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.

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