Terror of Mechagodzilla

Terror of Mechagodzilla has Godzilla (imagine that!) battling a hulking mechazoid freko Godzilla alien adaptation from some preceding movie I have yet to see. It starts with visual fireworks and any movie that throws you into giant Japanese monster mega battles right at the offset is a-ok in my book, papa-san.

It urns out that aliens that wear aviator sunglasses and silvery jump suits come from a planet floating in a black hole, quite possibly with Anthony Perkins and a cute floating robo-friend, and are back because the alien mencae is ever-ready to invade Earth. or, at the very least, Miniature Tokyo.

Misanthropic mad doctor and all-around good guy Professor Mafune (Tomoko Ai) is kidnapped by the aliens, the leader (Goro Mutsumi) of whom striekes one as looking vaguely like a Japanese Jim Jones, and that guy is just total intergalactic slimeball, okay? And well, somehow Interpol is involved, although not a single Round Eye makes an appearance in this film.

The aliens wear bicycle helmets with shark fins and weird, I don't know, "attachments" on the side, as well as sun visors. It reminded me slightly of the singer from Boris the Sprinkler, an amusing punk rock band I once saw at an eleven-hour festival (when I was thirty years younger I could go to these things and not be carried out on a stretcher by EMTs). He wore a helmet with antlers on it, but I don't suppose that's quite the same thing. The band stilll seems to be going, three decades later.

Getting back to it, the whole movie starts with the psychic hook-up that Katsura (Tomoko Ai), Dr. Mafune's daughter, has with Mechagodzilla. There's a little secret to that: She's actually a cyborg. This is never explained to the viewer. What? Was Mafune's old lady having an affar with C3PO?

Somebody from Interpol (it might be the guy whose name sounds like "itchy nose") falls in love with her. Titanosaurus, a specially designed giant lizard freakoid "disaster monster" (to use a term from the film, emerges like Great Cthulhu from the sea, and Godzilla, of course, has already made his appearance up front and personal. Blow the breath of death, Oh Dragon Master of the Atomic Apocalypse! (Damn, I like that title!)

The aliens want Tokyo, though. Or they want to destroy it. For what reasons, specifically, we are left to wonder. However, they set-up a mixed martial arts cage match on top of a tabletop Tokyo between the three Kaiju killers--Godzilla, Mechagodzilla, and Titanosaurus. Planes explode, lasers dart here and there, sparks and fire and real, weird atomic stuff blasts all over the place, as model building topple, jets and helicopters fly bo on fishing line, papier-mache boulders are tossed, and it's all rather more visually interesting than what one would expect.

Of course, like everyone of these movies, there's always the boring midsection where everybody yacks. Nothing they say is scientific and it all seems rooted in the national psyche of the Japanese, who understandably perhaps still bear the national psychological scars of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and Nagasaki (as well as the bombing of Tokyo). I'm not making judgments about the conflict, just observing that much of the horror and monstrosity of such films and even media such as modern manga, Uzumaki by Junji Ito spiraling into my mind, seems to follow an obsession with natural and national widsepread disaster.

Getting back to it: Godzilla is confronted by Mechagodzilla, after the rather absurd and long-necked comic relief called Titanosaurus is driven out, and has to whoop up on that hulking metal mencae. Having saved the day, Godzilla proceeds to lumber his massive, scaly green ass back out into the sea. Katsura the Cyborg commits ritual sepuku with a laser gun. All Was.

And yes, I know, I've give away too damn much. But you have to see it, man, if not for the primitive if rather still visually arresting live effects, for those alien bike helmets, which you could, you know, hang your hat on. Wonk-wonk.

Directed by Inishiro Honda, as if there was ever any doubt.

Terror Of Mechagodzilla | FULL MOVIE | Godzilla Monster Kaiju Tokusatsu Action Adventure

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