Saturday Monster Matinee:
「地球攻撃命令 ゴジラ対ガイガン」
Godzilla vs. Gigan (1972)
by Weltraumbesty / KRP, 6th of June 2015
///
Additional Notes (18th June 2026): Originally published at Exploderbutton.com / EXB (rip) at the date indicated. Insubstantially edited for this republication, with a section covering the Toho Visual Entertainment blu-ray edition redacted. Images are now sourced from the 1987 Toho Videodisc laserdisc edition of the film, because fuck, man, why not? I feel like I was probably a little too hard on Gigan here, without really trying to be - the film has a lot of loose threads to pick at if one is so inclined, but so do literally all of the Godzilla films beyond a certain point. Despite whatever the tone below may suggest, I've watched Gigan dozens of times since this review first went live a decade-plus ago, preserved a variety of old analog video copies, etc. It remains a favorite, even if I tend to complain about it as much as I ever have.
///
Aliens in orange leisure suits plot world conquest from a theme park, and it’s up to a comic artist and his friends (with an assist from Japan’s preeminent monster star) to stop them in Earth Attack Order: Godzilla vs. Gigan, the twelfth entry in Toho Co.’s iconic monster franchise. A conceptual return to form after the previous year’s bizarre and experimental Godzilla vs. Hedorah, Gigan recalls the multi-monster throw-downs that had defined the series in the middle sixties, if only superficially so. From the ostentatious title (best spoken with multiple! exclamation!! points!!!) and ad slicks to the music (something of a greatest hits of Ifukube library tracks) to the monster roster itself (including frequent series villain and kaiju-for-hire King Ghidorah) the film is calculated to evoke Godzilla’s recent, and more profitable, past, but beneath all that affected pomp lies one of the monster’s shabbiest outings. With dwindling attendance figures driving the series to the lower depths of under-production Gigan was left to build an ambitious tokusatsu epic from slim pickings indeed — it’s a wonder that any of it works at all.
Penned by longtime series scribe Shinichi Sekizawa (Ghidrah the Three-Headed Monster) from a story by Takeshi Kimura (The H-Man), Godzilla vs. Gigan offers an amusing pop art twist on the rote alien invasion archetype that had dominated Toho’s special effects productions from 1957’s The Mysterians onward. Kimura’s involvement assures at least a touch of substantive meandering by way of the invaders' backstory (their world was driven to ruin by the unchecked industrial ambitions of its dominant life forms, leaving the survivors to seek a more hospitable world), but the desperate man-sized cockroaches of Nebula Space Hunter M are mostly a silly bunch. After assuming human identities and amassing a hip collection of belligerently colorful formal wear, the M-aliens begin their quest for world domination (or as they refer to it, “perfect peace”) in a truly unusual fashion — by building a monster-themed amusement park with a monumental Godzilla Tower as its main attraction. The plan from there is simple: Destroy Tokyo with a pair of computer-controlled space monsters in a bid to lure Godzilla from his digs on Monster Island to the M-aliens’ fun-land base of operations, then destroy the King of the Monsters with the space lasers mounted in the head of his own (presumably unlicensed1) likeness. What could possibly go wrong?
Giving the M-aliens a run for their money in the silliness department are the human cast — a down-on-his-luck comic artist named Gengo (non-star Hiroshi Ishikawa in his next-to-last film appearance), his martial artist girlfriend Tomoko (Bohachi Bushido's Yuriko Hishimi), and a pair of hippies hunting for a kidnapped electronics expert (career character player Kunio Murai, Nobunaga Concerto). Using balloons, exploding cartoon murals, an affinity for yellow fruits and vegetables and some considerable narrative gymnastics to their great advantage, Gengo and his cohorts become just the sort of oddball anti-invasion force the ill-fated M-aliens deserve. For his part underrated director Jun Fukuda (Secret of the Telegian, Ironfinger) keeps the human action moving at a brisk enough clip, assuring that there are usually enough parts in motion at any given point in the proceedings to keep it all from feeling dull. The pop art-inflected production design doesn’t hurt either. Veteran art director Yoshifumi Honda (Throne of Blood) uses hefty doses of color to keep the palpable cheapness of it all from becoming too obvious or distracting, and generally with good results — the following year’s Godzilla vs. Megalon would have him following the same basic ethos, and with like success.
With the exception of the aforementioned ecological angle and some Invasion of Astro-Monster-derived commentary on the perils of technology (the computer-fixated M-aliens are ultimately undone by their inflexible reliance on them) Godzilla vs. Gigan is played mostly for kicks, and provided the series with what was up to that point its least complicated perspective on Godzilla as hero. Though Yoshimitsu Banno had presented the character in stark heroic terms the year before he had done so within the context of a film with far loftier substantive ambitions (so had Ishiro Honda for that matter, in 1969’s All Monsters Attack). Gigan's approach is utterly simplistic by contrast, reducing the whole concept to its germinal essence of Good Monsters against Bad Monsters, a trend that would — for better or worse — continue through 1974’s Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla. Still, rarely has Godzilla felt more dissociated from his past than he does here, rising to thwart an alien invasion out of heroic necessity and speaking to his mortal enemy buddy Anguirus (killer of the living!) via stylized speech bubbles. This Godzilla is pure kid’s stuff, theme song and all.
Not that any of this is an inherently bad thing, but Gigan's climactic kaiju brawl is just too protracted and sluggish to rate with the better among the ’70s films. With too little money and too little time on their side accomplished SPFX director Teruyoshi Nakano (Submersion of Japan) and his associates did their best by the considerable number of effects cuts Gigan demanded of them, but the quality of the work is inconsistent to say the least and is hampered further by an over-reliance on footage culled from prior series outings. An early appearance by Anguirus in Sagami Bay is limited to a few fresh takes on a tiny and unconvincing effects stage, a new process shot of troops running back and forth, and a heap of alienated military assault footage from War of the Gargantuas, Destroy All Monsters and so on. The final four-way monster brawl doesn’t fare much better, and feels at least a reel too long for its torpid pacing and frequent stock footage interruptions (minutes worth of material is replayed from Ghidrah the Three Headed Monster and Invasion of Astro-Monster). The new King Ghidorah looks impressive enough, but must have proven too difficult to operate effectively under the various constraints of the production — he spends the majority of the fight watching quietly from the sidelines while Godzilla falls increasingly to pieces. The latter suit appears for its fourth (and final) time in as many films here, and looks all the worse for wear after its demanding turn in 1971’s Godzilla vs. Hedorah.
If there’s a special effects highlight to be gleaned from Godzilla vs. Gigan it’s Gigan itself, a truly bizarre kaiju creation and one of my favorite among Toho’s menagerie. Nakano and company manage to afford the beast a few minutes of old-school city-stomping action, and despite the modest size of the effects stages it all plays quite well. Late SPFX photographer Motoyoshi Tomioka (King Kong Escapes) keeps shots tight for the most part, making good use of a sparse few blocks of miniatures before pulling back to watch it all burn. Though sequence is still set back by its dependence on recycled footage (in this film it’s positively unavoidable) the original material stands as a fine slice of budget-conscious tokusatsu action all the same.
I have a lot of fond memories of watching Godzilla vs. Gigan as a child, back when it was still running in syndication in its G-rated Cinema Shares Int. theatrical version Godzilla on Monster Island, and even if the film holds up rather poorer for me these days a fondness for it remains. The human drama is goofy fun, the aliens bizarrely fashionable, and Gigan is still one hell of a thing. This is yet another of those films that I like a good deal more than I probably should, and despite any earlier bellyaching I find myself revisiting it more often than I care to admit.
1 It’s not hard to imagine an alternate Universe in which the world is saved from the M-aliens not by the intervention of giant monsters, but by Toho’s legal department. They could foil the evil scheme through the sheer force of copyright litigation alone.
///
~ Weltraumbesty / KRP
this article is a piece of weltraumbesty prehistory. for more from this forgotten era visit the index and search for the keyword "prehistory"
if you enjoyed this shit then please consider throwing us a buck or two. we wander the wastes of intergalactic space in search of a new home, free from war and traffic accidents, and are powered by coffee alone. thank you.
© Weltraumbesty