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.

GHIDORAH, THE THREE HEADED MONSTER: If Mothra, Rodan, and Godzilla All Cooperate

Ghidorah, The Three Headed Monster (Japanese, 1964; American, 1965) – The 5th Godzilla Movie – Directed by Ishiro Honda – Starring Yosuke Natsuki, Yuriko Hoshi, Hiroshi Koizumi, Akiko Wakabayashi, Emi Ito, Yumi Ito, and Haruo Nakajima.

GHIDORAH, THE THREE HEADED MONSTER is an excellent movie, but it’s the first time in the Godzilla series I wish Ishiro Honda had broken with his strong desire to tell a human-driven story and instead just gone balls out with monster mayhem.

I understand that I’m going rogue on this, that one of the most detestable things a sequel can do is simply over-indulge on the signature moments from an earlier film, but there’s such an awesome set-up here of having Mothra, Godzilla, and Rodan team up to take on Ghidorah that I could have forgiven Honda and Toho if they’d simply gone, “F*ck the story, how many cities can we destroy in 90 minutes?”

The plot here is almost irrelevant to the mayhem, yet that is what gives the Honda/Toho films such strength. Even though the human portions of the film aren’t nearly as awesome as the monster portions, they’re actually more compelling. It’s a fascinating approach to storytelling and movie making – the humans are used to tell a gripping story while the monsters are used to deliver the action. Imagine if Die Hard had sent 2/3 of the film telling Holly’s story and then the last 30 minutes showing John McClane and Hans Gruber punch and kick and shoot each other.

But yeah, the real selling point of GHIDORAH is the big battle between four monsters and six heads.

Without question, the single best moment of the film and one of the single greatest scenes you will ever see comes deep into GHIDORAH where the Shobijn (Emi Ito, Yumi Ito) and the humans are watching Mothra (in caterpillar form) try to convince Godzilla and Rodan to stop beating the crud out of each other and team up to defeat Ghidorah. What’s amazing about the scene (beyond the simple awesomeness of watching a camera cut between an upright lizard, a flying dinosaur, and a slug nodding their heads at each other) is that the Shobijn translate the discussion for the humans standing with them.

It’s amazing.

A.

MAY.

ZING.

It’s utterly insane and bizarre and incredibly humanizing to hear the Shobijn translating all of these screeches and grunts into normal conversation: “Mothra is trying to get them to help but Rodan and Godzilla don’t want to. They say humans hate them.”

What? Godzilla has feelings?

Brilliant.

Madly brilliant.

The chat goes on forever, too, so the movie wants you to know these aren’t just GODZILLA SMASH styled mindless monsters. They’ve got actual intellects, so even though the Kaiju typically appear in a movie because the humans have unwittingly uncovered them, there’s more going on in their brains than we’ve seen. Even given that the Shobijn are putting the monster talk into human talk (and it’s a further translation given that I watched the English language version because that’s what Netflix streaming defaults to showing), it’s a mindbendingly awesome sequence.

I love the human sidebars, too, where they become increasingly frustrated that Rodan and Godzilla refuse to help. Detective Shindo (Yosuke Natsuki) laments, “these monsters are as stupid as human beings!” and that’s the entire film series brilliantly boiled down to a single line. The best line, however, goes to the Shobijn, who during their translating refuse to repeat one of Godzilla’s lines and instead offer up, “Oh Godzilla, what terrible language!”

I haven’t said much about the human plot of GHIDORAH because it’s kinda bland this time around. There is a solid subplot with an escaped Princess (Akiko Wakabayashi) who thinks she’s a Martian and can predict the future but it doesn’t gain a lot of traction with me. I kept thinking that there’s four big monsters coming, let’s get to them quicker for a change and integrate the human plot with the destruction instead of setting up the destruction. This is the fifth movie in the Godzilla series and I wouldn’t have minded if they’d altered the formula.

GHIDORAH is a step down from MOTHRA VS. GODZILLA, but it’s still a fine addition to the franchise.

RODAN: We Dug Too Deep

Rodan (1956; American Release, 1957) – Directed by Ishiro Honda – Starring Kenji Sahara, Yumi Shirakawa, and Akihiko Hirata.

Some interesting facts about RODAN:

1. It was Toho’s first Kaiju movie in color.

2. It was a big hit in the United States.

3. I watched the American version.

Okay, not the most interesting facts in the world but all three of them are important to understand both the movie and this review. (If I just wanted to impress you with something awesome I would have told you that George Takei does voice-over work for the American release.) I watched the American version of the film because that’s what Netflix has streaming and I didn’t want to wait for the DVD, and there are subtle differences between the two. (At least, that’s what Wikipedia tells me.) I don’t like watching the dubbed version of foreign movies. I’d much rather watch the original language version and read the bottom of the screen, but I was interested in seeing how the American release of a film worked without the added effort to hire Perry Mason to film new scenes.

It’s actually that first point up above, however, that I think plays the biggest role in how one enjoys the movie. In my review of GOJIRA / GODZILLA the other day, I mentioned that I was surprised at how dark and serious the movie was. Having brushed against, rather than fully engaged with Kaiju films over the years, my thoughts on the genre were largely concerned with men in rubber suits stomping over tiny city sets. That exists in GOJIRA, but the whole tone of the film was much more thoughtful than I was expecting. Perhaps that raised my hopes too high for RODAN, which is also directed by Ishiro Honda (or perhaps it’s the subtle differences in the American cut) and also features a dinosaur-esque monster coming up from beneath the surface to terrorize a city. Taken superficially, the most apparent difference between GODZILLA and RODAN is that the latter film (despite being released only two years later), is the addition of color.

You might think that such a positive technological advance as moving from black and white to color would only help a movie, but it actually hurts this early Kaiju movie.

First, nothing amplifies unrealistic effects like color. From watching a billion Doctor Who episodes, I can speak from experience when I say that rubber suited monsters are just more believable (or less unbelievable) in black and white. With a severely limited palette, you can obscure the weaknesses better, but when you amp up the color, suddenly it’s just that much harder to believe that we’ve got a 150-foot monster stomping on an actual car, and not Larry in a rubber suit stepping on a toy.

The black and white color scheme of GOJIRA helps to give the film a darker, moodier, almost noir-ish feel to the city scenes. I think it works well with the film’s sense of collective guilt and insecurity. In RODAN, however, all that color makes it hard to hide the weaknesses and works against a somber mood. We’re in color, baby, let’s see some sh*t blow up!

And blow up it does. RODAN starts off with a keen interest in story, but by the end, this is a loud, balls-out piece of explosion porn, and I think that has something to do with how the introduction of color altered either the story itself, or at least its presentation.

Like GOJIRA, Honda builds this film off the idea that humans are pushing too far and are risking being rebuked by the planet its carelessly destroying. RODAN takes place in a mining town and the miners are starting to dig too deep into the earth. If you’re like me, of course, the second you hear of people digging too deep you’re expecting a Balrog to come up out of the darkness, but the monsters in RODAN are more natural. First, we get giant insects attacking the miners first, and village soon after.

There’s some nice story work here in the opening of the film, as Shigeru (Kenji Sahara) believes one of the first two missing miners is innocent while everyone else believes him guilty of killing the other missing miner when he shows up dead. Shigeru isn’t believed because he’s in love with Goro’s sister, Kiyo (Yumi Shirakawa). Kiyo is super over-emotional but it’s understandable given that everyone thinks her brother is a murderer and then giant insects start appearing at your doorway.

Soon, however, Shigeru and Kiyo are largely lost as the film turns into an explosion fest. Shigeru is injured in an earthquake and comes back with amnesia, but when he remembers what he saw beneath the earth (two large eggs that birth the Rodans), this becomes a military movie. A team goes to check the Rodans out and then it’s just bang bang bang boom boom boom bang bang bang. Guns aren’t effective in stopping the giant dinosaur birds, so the military ends up trying to trap the Rodans underground by blowing up a volcano. They fail to bury them but the Rodans are poisoned and weakened from all the bombs and gas and when one of them dies in the volcano’s lava, the other one sticks around, unwilling to live without its mate.

It’s a rather powerful ending, speaking to the moving connection the two Rodans have for one another, but that angle needed to be developed more fully for the ending to have a truly thunderous impact. As it is, it’s only Shigeru and Kiyo who really seems to understand what the deaths of the Rodans mean on a personal level. Everyone else is like, “Huh, we did it. What’s for lunch?”

While not the all-time classic that GOJIRA is, RODAN is still a fine film with a fantastic ending.

And lots and lots of missiles.

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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.