Godzilla Vs Megalon (1973)

Plot Outline: An ancient underground civilisation decides its time to take back what was theirs: Earth. So they use their own home-grown monster, Megalon, and contact a nearby star system and enlist Gigan’s help to do it. But a scientist has just created a robot called Jet Jaguar, who travels to Monster Island to inform Godzilla of the duel threat. As always its up to Godzilla to save the Earth.

The Review: To many Godzilla fans, this is the ultimate anti-Godzilla film. It's highly camp, has ridiculous dialogue, even more ridiculous clothing and has the monsters tag teaming each other at the end like wrestling superstars. Godzilla is now the hero of the piece and instead of smashing cities for fun, he's beating up bad guy monsters and aliens trying to take the planet. Megalon isn't a very good adversary and looks quite ridiculous. Gigan is back but gone is the killer instinct he used to have - he's now more of a comedic side kick for Megalon. The fight scenes are played for laughs big time. The 'tag team wrestling' antics of the monsters at the end are insanely funny and it's possible that they are sort of an in-joke towards how the series had become by this point (if only the writers were that creative). As always the human element gets a bit tiresome but the terrible dubbing makes up for it. Dubbing sometimes ruins a film but here the dubbing actually enhances it. Some of the dubbed sound effects from the actors are hilarious (when a criminal gets pushed out of a truck and falls down the side of a mountain he moans all of the way down) and liven things up greatly. I know it's not supposed to be funny but it was. A little Japanese boy gets a really irritating girly voice. And the fact that there are two males living with him with no sign of any females in the house seems a little too strange for my liking.

Final Verdict: If you like watching men in rubber suits stomping on mini-cities, smashing Matchbox cars and beating each other up then this is for you. Godzilla Vs Megalon may be the worst of the lot for some people but for me, it's just a ridiculously good time.

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