Invasion of Astro-Monster

Today is the day for the 1965 movie Invasion of Astro-Monster, the second appearance of one legendary kaiju: King Ghidorah, having another showdown with Godzilla. Rodan also makes an appearance, but they cut out my girl Mothra from this one. Once again directed by Ishirō Honda, Haruo Nakajima and Shoichi Hirose reprise their roles as Godzilla and King Ghidorah, respectively. With Gamera, the Giant Monster in the past, we are now gaining a little perspective on the differences in both suit performance and direction of kaiju movies, and better still the next movie in our series has a different director! We're hitting the big time!

Invasion of Astro-Monster has some significant downsides to it: primarily a lower budget and reusing previous shots. Rodan's scenes are particularly noticeable as rehashed footage. Honda himself reflected on this period with "If we recycled scenes from previous movies, we could cut the effects budget. But then we received complaints from our fans saying, 'It looks weird, it's not fresh.' We could fool the audience for a little while, but eventually they would know the trick and stop coming to see the shows. Then the studio would think that special effects film don't sell anymore. It's no wonder we could not make anything good around that period... It is a sad story."

I am hoping that several good ones are still to come, but if this movie and Honda's own words are to be believed then we may be in for some rocky times while we journey through the history of kaiju movies. Let's talk about the movie first and then possibly revisit some of this.

If You Haven't Seen it Before

- Two astronauts, Fuji and Glenn, arrive on Planet X.

- They meet aliens, Xiliens, who hide them from a rampaging King Ghidorah and explain that he is the horrible Monster Zero who is destroying their planet.

- In exchange for "borrowing" Godzilla and Rodan to fight Monster Zero, the Xiliens offer humans the cure for cancer. They make the exchange. Big G, Rodan, Glenn, and Fuji all head to Planet X.

- Once on Planet X, Godzill and Rodan succeed in driving away King Ghidorah.

- Glenn and Fuji realize something funky is going on after suspecting the Xiliens of ill-intent for most of the movie so far, and are briefly taken prisoner before being released due to their status as guests of the Xiliens.

- Leaving the monsters behind and with the cure for cancer in hand, the astronauts return to Earth.

- The tape the astronauts were given is revealed to be an ultimatum and not a cure, calling for Earth to surrender to Planet X or be destroyed by all 3 monsters they now have control over.

- Under the control of the Xiliens, Godzilla, Mothra, and King Ghidorah begin destroying the world before the invention is broadcast from every available radio on the planet

- Glenn is formally imprisoned by the Xiliens later, and meets another man who apparently has invented a device which interrupts the Xiliens' electronics. They use this to escape prison and also free Rodan and Godzilla from Xilien control.

- After being set free from mind control, Godzilla and Rodan decide to turn their energy toward King Ghidorah in a final, utterly unspectacular battle.

- All three monsters fall off a cliff, into the water. Ghidorah retreats to space while the human propose that Godzilla and Rodan could still be alive.

- Fuji and Glenn are made ambassadors to Planet X. END

Kaiju Notes

- All of the suits for the monsters look pretty much the same as they did for King Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster. King Ghidorah's necks may be just a bit shorter, but my memory may be trash. He also appears to be somewhat less golden, the more muted color making him seem perhaps more dangerous but also less SPECTACULAR. Godzilla's eyes are noticeable in this again, after spending some time not being an obvious feature.

- Godzilla is beginning to transition into full "hero" mode. After cross bodying King Ghidorah, knocking him down and making him flee, Godzilla leaps into the air no less than four times doing a victory pose. It's strange, but undeniably entertaining to see the usually lumbering Godzilla doing cheerleader moves.

- The kaiju are much more human in this movie generally. At one point Godzilla, under the control of the Xiliens, even does the "cut throat" gesture when Earth is threatened with total destruction by him and the other two big bois.

- Godzilla does boxing moves in this one! No more Atomic Breath for this guy, he throws some jabs and crosses alongside some fancy foorwork before throwing King Ghidorah off a cliff (alongside himself and Rodan).

Let's start with the bad: I don't enjoy this movie. I find it plodding, a bit strange, and the monster action pretty disappointing. But the strange thing to consider is that there are also some significant highlights: the Xiliens, the inventive plot, the team-up shenanigans. For some odd reason the cohesive movie doesn't come together for me despite enjoying many aspects of the movie itself. It's also nice to compare this to Gamera, the Giant Monster as two films made on a tight budget and indulging their strangest desires. Comparatively, I think Gamera did a better job between the two despite it's obvious disadvantages.

Let's start by talking about the Xiliens: I love these guys. And I do mean guys, as apparently all of the female Xiliens are... clones of each other? It was unclear. But either way, the Xiliens come up with this entirely wild plan to kidnap Godzilla and Rodan so they can turn them against the Earth. But if they had the technology couldn't they simply do this anyway? They could just go grab them, brainwash them, and come back for conquest. But they decide to use subterfuge and deception, I think, because it amuses them. They never seem to have fun or smile as they represent themselves as beings of pure logic, but you look at that plan and tell me what part of it makes any logical sense.

Doubling down here: I think part of this movie is about the value of human emotions over pure logic. While arguing about the Xiliens attempting to take over Earth, one of the lady Xiliens has fallen in love with Glenn and expresses her desire to be a human like him: "A man is immortal. A material machine can be destroyed." Even the kaiju of this movie, still giant animals and monsters, seem a bit more human-like in contrast to the Xilien villains. It's not a necessarily well-developed theme, but one that I found myself unable to shake.

Related: despite their relative humanity compared to previous appearances, when the kaiju conflict with human forces they seem more brutal than normal, wasting little time and just wrecking havoc. Perhaps this is because they are under control of aliens to destroy rather than the more base instincts that typically drive them. Or perhaps it is destruction that is the base instinct, and thus they are now more effective at it? Either way, all 3 kaiju in this movie are forces of utter destruction in a way that hasn't been seen since Godzilla's first appearance. Even in recycled footage, humans take an absolute beating in this movie compared to almost everything since the 1954 original, as in most of the films the kaiju typically try to ignore humans for the sake of their own objectives. But when that objective becomes "destroy all humans," they are shockingly good at it.

In the end, this movie is a bit of a lesson in the importance of all pieces of a piece of art working together. Despite enjoying the wacky plot and human story (a rarity for me when it comes to kaiju movies), something about this just didn't click for me. If I had to guess it would be the relative lack of agency on the part of the kaiju: almost all of their time in this movie is spent being manipulated or controlled by the humanoid characters rather than being themselves forces of nature that humanoids have to operate around. Even the end of the movie doesn't bother to truly establish whether Rodan and Godzilla even lived, instead spending more time on the human elements and making our two main human characters into ambassadors to a planet that tried to conquer them not 20 minutes ago. While I think the human and monster pieces of a good kaiju movie have to work together, something about letting the monsters be subsumed by the other side of things seems counter to the point of the genre. It could work, I am sure, but I don't personally think it did here. I wish I liked this more, but if you're into wild rides and wacky notions, this might still be the kaiju movie for you!

Next: Ebirah, Horror of the Deep!