Terror of Mechagodzilla

Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975)
Toho Studios
Director: Honda Ishirō, Nakano Teruyoshi (special effects)
Also discussed: King Kong (1976), Gamera Super Monster (1980), Star Fleet (1982-83).

A title sequence montage of the fight scenes from Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla (1974) reminds us of what Mechagodzilla looks like, what it’s capable of and how it was destroyed. We fast forward to a submarine looking to salvage what’s left of Mechagodzilla from the sea floor. (Presumably they’re just off the coast of Okinawa, since that’s where Mechagodzilla went into the water?) They find no trace of any “space titanium” within 500 metres, but they do find some kind of sea monster which quickly destroys the sub. On the coast nearby, a young woman sits on the rocks and pictures the scene in her mind’s eye. A recording of the sub’s last radio transmissions and some amateur photographs find their way to the local office of Interpol, where they’re reviewed by an investigative team and Ichinose, a biologist they’ve brought in to consult. The crew on the recording claim they’re being attacked by a dinosaur, while the photographs suggest some UFO activity above the scene of the disaster.

In a hotel room in Tokyo, a bearded man in dark glasses welcomes another man in dark glasses to Earth. These are both aliens from the third planet of a black hole, the same bunch who appeared in the previous movie; the new arrival is their new commander, who bears an uncanny resemblance to their old, deceased commander. (Which is actually fair enough, considering they’re only disguised as humans – they may only have so many different masks.) Refreshingly, the aliens have a motivation this time, although it’s been recycled from Godzilla vs Gigan (1972) – their own planet is doomed and, because humanity has been so careless in overdeveloping and polluting Earth, they think it’s fair game to invade. They’ve already drawn up plans for the new, spotless alien city that will replace Tokyo. The bearded alien proposes enlisting the help of Dr Mafune Shinzo, a brilliant scientist who was spurned by the scientific mainstream and hates his fellow humans enough to collaborate in their elimination.

Dr Mafune worked at the “Ocean Development Laboratry” [sic] some 30 years earlier, where he specialised in the not obviously related fields of submarine exploration and cybernetic control of animals. (Then again, given the cinematic world we’re in here, maybe they’re a natural combination – maybe Mafune’s research was sponsored by the government in the hope of finding a way to control Godzilla, at least once they knew Godzilla existed. Although, NB: assuming a contemporary setting, “30 years earlier” would be just around the end of World War Two. This isn’t mentioned at all. The fact that Mafune continued his research during and after the American occupation implies he hadn’t been working on something military for the Imperial Army, but who knows?) When he claimed to have discovered a living aquatic dinosaur, which he dubbed Titanosaurus, his colleagues decided it was time for him to retire, which he did 15 years ago. (Again, given which cinematic world we’re in... Which part of this did Mafune’s colleagues have difficulty with, since by “15 years ago” they would have known about Godzilla for at least five years?) The present head of the institute explains all of this to Ichinose and an Interpol agent, Murakoshi, who are looking into the dinosaur that reportedly attacked the submarine. They go in search of the retired Mafune and are directed to a secluded mansion in the woods in his home town of Manazuru.

At Mafune’s house, Murakoshi and Ichinose meet his daughter, Katsura. (She’s the same woman who was sitting down by the presumably Okinawan coast earlier, although they don’t know that. Manazuru is further south than Tokyo, in Kanagawa Prefecture, but it's certainly nowhere near Okinawa. Perhaps she has a speedy private submarine or something. Perhaps the filmmakers simply forgot where the previous film had been set.) Katsura tells them Mafune died five years ago and sends them packing. Meanwhile, Mafune – alive and well, but looking a lot older and shaggier than he did 15 years ago – is toasting his success in perfecting his control of Titanosaurus with the bearded alien in a hi-tech secret lab in his basement. He’s amused when Katsura tells him the authorities came calling to ask about his dinosaur research – those fools, they laughed at him, but he'll show them, he’ll show them all, etc. The alien invites Mafune and Katsura to come and see the real reason his organisation has asked for Mafune’s help, the perfect means by which Mafune can exact his revenge on the world. It’s in a super-futuristic alien secret base hidden inside a cave under Mt Amagi. It’s Mechagodzilla.

The aliens have recovered all the pieces of Mechagodzilla and reassembled it since the end of the previous film. It looks much the same as it did before, if less shiny. The one small change is that the camp "MG" patch on its upper arm has been replaced with an even more camp "MG2", which can be seen very briefly later in the film (but blink and you'll miss it). The alien commander asks for Dr Mafune to apply his knowledge of control mechanisms to Mechagodzilla’s repairs, following which they can bring the world to its knees by unleashing the cyborg alongside Titanosaurus. Although he’s shocked to discover that his associates are the alien invaders from the previous movie, Mafune soon agrees.

The aliens are using captured humans as labour, silencing them by cutting their vocal cords. One of them escapes the base while Mafune is there and manages to give a fragment of “space titanium” to a water pipe maintenance worker before being chased through the nearby woods and gunned down by the aliens. The maintenance worker takes the fragment to Interpol, giving them the lead they need to find the alien base at Mt Amagi.

Despite receiving no help from Katsura, the Interpol investigation team have found some of Dr Mafune’s old notes and are preparing to take a second submarine down to look for Titanosaurus. Ichinose naively invites Katsura to come with them, but she refuses and seems strangely upset. Later, she tries to warn Ichinose against proceeding with the dive, but is prevented by the bearded alien who reminds her that her loyalty is to his people. In a flashback scene, we’re shown that Katsura was fatally wounded in a lab accident when her father was testing his dinosaur control equipment some years before, but her life was saved when the aliens entered the lab, took her away and replaced her heart with cybernetic machinery. (So just how long have they been hanging around on Earth?) He tells Katsura to send Titanosaurus to destroy the Interpol sub, which she does. But the creature is deterred, apparently by the supersonic sound waves emitted by the sub’s comms equipment.

The Interpol agents who are sent to investigate the Mt Amagi area are shot at by men with laser handguns. They alert the JSDF to the likely presence of aliens in the area. Meanwhile, Katsura arranges to meet Ichinose and persuades him to tell her about the sonic weapon being constructed as a defence against Titanosaurus; she reports back to her father. She’s concerned that, in the aliens’ hands, Titanosaurus will join the long list of destructive kaiju that have threatened Japan. (The three examples she names, in a little clips montage from previous movies, are King Ghidorah, Rodan and Manda.) Dr Mafune is unconcerned, and prematurely releases Titanosaurus to attack Tokyo. With the sonic weapon sabotaged, the JSDF will have no defence against it. In the control room of his base, the alien commander is secretly pleased by Mafune’s rash action: Godzilla will confront Titanosaurus, and the fight will leave Godzilla weak enough to be defeated by Mechagodzilla.

The name "Titanosaurus" sounds like it came from the same monster naming committee that brought you "Megalon" (and probably “Gigan”, if my hunch is right). In fact, it's an authentic dinosaur name, but owing to the scarcity of fossil remains that can be attributed to it – or more accurately, that can't be attributed to other dinosaurs – no one's entirely sure what it would have looked like. (In other words, it’s the “Miscellaneous” bucket for paleontologists.) The Titanosaurus we see here is an aquatic quadruped, but on land it walks bipedally. It looks a bit like a cross between a reptile and a seahorse. Its skin looks green or red depending on the lighting. It has a long, slender neck, a thin fin running from the top of its head all the way down its spine and a fanned-out fin behind each ear. There's another fin in its tail that, as we’ll discover, it can fan out vertically between two fleshy prongs and use to create a powerful draft by waving its tail to and fro. It abruptly stops what it’s doing and walks back into the sea when Katsura is shot by an Interpol agent and Mafune, observing the scene remotely from his lab, abandons Titanosaurus’ controls. Godzilla, who has indeed come looking for a fight, is left perplexed.

The aliens operate on Katsura again and repair her cybernetic innards, earning Mafune’s gratitude. He’s less pleased when the commander tells him they’ve linked Katsura’s brain remotely to Mechagodzilla. Mafune had previously suggested that a living brain was the one thing that would really give Mechagodzilla the edge, and now Katsura can act as its mobile control centre. The alien commander plans to lure Interpol to his current base, launch Mechagodzilla and have the base self-destruct with the agents inside.

Believing Katsura to be dead and unable to accept that she was involved in Titanosaurus’ attack, Ichinose goes to the Mafune house where he’s captured by several of the aliens, Dr Mafune and Katsura. He’s tied up and watches as Katsura triggers the launch of Mechagodzilla. Meanwhile, Murakoshi leads an Interpol team into the alien base where they’re able to rescue several of the muted human slaves before the base explodes. Controlled by Katsura under the alien commander’s orders, Mechagodzilla and Titanosaurus wreak havoc on Tokyo. Godzilla suddenly appears on the scene and confronts the duo. (Funnily enough, he appears just as Titanosaurus is about to step on two kids who call out for Godzilla to save them...) Godzilla and Titanosaurus seem pretty well matched, but Mechagodzilla decides the fight when it fires a rocket straight into Godzilla’s belly. (At which point, smoke comedically billows out of his mouth.) His opponents take the opportunity to bury him in a crevasse and jump up and down on top of his grave.

At this point the Interpol team fly in with their sonic weapon mounted on a helicopter and drive Titanosaurus back. Before Mechagodzilla can shoot down the helicopter, Godzilla bursts up out of the ground and gives the cyborg a radioactive blast. (He then takes a moment to dust himself down.) Mechagodzilla fires off its full range of weapons, but Godzilla charges it and twists its head off. This isn’t enough to stop it – underneath its Godzilla-esque head is a small dome that seems to be the source of the destructive beam it usually fires from its eyes. Meanwhile in Mafune’s lab, a firefight breaks out between the aliens and some Interpol agents led by Murakoshi; the aliens are routed. (We see one of them revert to his true alien form when he’s killed, as in the previous film, but this time the aliens don’t look like green apes, more like humans with bits of discoloured latex scattered over their faces.) Mafune is killed in the crossfire and the shock of his death finally brings Katsura back to her senses. In order to destroy Mechagodzilla’s control system, she shoots herself with an alien handgun. Mechagodzilla immediately stops and seems to blow a fuse, allowing Godzilla to finish it off. The alien commander attempts to escape in a UFO, which Godzilla quickly destroys with his radioactive breath. He then turns his attention to Titanosaurus, who ends up falling apparently dead into the sea. Our heroes are left mourning Katsura’s death while Godzilla wades off into the sunset.

The last new Godzilla movie to be released for a decade to come, Terror of Mechagodzilla looks like a late (and, alas, unsuccessful) attempt to recapture some of the series’ early vigour with several of the franchise’s key figures returning behind and in front of the camera. It also proves to be the swansong for a couple of them.

Honda Ishirō, the OG (Original Godzilla) director, has been persuaded back after five years of working in television, as has Ifukube Akira, the OG composer. Honda, whose direction defines this first era of Godzilla, would never work on another film – he lived until 1993, but emerged from a prolonged retirement only to work as an assistant on Kurosawa’s later films. Ifukube’s music was played from stock in Godzilla vs Gigan (1972) but he last actually worked on a Toho tokusatsu movie in 1970. He adds what sounds like some interesting bass electronics to his usual orchestral composition here, although strangely it’s in scenes featuring Titanosaurus rather than Mechagodzilla. The bombastic Godzilla fanfare and march he composed for the 1954 movie remain indelibly associated with Godzilla and routinely turn up in even the most recent films in the franchise. Ifukube would return to provide the music for some of the 1990s Godzilla films and died at a ripe age in 2006.

The actor playing Dr Mafune is hardly recognisable for most of the movie, with his "old man" hair and bushy moustache, but the stills montage that plays over the description of his early career and a flashback mid-film reveal the familiar face of Hirata Akihiko. He was, of course, the tragic Dr Serizawa in the 1954 film and many other characters since; it’s sad to see him reduced to the most cliché of mad scientists here. (Not to mention that wig and moustache – anyone who’s seen Christopher Lee in the Hammer horror film The Gorgon (1964) will have some idea of what’s been inflicted on Hirata.) He continued to act but was too unwell to appear in Godzilla’s 1984 comeback and sadly died that year. Representing the new generation of Toho kaiju eiga actors are Sasaki Katsuhiko as the hero Ichinose, who was previously the inventor Gorō in Godzilla vs Megalon (1973), and Mutsumi Gorō playing an entirely different alien leader to the one he played in the previous movie. Sahara Kenji appears as a high-ranking JSDF officer in a briefing scene, but blink and you really will miss him.

It's the end of an era, and what a weak note to go out on. Toho’s Champion Festival, already reduced from three events a year to one, would limp on until 1978; absent a new tokusatsu movie, the 1976 festival would consist entirely of animated works and be dominated by Disney imports. There’s not much more to say about Terror of Mechagodzilla, a lazy and underwhelming rehash of the previous year’s offering. (It’s the first movie in the franchise to pit Godzilla solo against multiple antagonists – is that really the most interesting thing about it?) So instead, let’s take a whistle-stop tour of the giant monster milestones of the next decade.

In 1976, Paramount Pictures distributed a remake of King Kong (1933). The American “creature feature” craze had peaked and subsided some 15 years earlier, so it’s not clear why those involved should have thought the time was right for a Kong remake when they mooted the idea in late 1974 and bought the rights from RKO General in early 1975. But it was a prescient choice: the runaway success of Jaws (1975) would prove that an action film with a giant animal antagonist could be a hit. There’s some debate over whether producer Dino De Laurentiis was asked by Paramount to handle this film in particular or whether he’d already had the idea and suggested it to them when they asked him to produce a film for them. If the latter, there must have been something in the air because the other person who’s said to have originated the idea, TV executive Michael Eisner, had mentioned it to Universal Pictures as well as Paramount before Paramount decided to proceed with De Laurentiis as the producer. There was a brief but abortive flurry of lawsuits and counter-lawsuits because Universal had separately approached RKO General for the rights to Kong and, not knowing that Paramount had acquired the rights, essentially assumed that they would get them.

The tone of King Kong (1976) was intentionally different from the original film. De Laurentiis wanted something with a lighter feel, a knowing, winking, humorous edge and more focus on the romantic aspects of the story (specifically between Kong and the female lead) than on the fantastic wildlife of Kong’s island. (Incidentally, the island isn’t named at all in this movie, although “the beach of the skull” is named as a landmark.) The director that De Laurentiis engaged, John Guillermin, had just made the multi-award-winning The Towering Inferno (1974) and brought some of that disaster movie atmosphere to scenes in King Kong that played more as horror in the original. To realise Kong, the plan was to use animatronics including a hyper-ambitious 12-metre-tall full-size mannequin. In other words, the spectacle of the film would come not from stop-motion or composite action sequences but from the sheer material fact of Kong’s presence on screen next to the actors, with an emphasis on wonder rather than uncanny horror. In the event, the giant mannequin didn’t work and Guillermin was obliged to shoot a human scale Kong for later compositing, with special effects make-up artist Rick Baker wearing a Kong costume in a rare instance of an American monster movie using the effects techniques more commonly found in Japanese kaiju eiga. The animatronics were used in a minority of scenes, mainly of Kong emoting or manhandling the female lead, for which only a disembodied head or hand was required.

Of the three lead actors, the biggest name was Jeff Bridges, playing the romantic male lead Jack Prescott. Jack was reimagined from the first mate of a chartered ship (named Jack Driscoll in the 1933 film) to a paleontologist who specialises in primates and has somehow heard about this mysterious, uncharted island with a giant ape living on it. Bridges’ film career had only started in 1970 and he’d already had a couple of starring roles and a couple of Oscar-nominated supporting roles, so his was clearly a name to watch. Charles Grodin was cast in the Carl Denham role, reimagined as Fred Wilson, roving executive of the Petrox Oil Company, who has acquired satellite images of the uncharted island which he plans to prospect and decides instead to exploit Kong as a marketing gimmick when the island turns out not to be sitting on large oil reserves. Grodin was known largely for supporting roles, mostly comedic, although he’d recently been acclaimed in the lead role of The Heartbreak Kid (1972). Debuting as Dwan, the Ann Darrow role of the aspiring young actress, was Jessica Lange, who has since enjoyed a lengthy and successful career.

Changing the unscrupulous entrepreneur character from a filmmaker and impresario to an oil company executive was a good move thematically, updating the film’s concerns from the sharp business practices of the 1930s American film industry to the destructive activities and moral shortcomings of multinational fossil fuel companies. It’s no accident that the makers of this film made this choice in the middle of a decade-long energy crisis and in the wake of the Middle East oil export crisis of 1973-74. Unfortunately, the change means the film has to jump through some plot hoops to get Jack and Dwan on board the Petrox expedition’s ship (he’s stowed away, she’s been shipwrecked by total coincidence in the ship’s path). Relocating Kong’s final showdown from the Empire State Building to the World Trade Center, which had only recently opened in 1973, adds the potential for further commentary as the plaza of this monument to capitalism is stained with Kong’s blood, while a terrified Dwan is cornered and ruthlessly objectified by the assembled press. (I imagine, though, that the final reel resonates in a different way with viewers coming to the movie after the 2001 terrorist attack on the famous Twin Towers.)

Sadly, the execution doesn’t do justice to the ideas. I think the leads just about rescue the script, but it’s a near-run thing and they deserve full credit for their efforts. The movie often comes across as cheesy, but hey, that’s a deliberate tonal choice made by the producer before anyone else even started working on it. The massive overreach of a life-size animatronic Kong that had to be covered for by a man in an ape suit tips the whole thing over the edge from ironic indulgence into full-blown camp. Nonetheless, King Kong did fairly well at the box office and some film critics had nice things to say about it. It made enough of a splash to inspire knock-offs like the mid-budgeted Hong Kong imitator The Mighty Peking Man (1977) and the nano-budgeted American-Korean collaboration A*P*E (1976). It even got a very belated sequel, King Kong Lives (1986), once more produced by De Laurentiis and directed by Guillermin, which resurrects Kong alongside a Lady Kong and, eventually, a Baby Kong. The critics weren’t nearly so kind about that one.

The following year, Star Wars (1977, latterly Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope) changed the face of cinematic science fiction and raised everyone’s expectations with regard to special effects. One of George Lucas’ admitted inspirations for Star Wars was Kurosawa’s jidaigeki films, and particularly The Hidden Fortress (1958), so it’s only fair that Japanese cinema should have taken something back from it. There were two prompt attempts to cash in on the craze around the American film: Toho’s The War in Space (1977) and Toei’s Message from Space (1978). Apart from the title and the heroes’ orange flight suits, The War in Space doesn’t show much influence from Star Wars – it’s more of a rewrite of Atragon (1963) but set on Venus and with spaceships. Message from Space, on the other hand, looks exactly as if someone who’d seen Star Wars had outlined it to someone else and that person had written up what they imagined it must have been like, then handed the script to a third person to visually design the thing from scratch. Neither of these movies has any daikaiju content, although we will touch on one of them again in a minute.

Star Wars did influence one daikaiju movie, and that was Gamera Super Monster (1980). Daiei Film (the production company set up by Tokuma Shoten, who’d bought the bankrupt Daiei Motion Picture Company’s assets) had decided it was time to exploit that Gamera property that had been gathering dust for most of a decade. Their new movie was a compilation of effects scenes from the seven old movies, reframed by the story of a young boy and his adult friends shot inexpensively in contemporary suburbia.

Little Keiichi is astonished to discover that Kilara, the woman who runs the pet shop round the corner from his home, and her two friends are Superwomen from outer space. They operate out of a campervan on the roof of an apartment block and their Superwoman costumes consist of silver body stockings with red boots, gloves and capes. They work secretly to defend the world from the predations of the spaceship Zanon, whose spy on Earth is a Superwoman defector called Giruge. (You can tell she’s a baddie because her body stocking is black.) The plan of whoever’s in charge of the Zanon (we hear a voice over a radio but never see inside the ship) is to beat humanity into submission with kaiju attacks, all of which are repeated from earlier movies, and they bring Gamera under their control at one point so that footage from the original film can be redeployed. Gamera fights the other kaiju (including Guiron, on his own planet, for reasons) while the Superwomen work behind the scenes to foil the aliens’ schemes, and the day is saved when Gamera flies into orbit and rams the Zanon.

The influence of Star Wars is limited to, but extremely obvious in, the design of the Zanon which is a straightforward knock-off of an Imperial Star Destroyer. The movie also shows the influence of the Christopher Reeve vehicle Superman (1978), not just in the title and the costume of the Superwomen, but in the closing title sequence in which Kilara takes Keiichi “flying” over Tokyo at night. Also present are visual references to the recent anime series Space Battleship Yamato (1974-75), which was enjoying a resurgence in popularity thanks to a spate of TV movie sequels, and the then current Galaxy Express 999 (1978-81): in a mid-film scene of Gamera flying through space, the kaiju costume is gratuitously superimposed on images from the animated series. These weren’t Daiei properties, so presumably Daiei went out of their way to get permission to use the clips, but there’s no coherence, visually or narratively, to these shots. The reason for them is probably the same as for the Hollywood film references – simply to tie Gamera into the pop culture experience of the contemporary viewers, to try to make Gamera look cool by association.

The Superwomen can’t be added into the stock footage, so their involvement in the proceedings is pretty much limited to a showdown with Giruge and a couple of other low-octane plot-related scenes, plus several scenes in which they “monitor” the kaiju fights on a big TV in Kilara’s flat while Keiichi cheers Gamera on. Because its premise is essentially “boy learns life lessons from watching old kaiju eiga”, Gamera Super Monster invites comparisons with All Monsters Attack (1969). But it far outdoes All Monsters Attack in its proportional reuse of footage and its paucity of new special effects material. It boasts a grand total of about two minutes of new monster effects, consisting of shots of Gamera flying through space and one scene of his legs trampling a billboard advertising a kaiju movie called “Dodzilla”, which is a moment of gloating the Gamera franchise really hasn’t earned yet. Gamera Super Monster can’t even claim to offer the kind of social commentary that justified All Monsters Attack. It’s just sort of there.

It’s probably for the best that Gamera sank back into dormancy for another decade and a half.

Finally, an extended sidenote. While Daiei was perpetrating Gamera Super Monster, Fuji Television was producing X-Bomber (1980-81), a science fiction serial that used puppetry instead of live action or animation. It owed much to the works of Gerry Anderson, the British creator of Thunderbirds (1965-66), Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (1967-68) and many, many others. Unlike Anderson’s series, in X-Bomber the puppets were operated with rods from below rather than with strings from above. According to the extras on the English version’s DVD release (but we’ll come to that in a minute), Anderson was persuaded by this series to try rod puppetry on his next serial, Terrahawks (1983-86). Although there was no obvious overlap of personnel, X-Bomber also seems to have been influenced by Toei’s Message from Space, in the distinctive costume of its main villain and in the inclusion of a spaceship that looks like an antique galleon.

X-Bomber is kaiju-adjacent, because alongside its puppetry it employs the familiar tokusatsu technique of stunt actors in costumes playing the outsized characters. The three lead heroes pilot spacecraft that can combine to form a gigantic mecha, Big Dai X, which is portrayed across the series by an actor smashing up miniature landscapes and vehicles, while the Imperial Master who supervises the villains and makes a full appearance in the final episode is also a stuntman in costume being attacked by a puppet.

X-Bomber was exported to the UK, dubbed and broadcast as Star Fleet (1982-83). It was shown in a prime 10am slot on Saturdays between imported episodes of Sesame Street (1969-present) and homegrown children’s magazine programme The Saturday Show (1982-85). Its impact can be judged by the fact that Brian May and Eddie Van Halen released a (commercially unsuccessful) hard rock cover of the theme tune composed by Paul Bliss, largely for the amusement of May’s four-year-old son who was a fan of the show. At a time and in a country short of exposure to kaiju eiga, Star Fleet introduced the British children of the 1980s to the larger-than-life side of Japanese visual fantasy. And friends, I know: I was one of those children.