Son of Godzilla (1967)

Plot Outline: Radiation experiments on an island create giant preying mantis and humongous spiders to come to life. The scientists there also discover a giant egg, which hatches and is revealed to be the son of Godzilla. With lots of nasty monsters lying in wait, it's up to Godzilla to protect his son.

The Review: In an attempt to make the Godzilla films slightly more appealing to kids, Toho introduced the world to Minya, the son of Godzilla. In one of his worst outings ever, Godzilla must play the protective parent and keep his son from being harmed by the weak monsters. Godzilla is more of a cartoon character in this instead of the ferocious beast he is supposed to be. This is because the film is based around comedy. He was probably too scary and so they decided to ridicule him by giving him a kid! No longer is he smashing Tokyo, he's playing protective dad and saving his son from a horde of nasties. His battles with the kamakiras (giant manti) and Spiga (the spider) are laughable. It's like watching the Three Stooges in monster suits at times. Godzilla certainly has seen a lot better days, in fact he hasn't seen any worse. At least Godzilla's Revenge, pretty much the same flick with Minya in it and Godzilla acting as protective parent, had more stock footage of him beating up monsters from other films. For the human side, there is way too much talking and the obligatory unnecessary sub plot sucks too. But any film with Baby Godzilla in has always been a flop compared to the episodes around it - this one is no exception. Jun Fukuda directed a couple of these films and most of them sucked, with the exception being Godzilla Vs Gigan.

Final Verdict: This is the worst Godzilla film out there and it's all down to the fact he's playing dad and having to take on some lame baddies. Put him up against some space monsters and see how he does! This one is for little kaiju fans only, and even then you'd be hard pressed to take anything from Son of Godzilla except a strong hatred of the title character.

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