Kaiju Friday! Invasion of Astro-Monster (1965)

That's just too precious not to put on the Blog rather than the movie poster LOL

Invasion of the Astro-Monster (1965)


Plot Summary

Astronauts Glen and Fuji travel to Planet X, a newly discovered moon of Jupiter, which for some reason has been transmitting radio waves to Earth. While there the two astronauts are then ordered to go down to the the caverns where the people of the planet are forced to go, allegedly because they are now being attacked on a regular basis by Ghidorah, who moved there after being defeated by Godzilla, Rodan and Mothra several months earlier. The aliens then request that they be allowed to "borrow" Godzilla and Rodan (sans Mothra) as a means of repelling Ghidorah and that in exchange they would be given a formula for a "miracle drug" to combat all forms of cancer. In the meantime, Fuji's sister Haruno is dating inventor Tetsuo Torii, who has just invented a high frequency transmitter to ward off muggers. A few weeks later the aliens take Godzilla and Rodan back to their planet and they seemingly defeat Ghidorah. The astronauts then get a tape recording supposedly containing the formula. The tape actually contains an ultimatum for the people of Earth to surrender or else face destruction from the combined strengths of Godzilla, Rodan and Ghidorah. Will the nations of the world give in to the demands of the aliens or will they be destroyed? And what role does Tetsuo's invention play in the upcoming battle?

This is another one of the Godzilla movies I saw years ago (dubbed version) on the CBC late night movie and while it's not a "good" movie from a critical perspective it's actually quite a fun and entertaining flick even if it's predictable as hell. Nick Adams who starred as Glenn was the American lead on this film and I have to say he did a very good job in his role as he spoke English while everyone else naturally spoke Japanese. Having seen the English dub before I can tell that Adams was very believable and professional in his role. He also showed remarkable chemistry with his main co-star Akira Takarada.

A lot of this movie just strains credulity what with the advanced World Space Agency having a mission to Jupiter's newly discovered moon "planet X" but somehow the earnestness in which it's all presented actually works surprisingly well. I did find the contrivance of Adams and Takarada swallowing everything those aliens said at face value was just dumbfounding. I mean, no one in their right mind are going to be suddenly trusting of aliens no matter what they're going to offer the world and predictably they're a lot more dangerous than beneath the surface.

I will say I like the way the inside of the alien spacecraft and such looks. The lighted hallways in the spaceship calls to mind the hallways of the space station in 2001: A Space Odyssey. (1968) The aliens are pretty distinctive in their look as well and gives a subtle shorthand to the theme of the aliens being ultimately ruled by computers and machine logic. Indeed, that's the message of the film that these aliens (or rather us humans) can not let ourselves be consumed and subsumed by computers and the mechanical logic of such devices. There's a whole subplot where one of the aliens is keeping tabs on Adams but she breaks out of her computer programming by realizing that she loves him which costs her her life.

The twist in the movie is fairly obvious but the character that delivers that twist is as cardboard as anything. He's the brother of Takarada's sister and he happens to be dating her. He's basically a nerd who's a bit of a washout as an inventor but suddenly finds that one of his inventions have been bought by a faceless conglomerate. I think you can guess the importance of this development pretty easily. Nonetheless it's a necessary evil for the resolution of the film.

As for the Godzilla stuff? Well we get a couple pretty good battles, one on planet X with Godzilla and Rodan beating up King Ghidorah which led to the dance up above there and then at the film's climax when they're under control of the aliens to take over the world for them. Luckily the scientists and such can counteract that and we get a pretty quick but satisfactory fight. One thing is clearly evident here is that Godzilla is given A TON of personality in this flick. When he's hit by lasers or whatnot he hops around and he shows satisfaction when things are going well. We're clearly headed into the phase where Godzilla is Earth's protector.

From a regular movie standpoint I give this * but as a Godzilla movie it gets about ** 1/2.