. GODZILLA opens with an oceanic storm, and in all of the resultant damage, a giant egg washes up on the shore. Local businessman Kumayama (Yoshifumi Tajima) and Happy Enterprises do what local businessmen do best and attempt to profit off the egg. Our protagonists for this go-round repeats the journalist/scientist dynamic from MOTHRA. Journalist Ichiro Sakai (Akira Takarada) and scientist Professor Miura (Hiroshi Koizumi) attempt to investigate the massive egg, but Happy Enterprises shoos them away, telling them that they have bought the egg fair and square from the locals and will not allow anyone else access.

Kumayama is just the face for Happy Enterprises, however, as company head Jiro Torahata (Kenji Sahara) is overseeing the operation. While these two are scheming, the tiny female Shobijn (Emi Ito and Yumi Ito) show up to tell the businessman that they’re from Infant Island and the egg is from Infant Island and if the egg isn’t returned to Infant Island, there’s gonna be lots of monster smashing because the egg belongs to Mothra.

The Shobijn are annoying, but they’re important to Mothra’s story and so it’s nice to see them kicking around this movie, too. The real joy about this egg-hatching angle, though, is that the baby Mothra isn’t going to smash Japan because it’s evil but because when it hatches it’ll be a newborn desperately searching for food. It’s not going to destroy anyone out of malice, but out of a primal need for food.

Happy Enterprises isn’t interested in anything the Shobijn is selling, so the tiny ladies turn their attention to Sakai, Miura, and Sakai’s photographer Yoka Nakanishi (Yuriko Hoshi), where they find a much more receptive, but powerless audience.

Into all of this comes Godzilla, who’s been displaced by the same storm and decides to attack Nagoya because he’s f*cking Godzilla and that’s what Godzillas do. Look, I know that there’s a dude in a rubber suit (Katsumi Tekuza) smashing models, but it’s awesomely rendered. I could watch Godzilla smashing stuff all day and not get tired of it because Tekuza, Honda, and the effects team are at the top of their game here. I will say that Godzilla does feel like an interloper at times and almost unnecessary until we get to the point where Godzilla turns his attention on the egg and we get the big Godzilla versus Mothra throwdown.

This is a great monster vs. monster sequence. Mothra gets the upper hand but then Godzilla kills her with his atomic breath. Mothra dies on top of the egg in a very motherly, tender display, and Godzilla is off to stomp and roar elsewhere. The Shobijn help hatch the egg with their singing and two little Mothra appear to go double team the attack on Godzilla, and they defeat him by tying them up with their silk spray.

MOTHRA VS. GODZILLA is another good installment of both the Godzilla and Mothra series. Honda paces his films to build tension and work the narrative to a point where the monster battles mean something more than just active destruction. When I started watching these Godzilla films, I thought I’d get a kitschy kick out of them, but I am honestly and truly really enjoying them, so far. If you’ve never seen them, I highly recommend checking out these early movies.

GOJIRA / GODZILLA: May We Live Without Destruction

Gojira / Godzilla (1954) – The 1st Godzilla Film – Directed by Ishiro Honda – Starring Akira Takarada, Momoko Kochi, Akihiko Hirata, and Takashi Shimura.

If you are of a certain age and grew up in the Boston TV market, you are well aware of WLVI-TV 56′s Creature Double Feature, a back-to-back Saturday afternoon block of monster movies. Given that they ran Saturday afternoons, I was more likely to turn the antenna to pick up the Red Sox or Bruins game down the dial on Channel 38, but I still watched it enough to know who Godzilla and Mothra and Rodan were, and I always loved catching the commercials.

There was a part of me, though, that was never able to get past the Rubber Suited Monster aspect, or the less-than-stellar effects, or even the black and white. Now that I’m older, none of those things are deal breakers, and I’ve decided it’s time to educate myself and watch a bunch of Kaiju movies until I get bored with them.

There’s only one place to start this set of reviews, of course, and that’s with the first film to feature the most famous of all Kaiju monsters: GOJIRA as it was originally called, GODZILLA as it came to be known.

GOJIRA / GODZILLA is one of those movies that if you haven’t seen it, you really have no idea how good it is. Knowing the basic story of Godzilla or being partly familiar with Kaiju movies does not prepare you for how powerful this movie is when you experience it for the first time. To start with, this isn’t not a monster movie. Oh sure, there’s a monster in it and he tramples through a city and fights the military and all that, but this isn’t just some dumb B-movie that gives you a scant plot in order to get to all the stomping and screeching. GODZILLA is a serious movie, awash in national and personal guilt and serving as a warning against the dangers of nuclear testing.

Brilliantly, the movie opens at the nexus of legend and science, expertly blending in historical fears with contemporary nightmares. A fishing boat is attacked by a flash of light, and villagers on a local island start recalling stories of the legendary “Godzilla,” a sea monster in which young girls were sacrificed to in days gone by. In short order we get our first look at the 150′ tall, reptilian biped looming over the top of a hill, and all the angry villagers who went running after him with their pitchforks before they saw him, no turn and run the other way.

One witness is Archeologist Kyohei Yamane (Takashi Shimura) and as he testifies to the government about what they’re up against, he tells them that Godzilla is only here because of nuclear testing. There is great debate in the room (which oddly falls on gendered lines) about whether the government should let this information out to the public. Eventually it’s decided to let the public in on things, as if not telling the citizens would have made it better when he showed up to destroy Tokyo. There is plenty of action sequences with Godzilla romping the city and getting shot at by a huge variety of Japanese army weaponry, but it’s all touched with a sense of sadness and futility.

Godzilla’s destruction of Tokyo is not filmed with either real menace or repelled with real fervor. There’s plenty of fire breathing and buildings getting knocked down, but the images that stand out are the victims of the violence, the people who had no say in Godzilla’s creation and no part in repelling his assault. They’re just people, living their lives … lives that get interrupted when a giant reptile and the army decide to fight each other in their city. Even when Godzilla is finally repelled (or when he decides he’s had enough knocking Tokyo around and leaves), the camera focuses on the sadness of Yamane more than the cheering corwds – we hear them but we see him as the man who argued that Godzilla should be studied instead of destroyed sees that dream fall by the wayside in the shadow of all the creature’s destruction.

It’s powerful filmaking from Ishiro Honda, amplified by a truly legendary score from Akira Ikufube.

As the army and government struggle to find a way to stop Godzilla, Yamane’s daughter Emiko (Momoko Kochi) reveals to her new flame Hideto Ogata (Akira Takarada) that her old flame, Daisuke Serizawa (Akihiko Hirata), has developed a device called the Oxygen Destroyer, which, well, destroys all oxygen underwater, forcing anything living to die of asphyxiation. Serizawa does not want to use the device because he fears it falling into the hands of people who will use it as a weapon. GOJIRA makes a powerful statement about the escalation of arms, as the only weapon that can be assured to defeat the new Greatest Weapon in the Next Greatest Weapon. The quest for power leads to bombs, which gives us Godzilla, a creature that can absorb radiation. The army’s attacks on the creature are only partially successful, so they need a new weapon, which Serizawa has, but he knows if he does use the Oxygen Destroyer, everyone will want it until the Next Greatest Weapon comes along.

It’s a crippling position for Serizawa to be in – Godzilla can only be defeated if he uses the Oxygen Destroyer, but then the Oxygen Destroyer becomes, in essence, the New Godzilla, which will cause other scientists to attempt to build something even more powerful. If Serizawa could simply trust people to not use his terrible weapon, he would use it, but he knows that the governments of the world are not going to let such a weapon be used once. Serizawa is ultimately convinced to use the Oxygen Destroyer when he hears a children’s chorus singing a lament on the radio, desiring that we live without destruction.

The final action sequence is jaw-dropping brilliant, but not because of the action. Rather, it’s emotion that carries the day. Honda films Serizawa and Ogata’s deep sea dive to release the Oxygen Destroyer near Godzilla with no joy, no speed. This is a somber attack on another living creature. Instead of coming across like Luke’s canyon run on the Death Star, Honda’s camera, Ikufube’s haunting score, and the dreamlike quality of the underwater shots make this a tragic march to a funeral. There is no joy in killing the “monster.” Even Godzilla watches them with a sense of tragic inevitability. The two men deliver the Oxygen Destroyer and Serizawa stays at the bottom of the ocean to kill himself in the process. Doing this ensures that no one will ever learn of his secrets to creating the Oxygen Destroyer.

Godzilla’s death is as somber as you will ever find for the death scene of a movie’s antagonist. There is a brief round of cheering after Godzilla dies, but all of the principals are saddened and troubled by the double death of Serizawa and Godzilla, and I’m leave feeling drained at the end of the movie instead of feeling joy or relief at the death of the monster.

GOJIRA / GODZILLA is an amazing movie.

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Mark Bousquet is the author of several novels and collections, including Gunfighter Gothic, Stuffed Animals for Hire, Dreamer’s Syndrome, Harpsichord and the Wormhole Witches, and Adventures of the Five. He has also published a review collection entitled Marvel Comics on Film, which covers every cinematic and TV movie based on a superhero from the House of Ideas. A complete listing of all his work can be found at his Amazon author page.