I warned 'em. Didn't I warn 'em? In The Black Scorpion, I warned 'em. "Don't make me review Son
of Godzilla, I said. Did the Cabal listen? Nope. And just look what's happened.
Well . . . okay. I digress. Nothing's happened, I've just watched a bad Godzilla movie, but shouldn't that be enough? Because, let's face it, when Godzilla movie's are bad, they are baaaad (and not in that good way, either).
Now, we all love Godzilla here at AYTIWS, but, man, he's made some bad career choices in his time. And as the 60s slowly (to slowly for some) became the 70s, Godzilla continued his slow decent. Budgets shrank, and plots stupefied, as Godzilla movies became kiddy fantasies. The kind of stuff you drop your eight year-old off to at a matinee movie . . . when you could still do that without fear that your eight year-old would be abducted by a pedophile and found chopped up in a trash bag.
Crap. I knew I shouldn't have watched Seven again.
Anyway, Son of Godzilla is a prime example of this not only obsetting, but damn annoying trend. Godzilla is not child friendly. Hell, Godzilla isn't even human friendly. But that's a soapbox for another time. Thankfully, in this movie (#8), Godzilla doesn't pay much attention to the humans. But then, neither did I.
A United Nations research team has set up shop on the island of Sollgel ("soul-gel", a nice places to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there, too many giant bugs) in order to conduct weather controlling experiments. They plan to turn the tropical island into tundra because . . . well, they can. Evidentially, this will provide an end to world hunger because, if they can radically change one biome, why not another?
Well, Something Goes Wrong. A freak radio signal interrupts a test during its "heating operation". As a result, a "radioactive storm" comes to the island. It's not nearly as deadly as it sounds, but it does cause 3 giant mantises to grow even larger (from 50 to 150 feet).
Ravenous, the Deadly Mantis's idiot siblings uncover a giant egg . . . which just happens to be a Godzilla egg. Those freak radio signals were actually the baby calling to Godzilla from inside the egg. Stomping his way from the sea (going straight through the research team's base), Godzilla squashes some bugs and, reluctantly, adopts the baby as his own.
Oh, and there are humans here, too. The main ones being reporter Goro (Akira Kubo, Man of Action!) and Saeko the Wild Woman (Beverly Maeda). They have a thing going, I think. I'm not sure. In fact, I'm not sure about any of the character's motivations. Every human in here is a sketch in Shinichi Sekizawa's script. But that's normal. At least the actors seem enthusiastic. Too bad the bad dubbing shoots them in the foot. Characters speak like people who rush to say their good-byes into the phone because they're late for an important meeting.
Godzilla, at least, gets a much more solid character. It helps to have the script actually written for him. And his character goes full circle here (for once). He begins the movie reluctantly letting the baby zilla (called Minilla) tag along, and ends things comforting and nurturing the little tyke as the rampant cold weather sends them both into suspended animation.
Plus, even I can admit that the climactic fight is pretty cool. Minilla ends up saving G's ass, and stands proudly next to dad as they both blast their opponent to ash.
So here's my big dilemma: on the one hand, I really hate this movie. But, on the other,
it's probably the best movie of the series in terms of Godzilla's character. Minilla, no
matter how much I hate him, gives Godzilla someone to play off of, and allows the Big G to
show an emotion besides anger.
But, oh, do I ever hate the little bastard. With his motionless face, beer gut, and stunted arms, Minilla has to be the ugliest monster ever made. He also becomes the Odious Comic Relief, performing several "humorous" antics to mimic a small child (with G playing the role of a kind but firm, very-Japanese, parent). In a way, Minilla is both too cute and too hideous at the same time.
Also, in order to resemble Minilla (a dubious distinction, at best) Godzilla's suit was altered, giving him huge, brown eyes on top of his head. The only good looking monsters here are the various giant bug, especially Spiga, the giant spider. But even they are prone to defying the laws of gravity (being puppets and all).
So G looks like Kermit the Frog. Okay. Last time he looked like the Cookie Monster. That's some improvement.
Unfortunately, there's no improvement in the overall quality of the movie. For every good thing in Son of Godzilla, I could name you 2 bad things. That's a bad average no matter how you slice it.
