Invasion of Astro-Monster

This Godzilla movie seems rather long. Longer than the time that it says it lasts. This one I found really dull and boring as a child. Godzilla isn't really in it all that much as it is mainly about these really dumb looking space aliens. They have a problem on their planet...it seems the mighty King Gidorah is attacking their planet. Astronauts who claimed this new planet are asked by the space men for the monsters Godzilla and Rodan. We say sure and give them the monsters. Then the earth finds out that the space men just wanted to take over the planet so they now have all three monsters and send them on the rampage. This one was just bad as the final battle really sucks and how they defeat the space men is really lame. Like I said this one is just boring as it is very slow paced.

source: Invasion of Astro-Monster

In the year 196X, astronauts Glenn Amer and Fuji are traveling to Planet X. They are met by an alien underground civilization. The aliens want to use Rodan and Godzilla against Monster Zero which is ravishing their surface world. It turns out to be another King Ghidorah. In exchange, they promise to give a wonder drug to cure all human diseases. Aliens and monsters. It's such a campy concept that one cannot help but love it. I love the aliens. The story needs a lot more simplification. A simpler story would work easier. This has all the classic Japanese monster bits from the genre. All the monsters get to crush miniatures. The Japanese actors get to point and yell in shock. It has all that plus aliens.

I can only take these Japanese monster films in small doses, which is to say about every six months to a year so as not to get permanently loopy. The same thing with Seventies martial arts flicks. But I stick with them for the amusement factor because that's basically what I see as their mission. I see that most of the reviews for this movie are hugely positive, and that's fine, but even so, I don't get the rationale for rating pictures like this a '10' because even if you're a fan, you have to have seen "Star Wars" or "Alien" by way of comparison. I merely shake my head. At least the bonus for this viewer was the inclusion of Nick Adams in the cast. He proved he really was a rebel to take on this assignment, appearing in the cast credits as Nikku Adamusu. But the odd thing was that his name in the story was Glenn, without noting whether that was the character's first or last name. His astronaut partner on the space mission went by the last name of Fuji (Akira Takarada), which led me to question why everyone simply called him Glenn, no matter the context. The cast credit here on IMDb states Adam's character as Glenn Amer, but one wouldn't know that from watching the picture. Maybe Amer was short for American. Say, I had to laugh when Spaceship P-1 landed on Planet X, and the hatch door used to leave the ship actually had dents in it. Still, that was a whole lot better than the spaceship used in the 1959 flick "Teenagers From Outer Space". In that one, you can see the futuristic technology of space age hammer and nails at work. So you can actually measure the progress of sci-fi special effects used in this film compared to the one that came out six years earlier. The best and funniest moment in this picture occurred when Godzilla and Rodan defeated King Ghidorah on Planet X. Right after, Godzilla went into this goofy looking dance number that had me baffled. That simply reminded me that these Toho films were primarily put together for a pre-teen audience, so with that in mind, it seemed rather logical. What's not logical is why I still watch this stuff. But rest assured I'll be back in another six months or so. Or wait, maybe sooner, because I just happened to come across a copy of "Mothra vs. Godzilla".

It's the old, old story: an alien race in Devo sunglasses barters a cure for cancer against the loan of Godzilla and Rodan, the only known proof against King Ghidorah, the scourge of Planet X. This is like kids putting a black widow and a praying mantis into a jar so they'll fight. In the last Ghidorah movie it also took the larval Mothra to defeat the flying three-headed beast, but Toho has a short memory and a shorter budget. Guys who wear vinyl suits and never take off their helmets are usually up to something, but only Nick Adams smells a rat with plans for world domination. His suspicions are confirmed when he sleeps with one of the aliens and she immediately pressures him to get married. This means war. Philosophically, there's something reassuring about the pre-Gamera rubber monster. It is a corporeal manifestation of our worst, most nebulous fears, and as such it is a comfort. The central fact of a giant monster is its implacability. In the best Toho films, giant monsters tend to want nothing. They don't want to eat us; they aren't sending a message. They're just here, and they're just terrible. Ghidorah makes his entrance in this movie, cruising over a landscape already blasted and inhospitable, by blasting it and making it even less hospitable. No reason; just wanted to destroy something. That's what a rubber monster does. It cannot be appeased. The only personality trait it possesses is anger. It is made of the stuff that governs the universe: it is unadulterated chaos personified. All we can do is stare, and hope that another giant monster knocks this one off its present course. In fewer than fifteen minutes of actual monster action, nobody gets anywhere near Tokyo, but Rodan whips hurricane winds over a small town while Ghidorah strafes it. There isn't much destruction, but what there is of it is quality miniature work - shingles flying, Buicks rolling through showroom windows, the Mobil Oil offices on fire. Godzilla is more acrobatic than usual, though his suit sags at the joints to accommodate his new athleticism. He employs the Ali shuffle here for the first time, dancing between Ghidorah's death rays, but not for about an hour and a half, and not for long. Nick Adams wears a Byzantine combover, which from certain angles seems to feature no fewer than five partings, but he was a Toho kids'-movie favorite, probably not least because he gave the Japanese actors a blonde to be taller than. Adams' suicidal rebel image, cultivated after the death of James Dean, played out when he died of a drug overdose three years after his appearance in this film. Maybe he saw doom in the specter of another diminutive blonde on the Japanese rubber monster movie horizon - Richard Jaeckel.

Ghidorah, that three headed flying Cerberus from outer space is in control of the folks from Planet X who look quite Oriental, but they have gray suits and helmets to distinguish them from the earthbound Japanese who made this addition to the all star monster lineup of films they do. Planet X is a planet in parallel orbit behind big Jupiter, the better to conceal it from prying earthling eyes. The X people live underground and Ghidorah does his thing on the surface. If I may digress, an observation here. In all the Japanese monster films I never see these monsters actually eat anything. What do they do for food. Godzilla and Ghidorah both carry a built in microwave if they like their humans well done. They make a lot destruction but never seem to consume anything. Certainly on Planet X it looks barren, so what does Ghidorah eat? Those X guys have a nefarious scheme afoot. They want us to send Godzilla and Rodan from earth to defeat Ghidorah. Actually they want to use all the monsters to capture earth. What the X guys weakness is? You won't believe it, but think of that classic Twilight Zone episode with Andy Devine and how he defeated those aliens who wanted to take him back to their home planet. As bad as they are I do so love these monster fests from Japan.

A lot of 'professional' film critics seem to have an irrational dislike of Godzilla films. True, the special effects in them aren't usually fantastic but they're certainly a lot better than many 60's western dinosaur films which just rely on lizards with fins and spikes blu-tacked to them. This film, for example, is an excellent piece of sci-fi, imaginative, well-paced and containing genuine characters and interesting monsters. An alien race want to borrow Godzilla and Rodan to stop Ghidorah attacking their home planet, but it soon turns out they are not as friendly as they seem. One of the best Godzilla films I've seen, a true classic from the golden age of monster movies.

This was one of the first Godzilla films I can recall watching on prime-time network television when I was growing up (back then it went under its Americanized title of simply, MONSTER ZERO). Though pretty far-fetched, it's still a highly enjoyable offering in the Toho series and gives us another chance to see Godzilla and Rodan join forces against the popular three-headed King Ghidorah (Monster Zero). This time the widescreen English dubbed version is an asset, as American actor Nick Adams adds some spice to this one, since it's always fun to hear his nasal Brooklynese voice delivering such entertaining macho lines of gibberish as: "you stinkin' rats! What have you done to her?" Adams plays one of two astronauts sent to the newly discovered "Planet X" where he meets an alien civilization forced to live underground in order to avoid frequent attacks by Ghidorah up on the surface. The leaders ask our heroes to help them obtain the services of Earth monsters Godzilla and Rodan to help them vanquish 'Monster Zero'. But all may not be quite as it seems... Some fans don't like the fact that the monster battles are kept to a minimum this time, but they're pretty good when they arrive and it's an added kick seeing the desolate looking Planet X in outer space, with its mountains, craters and dark, star-lit skies. The addition of aliens, flying saucers and double-crosses help make this a good time for Godzilla lovers. *** out of ****

I saw this movie when I was 8 years old, and I've loved it ever since. One doesn't need to be a child to enjoy Godzilla, but it helps. The playfulness, the cheesyness, and the sheer low-budget destruction combine to make one of the most entertaining films one could ever want. Now, as a junior at Berkeley, I know I should be above such thrills as any kind of monster movie. Indeed, any pretentious, humorless prig of a critic will hate this movie. But the rest of mankind will get a kick out of the complete wackiness of two men dressed like 80-meter-tall lizards boxing in downtown Tokyo (or what it would look like if Tokyo were a 1/10000th size scale model). This movie has every campy necessity to make it the greatest of the great B movies. You've got your Brooklyn astronaut, your emotionless aliens in goofy outfits, one brilliant scientist who uses Mr Wizard techniques to demonstrate scientific facts that are blatantly false, and a smattering model tanks melting under a stage-hand's blowtorch. The "A-cycle light wave," the random cuts of stuntmen falling over balconies, awesomely anthropomorphic monsters, the annoying nerd character, Planet X--What more could you want from a classic "fun" movie? It even has Godzilla's famous victory dance! How could you not like this movie?? I pity the child who is deprived of the joys of Godzilla before he must face the harsh realities of life.

The story, characters, special effects, acting, and music are all fantastic, but there is one category in which the film unfortunately fails at: the pacing of the monster action, which is quite a detriment to the film's enjoyability. The first act is rather well-paced, effectively building up to a rather exciting fight on Planet X, but afterwords, it focuses completely on the humans until the last ten minutes of the film, and while there are many great human scenes here, eventually it drags out too long and it gets to the point where the audience is desperate for more monster action and wishes it could just pick up the pace a little. Once it finally does give you more monster action, though, it is fun. Overall, it's definitely one of the better films of the Showa series, with a lot of things going for it, but it's bad pacing keeping it from being satisfying all around.