It’s a shame producer Tomoyuki Tanaka disliked 1971’s Godzilla vs. Hedorah so much. The following year, after recovering from illness, he set out to get the Godzilla franchise back to basics. With Japan’s film industry in steady decline, the budgetary woes continued for Toho. The rise in popularity of television and big-budget imports from Hollywood lead to the Japanese studios cutting corners all over the place. In a few years, 1975 would mark Japanese-made films falling to below 50% market share. Like All Monsters Attack, Gigan relies heavily on stock footage, though a new monster was created for this one, and man does it rock. In another cheap move, they also use recycled music from Akira Ifukube’s other movies for the score, and uh, yeah, occasionally that works out. Jun Fukuda helms the project as director, seeking to right the ship, and special effects director Teruyoshi Nakano is back for round two after his spectacular work with Hedorah. The Godzilla suit from Destroy All Monsters is used for the fourth time, and sadly this will be the final film Haruo Nakajima will play Godzilla. Nakajima has been with us from film one, bringing Godzilla’s familiar mannerisms to life, and he will be missed.

Godzilla vs Gigan is maybe one of the most mixed bags we’ve seen so far. The design for Gigan really kicks ass, and while he does show up in a couple more films, he should really be in more. The opening credits are spectacular with bold stripes panning across the screen. The music here, and in the opening scenes, fits surprisingly well for being lifted from other films. There’s good humor sprinkled throughout; it opens with a few shots of manga illustrations, the music building in intensity as the pages turn, until we see what the characters are running from….NOTHING! Artist Gengo Kotaka, played by Hiroshi Ishikawa hasn’t finished those pages yet, and a publishing executive rejects his pitch on the spot. These light scenes will contrast with some grisly violence later, but for now we’re in a bog-standard Godzilla film. A pair of guys are trying to open a Godzilla themed amusement park called World Children’s Land, devoted to “absolute peace.” You know right away there’s something fishy with these dudes; one is chasing a woman out of the building, and she drops a tape reel that Gengo sneakily snaps up while sending her pursuers in the opposite direction. Gengo is meeting with Chairman Fumio Sudo (to pitch monster ideas for the park), and there’s this hilarious shot of a giant silver globe that slowly turns to reveal itself as Sudo’s chair/desk combo like some kind of Bond villain. Supposedly they’re just looking for artwork, but they’re discussing an awful lot of their thinly veiled nefarious plans right in front of Gengo, including wiping Monster Island from the face of the earth. Yeah, these dudes are totally into peace.

Gengo and his black-belt girlfriend Tomoko Tomoe, played by the fabulous Yuriko Hishimi, team up with Machiko Shima, the woman on the run, and her hippie friend Shosaku Takasugi played by Tomoko Umeda and Minoru Takashima respectively. We get two Tomoko’s for the price of one! The late 60s, early 70s fashion is on full display and I’m a little envious, they all look dope as hell! When they play the stolen tape, it’s a bunch of bloops and beeps, and apparently Godzilla and Anguirus can hear the transmission. And then…they discuss it! This is one of a few films where the monsters “talk” to each other, though it’s usually been roughly translated through the Shobijin or Minilla. In this one, there’s speech balloons with dialogue that seems so incongruous to the monsters it makes you feel like you’re having a stroke:

Godzilla: Hey, Anguirus!
Anguirus: Yeah?
Godzilla: Go see what’s up!
Anguirus: OK!
Godzilla: Hurry!

The concept of Godzilla recognizing something as a time-sensitive issue is absolutely mind-boggling. I don’t know if my brain will ever recover. Our heroes investigate the guys behind the World Children’s Land, and the music does not work for this montage. There’s also a weird scene where they’re discussing plans and everyone is eating bananas. The Chairman and his henchman turn out to be none other than alien cockroaches who thrived on a planet where the dominant lifeform produced so much pollution they killed themselves off. They see humans on the same track and plan on taking over here too.

Godzilla vs Gigan is only about 90 minutes, par for the course, but it ends up dragging on. It’s got a strong start and weak finish. When the monster fights start, Gigan and Ghidorah come down to earth from space and their models are not great. There’s an awful shot of two models flying around Godzilla Tower in Children’s Land, and they’re very static. A ton of footage is repurposed from other films, notably fights between Anguirus and Ghidorah from Destroy All Monsters, which happens in the day, but this film’s fight takes place at night, so they just turn down the brightness on those shots and hope you don’t notice.

The actual new fight scenes are pretty cool, and Gigan’s design looks like a five year old described it: “So like, he’s got a cool red visor, and a beak, and hooks for hands, and and and dragon wings, and spikes, and scales, and a giant buzzsaw in his chest that actually spins! He tears a building apart with it and assaults Godzilla and it’s cool silly fun. Things take a dark turn when Gigan tears Godzilla and Kurosawa-esque fountain of blood shoots out! Its a serious geyser. It’s unfortunate that the movie becomes kind of a bore and so much stock footage is used because those shots rule. In addition to the reused scenes from earlier films, some new footage is looped back to back too in a fit of terrible editing. If they had spaced it out a little, and flipped the shot horizontally, it may have blended in a little more smoothly, but as it stands it’s extremely jarring seeing Gigan leap up and attack fighter jets five times in a row.

Overall Godzilla vs Gigan is kind of a mess, but has plenty of action, even if a full quarter of that action is reused footage. Almost half the movie is the big tag-team showdown between the four monsters. The plot drags, and it gets back to the “aliens invade and control monsters trope” if that’s your thing, but doesn’t have a lot else going for it. There’s a fun song at the end about how Godzilla is a champion of peace, a far cry from his nuclear nightmare origins. Luckily, Gigan will return in the next film, Godzilla vs Megalon, along with everyone’s favorite fighting robot: Jet Jaguar!