Ghidrah, the Three-Headed Monster

1964 monster mayhem!

Rating: 15/20

Plot: All kinds of stuff going on here. There's an assassination plot involving the princess from some anonymous country, a princess who, following her leap from a plane, decides that she's a Martian. You've got a giant, red-glowing, sometimes-magnetic space rock. There's some minuscule fairy twins who speak in unison and are BFF's with a phallic giant moth creature. Rodan and Godzilla reemerge and have trouble getting along. And a new threat to earth--a no-armed, three-headed, flying thing with terrible breath--needs to be stopped. Man, do the Japanese know how to bring it or do the Japanese know how to bring it?

What badass monster-on-monster-on-monster-on-monster action this one has! It took a bit of time to get to the monster fracases, but luckily, all the stuff involving the human characters was interesting enough to sustain. The other Godzilla movies I've watched had me really missing the guys in suits throwing rocks at each other and pushing each other around, but I actually enjoyed the parts of the plot involving the human characters. I really liked the main bad guy, a guy so bad that he never removes his shades. The bad guys, by the way, might be the worst "killers" (that's what they're called repeatedly) in movie history. I don't believe they succeed in coming close to killing anybody in this, do they? I'm not even sure they could hit a wall with a bullet if a wall happened to be their target. The princess is cute while the fairies (too little for me to use my "little person" tag) and the peripheral characters, mostly because of the terrific dubbing, cracked me up. I wish I had a pair of miniature fairies to keep me company actually. But the monsters are the stars of the show here, and in this one, you get four of them--Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra, and the title villain. I'm still most impressed with the special effects that make Ghidrah work (still not sure how that happens actually), but it's a lot of fun watching Mothra wiggle around, Rodan pecking at Godzilla's head, and Godzilla getting angry and throwing a hissy-fit. The fight scenes were thrilling and hilarious. There's a wonderful scene where Godzilla and Rodan are playing volleyball with a rock, one of those scenes that starts stupid, goes on for far too long, keeps going long after any human being would think it could possible go on for, and finally becomes almost a religious experience, a work of dadaist art. Fist pumps may have been involved. I also really liked the score. One question though: How could the end of this movie actually have been the end of the movie? Ghidrah, a threat to destroy earth, flies away with his tail between his legs because he's got Mothra web all over his face? That really does him in? Seems like he could go wash that off and be back five minutes later to continue the fight.

Cory recommended this bad boy.