Weirdhouse Cinema: Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1974)

This is an I Heart Podcast. Guaranteed human. No gloss, no filter. Just stories, spoken without fear. A person who is not generous cannot be an artist. The world will be at peace only when it is ruled by poets and philosophers. Listen to my weekly podcast, the Pooja Bhachon on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Come for the honesty, stay for the fire. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb. And this is Joe McCormick. And we're back with our fourth Godzilla movie here on Weird House Cinema. And man, it's an entry that introduces one of the king of monsters' greatest rivals, Mechagodzilla, who also happens to be one of the most iconic mechs of all time. I think it's pretty safe to say. Yes, we're talking about 1974's Godzilla versus Mechagodzilla. What technically constitutes a mech? What makes a mech different than a robot? Just size? Is it, if it's a big enough robot, is it a mech? Well, we're probably going to summon some, some pedantic corrections here, which we invite from Mech fans. My understanding, which might be flawed, is that a robot is entirely like off on its own, doing its own thing, obeying its programming. Whereas a mech, I think more typically has someone inside it controlling it, or you might apply some sort of like a remote control scenario. I realize that with Mechagodzilla, the lines are maybe a little blurred here. By some people's definition, Mechagodzilla might not be a pure mech, but I also don't think Mechagodzilla is a pure robot. By this distinction, Robot Jocks is actually, despite the title, about mechs. I think so, yeah. I think Robot Jocks is definitely mechs. Mechs, and maybe Tex-mechs, right? Cause there is some, There is a character named Tex, that's what it is. Whereas, yeah, Mechagodzilla, I don't know. At the end of the day though, Mechagodzilla is just Mechagodzilla. It is what it is. It towers over so many things. We just have to respect the Mechagee here. But certainly, folks out there, if you have, cause people have had obviously decades to argue about this, if you have thoughts on what exactly Mechagodzilla is, and how we should classify it, well, write it. Now, one quick note that's unrelated to the content of today's episode. I just had to say something about it, because I've noticed this since we're on video, we don't coordinate ahead of time about what we're wearing. So the last two Weird House cinemas, I think we ended up wearing black t-shirts. We're not doing that on purpose. We're not color coordinating. But I feel like Rob, this is an opportunity, at least for the people watching on video, what's on your t-shirt? Show it off. Oh, it's one of my many bar kindred shirts here. My favorite vegan restaurant slash bar in San Diego. Oh, nice. I've just got a hammer, hammer horror t-shirt. Oh, nice, nice. Yeah, not doing that on purpose, but I guess maybe we both have a lot of black t-shirts that come out for the movie days. A lot of black t-shirts, yeah. Gonna try and spice it up and get some colored t-shirts, but a lot of black t-shirts in the drawer. So Godzilla versus Mechagodzilla is, I think one of the most fun Godzilla movies of the early films. When I first saw this, I did expect a giant robot version of Godzilla shooting missiles out of his fingers. So like you get what you pay for in that regard. But I did not expect many other things about this film. I did not expect, for example, the scene where a hitman from outer space in a Phantom of the Opera gorilla mask is ooke-ooking while he throws folding chairs at our hero on a boat. This is to say, there is much more than just a Mechagodzilla to this Mechagodzilla movie. Absolutely, yeah. If you think that it's just gonna be limited to Godzilla fighting a mechanical version of himself, don't worry, there's more to it. But if you were opposed to the idea of a mechanical Godzilla, this movie's probably not for you because it is still very much the central attraction. So by 1974, we're a good ways into the Godzilla series. Yeah, we're almost, I would say, terminally into the franchise at this point. As we'll discuss, there were concerns about where we were with the franchise. This was the 14th Godzilla film and the penultimate film of the Much Love Shoah era that of course went 54 through 75. So as you might imagine, a number of the elements involved in today's film were not new to the franchise. A lot of ideas have been deployed over the years. Taking many different things off of the shelf and combining them in new ways. Exactly, like alien invasion threat that had been used before, what I think, 64 is Ghidorah, the three-headed monster, the fifth film in the franchise. Likewise, the idea of a divine kaiju, like a giant monster as deity that had already been deployed in 64's Mothra versus Godzilla, the fourth film, which we previously covered on Weird House Cinema. Though different in the sense that in Mothra versus Godzilla, Godzilla was still kind of bad and he was fighting the divine kaiju. So Mothra is the divine kaiju that has to be summoned by rituals, is kind of a good God who must defend the people against the ravages of Godzilla. By this movie, Godzilla is firmly a good guy. Absolutely, and had been for a while as the dialogue will refer to. Let's see, we also had, certainly had kaiju triple threat battles before. So Ghidorah and its follow-up, 65's Invasion of the Astro Monster, both of these film feature team-ups and multi-monster battles, battle royals, if you will. And then, yeah, Godzilla as a good guy, this originated in Ghidorah, so this had been in play for a while. And then in terms of just monster battles at all, this had been happening since the second film, 55's Godzilla Rates Again. Yeah. But as the title suggests, Godzilla versus the Bank of Godzilla is the first film with a robotic monster villain taking the obvious next step in the franchise's evolution, while also cashing in on the growing mech and giant robot craze in Japan at the time. However, it's worth pointing out that, we certainly had giant robot films before. Godzilla, original Godzilla director, Isher Honda's 1957 film, The Mysterians, is a great early example of a giant robot in a Japanese film. Right, but that's not a Godzilla movie. That's just a different Honda movie that's got this giant robot. Yeah. Right. Now, technically, Godzilla teamed up with a robot, Jet Jaguar, in the 1973 film, Godzilla versus Megalon. And then, some of you might be aware of Mechanikong, the mechanical, like essentially, what mech of Godzilla is to Godzilla. Mech of Mechanikong is to King Kong. And Mechanikong actually predates mech of Godzilla. It appeared on the King Kong show, a TV series that ran 66 through 67 in Japan, and appears in the film, King Kong Escapes from 67. Sometimes you just find out there was a King Kong TV show. Never even imagined such a thing. Yeah. And sadly though, as far as I'm aware, maybe this happened on some television series, and I'm not aware of it. Godzilla fans chime in, but I don't think we've ever had a proper tag team of King Kong and Godzilla versus Mechanikong and Mech of Godzilla. If it has happened, please alert me to it so that I can seek it out immediately. That would be interesting. Also, I think this is the first Godzilla film to involve Interpol. Jet. Generally, I would say giant monsters trying to destroy whole cities is not on their radar, but in this one it is. What is going on with Interpol in this movie? Interpol is imagined as a cross between, between like MI6 from the James Bond movies and a ninja secret society. Yeah. I think a part of it comes down to this, and we'll discuss this more as we proceed. Any good giant monster film has to be some sort of film when the giant monsters aren't on screen. It has to decide. And this film has decided that it is going to be at least a slightly groovy spy slash supercrime slash international mystery sort of a film. Yeah. Oh, and it does a pretty good job with that. I didn't make the supercrime connection, but you're right, the Interpol agent who is revealed later in the film would fit right in in Mario Bava's Danger Diabolic. Oh, absolutely. Wouldn't he, like, he looks like a character from that movie. Yeah, he just wandered in and is detached for a good portion of the film. Like, all right, what's he going to do? Is he going to jump in and do something? Which side is the on? Yeah. So, yeah, as we've been saying, Godzilla versus Mechagodzilla is a film with a lot going on in it. It jumps around, has a little something for everyone, blistering kaiju battles, funky humanoid aliens, and vital to actually watching any giant monster movie from beginning to end. It has a decent human plot. When the monsters are not on screen, you're not just longing for the monsters to come back. It's kind of juggling a few too many characters, I think. But it is, the human plot is not bad. Yeah, yeah. Especially once the planet of the apes aliens show up and they reveal the gorilla masks. That's pretty solid. Yeah, so I've long been a Mechagodzilla admirer from afar, but I didn't actually get around to watching this one for the first time till last year. I watched it with my kiddo and we watched it. I believe that one in the English dub version. And then for this episode, I rewatched the film with the original Japanese language track and subtitle. So I've had it both ways now. And at some point, my kiddo and I are gonna follow up with 75's terror of Mechagodzilla. Excellent. I actually, I have not seen that one, so. Honda comes out of retirement to direct that one. So, you know, end of the Showa era. So it's an important one. I'm licking my chops. But I thought it might be good quickly to situate Godzilla versus Mechagodzilla a bit in the series history. So I wanna acknowledge a source before going forward for a lot of the following. My knowledge comes from the articles about the relevant films by the journalist and author Steve Rifle that are included in the Godzilla Showa era films collection from Criterion. So that collection comes with a big, an excellent booklet actually. It's got like an overall article about the series and then little entries on each movie. Yeah, I'll come back to that release here in a minute. But Steve Rifle has written multiple books about the Godzilla franchise. So if you wanna dive deep, have some, maybe some vacation reading about Godzilla, this is the author you should pick up. So the immediate previous Godzilla film, Godzilla versus Megalon from 1973 is considered by a lot of people to be a real low point in the series. It was made on an extremely limited budget. It was shot in just a few weeks and it relied heavily on recycled footage from previous Godzilla films. At the same time, I think the stakes might have felt pretty low to the studio because this is another one of the later Godzilla movies targeted specifically at children. You might even say little children, kind of similar to All Monsters Attack from 1969, which we've already talked about in a dedicated episode. Gone entirely is the dark tone of movies like the original 54 Godzilla. And though there are plot elements in Godzilla versus Megalon about nuclear testing, it seems that the real presence or feeling of the themes like environmental destruction or nuclear, the dangers of nuclear war, those are not really felt in the movie. It's just kind of a, it's a plot element, it doesn't really feel like it means anything. Yeah, your better Godzilla films are also to some degree message films. I'm not gonna say that today's film really has message, but yeah, some of the ones that we've talked about before, half. So by this point in the series, when you get to the ones in the later 60s and early 70s that are aimed at kids, of course, Godzilla is a friendly protector of humanity. And there's a lot of cute stuff in these movies, like the baby Godzilla Manila, which my daughter loves, and a lot of slapstick comedy for the kids. The fight scenes have more of a goofy, goofy slapstick fight kind of feeling. And this was part of a trend. So by the 1970s, Toho had seen diminishing ticket sales for Godzilla releases, and this was widely chalked up to competition from television. So they compensated by cutting production budgets, they're trying to spend as little as possible making these movies. And another way you could look at it is, they were trying to react to the rise of television and the loss of interest in theatrical movies by making the movies more like the TV shows that they thought they were losing out to. TV shows such as Ultraman, which we've talked about on the show before. This is about humanoid alien warriors in robotic-looking suits that can enlarge their bodies to kaiju size to fight against attacking monsters. And if you grew up more in our era of childhood, I think you could argue that shows like the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers were a sort of spiritual successor to a subgenre that originally began with Ultraman and things like that. Absolutely, and if you look at, and I haven't watched many of these shows in their entirety, but I've seen a lot of clips, and the Tokusatsu TV series that were really jumping out in the 70s, like they were really going all out. So you can understand how, like why would you go see a Godzilla movie at the theater when you could see all this wild action on television? And then perhaps diminishing returns as the cinematic treatment is just trying to match the TV treatment. So again, why go to the theater to see that? It's all on my screen at home. Yeah, exactly. So it feels like, I mean, like we weren't sitting in the room with these people, so we don't know, but it kind of feels like Godzilla versus Megalon, the movie before this, may have been born out of a question like, how can we get an Ultraman in a Godzilla movie and not spend any money on it? So in this movie, you get the giant robot warrior, Jet Jaguar, who has to fight to protect Earth from a huge beetle named Megalon. This beetle has drills for hands, Godzilla gets pulled into the fight too, but his presence in this movie is almost an afterthought. Like it is still a Godzilla movie, so I guess we got to toss him in there, but it's very much a Jet Jaguar movie. Yeah, kind of a Poochy energy there, I guess. I've seen this one, but it was on Amos T3K years ago. Yeah, what is Jet Jaguar doing now? So in this movie, during the fight scenes, I was reading about this recently, like the monsters do a lot of silly stuff. They repeatedly break the fourth wall, and they do poses and even reaction shots for the camera. So it's a little bit like Godzilla becomes Jim from the office. And Megalon had a poor domestic box office performance, but ironically did pretty well overseas. So for a lot of fans outside of Japan, Godzilla versus Megalon was the first Godzilla film they actually got to see in theaters. So that's all the background. One year after that comes Mechagodzilla. The inspiration for this movie is allegedly that producer Tomoyuki Tanaka spent some time on the island of Okinawa the year before and started thinking that it would be an appealing setting for a movie. A major element in the story is this legend of a magical sentinel named King, they call him King Caesar in the movie, or King Shiza, which is prophesied to one day wake from its ages of slumber and protect the island of Okinawa. This is apparently based on a real creature of Okinawan folklore called the Shiza, which is a lion headed dog that plays a role as a protector as well. That's right, like this is basically based on the lion dog of mainland China. And it goes way back in Okinawan sculpture and mythology. So there are lots of examples of these things. If you travel to Okinawa and you see some of the artifacts. Though I will say the design of King Caesar, the giant monster feels a little bit less lion dog to me. You can still see elements of that, but it's bipedal and the face feels very bat like. I get strong bat energy from King Caesar. Strong bat energy, a little bit like almost like a bat werewolf. Yes, bat werewolf. That's exactly. Yeah, kind of like you've watched the first ever episode of Batman the Animated series. Oh, with Nambat. Yeah, yeah, kind of like Nambat, except without wings. Nambat is great. But also with these, I mean, like I'm not saying it's a devoid of the lion dog design. There are flourishes of that in there too. Like you can recognize it, but. But the great thing is, we'll get into later, like King Shiza really stands out. Like if there was no mecha godzilla in this film, I'm not saying it would be as great, but it's still a pretty interesting foe slash partner for Godzilla in that this creature just looks so much different. And you know, a nice furry kaiju. So why are Godzilla and his new ally, King Caesar, fighting a robot this time? Seems like it's the same reason that the previous movie was all about an Ultraman copycat, Jaguar. Robots and cyborgs were all the rage in Japanese media at the time. It's like the public had had a sort of botborg fever. And so they're feeding that fever. We got to get a robot or a cyborg in there. And actually in this movie, they called mecha godzilla both. They emphasize actually mecha godzilla is a cyborg. So the criterion article points out in particular, the success of giant robot TV shows in the 60s and 70s like Super Robot Red Baron, another one called Super Robot Mock Baron, one called Iron King and one called Jumborg Ace. And the article also notes several interesting things contributing to the design of mecha godzilla. One is effects director, Teri Ushinakano, created the original design by taking a Godzilla toy. So this was supposed to be Godzilla. You know, the toy was made out of tin and then beating it with a hammer to deform the surfaces of it. It doesn't say this in the article, but I'm imagining this means that it was stripped of its paint and outer texture that gave it the Godzilla appearance. So this would leave it with a more bare metal appearance and also probably some more flattened and angled surfaces like we get with mecha godzilla. Apparently the effects team also studied the movements of soldiers in historical European plate armor as a basis for mecha godzilla's movement. That's interesting. So a lot of fans think of Godzilla versus Megalon as one of the low points of the series. Godzilla versus mecha godzilla, it's not like an absolute fan favorite, but it's pretty well liked. It was considered a partial return to form after the more explicitly infantile godzillas of previous years. I'm not saying this is like, you know, that it's like a super mature film, but it's not as explicitly aimed at children. It is more of an adult plotline. And apparently they redid Godzilla's head design to make him a little less goofy looking and give him more of a fight and face. And mecha godzilla after this movie proved enduringly popular, like fans wanted mecha godzilla to come back. So mecha shows up in many subsequent properties. Yeah, it comes back in the next film, terror of mecha godzilla. And then later on we get new versions of mecha godzilla. Like I think this movie effectively shakes things up in a number of ways. But at the end of the day, the big thing that it does is it introduces a character that, you know, I'm not saying equals Godzilla, but almost has like its own energy unto itself. Like there's something about mecha godzilla. Like it feels like some sort of a potent symbol for, I don't know, the complete mechanization of your hopes and dreams and do a new terrifying form. And oh, and then I should also add just the monster battles in this one, I think sizzle really nicely. There are a lot of fireworks, literally. Yeah, very good. And gore, this one has gore, more gore than I expected. There's a horrible scene where Angiris really gets mangled and you see all this like gore coming out of its broken jaws. There are scenes where Godzilla gets wounded in the throat and there's jets of arterial blood spraying out of Godzilla's neck. There are also, there's also weird alien gore where the aliens get wounded and they're squirting some kind of black fluid out of their, you know, throats. More gore than I expected from a Godzilla film. This might have to be a topic we'll come back to. Like how much of this is it just being the 70s at this point? You know, what kind of gore was present in the Godzilla movies that came right before this? And how much of this is a reaction to gore that was existing in competing media, like in the Ultraman movies and TV shows or in the Gamma movies, which also have their own alien goopy blood going on. I mean, I'm not saying this is a highly gore film. It's not, it just feels gore for what I'm used to thinking about with Godzilla. Yeah, yeah. All right. I don't really have an elevator pitch for this one because the title kind of says it all. Like that kind of speaks to the, to how iconic the idea of mecha-Godzilla is versus Godzilla. You know, it's like Godzilla versus the inorganic opposite evil version of itself. I could give a pitch that's different than the title and that is come see the sights of the amazing island of Okinawa. Yeah, yeah. It's almost like an Okinawa tourist advertisement. It really is. They shot there and it looks gorgeous. I have not been myself yet. All right. If you would like to see mecha-Godzilla, well, you can get this one in a number of places, obviously it is a Godzilla movie, but we once more want to highlight that criterion collection book set. Godzilla, the Showa era films 1954 through 1975. It's an amazing hardback, beautifully illustrated book with no fewer than 15 Godzilla films on Blu-ray. It's a little bit pricey if you get it full price, but there are frequent sales, especially at criterion channel. I mean, the criterion collection website for this. Totally worth it for Godzilla fans. This is an investment in your future. But if you're looking to stream it, criterion channel currently offers this among many other Godzilla films. No gloss, no filter, just stories, spoken without fear. Addiction is a disease and it should be looked upon as any other disease. How did you cope with a reckless father like me? Join me, Pooja Bhatt, as I sit down every week with directors, actors, musicians, technicians, and beyond. You don't need to work with the biggest people and the biggest sound to have great music. I have gone through the sub-city, Hachakar. Reached the pinnacle, stung by the sneaker, I've fallen down again. Yeah, I am not writing actively anymore and when I see my old work, it kind of saddens me. I'm only as good as the last shot that I gave. Mom's gone, but don't shut the theater. The show must go on. Listen to my weekly podcast, the Pooja Bhatt Show on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Come for the honesty, stay for the fire. All right, let's get into the people behind this one. And I will agree with you once more. We do have, I think, too many human characters. I feel like, why do we have two professors when we could have one? They're like, no. No professor could have an expertise in both physics and archeology. I think they could for a Godzilla film, just to move things along. I don't think we need two professors. I don't think we need the professor's daughter. I don't think we need the second Interpol agent. They look. Yeah. So yeah, a lot of moving pieces here, but at any rate, let's start at the top. The director and one of the writers on this one is Yun Fukuda, who lived 1923 through the year 2000. Japanese director best known for his work for Toho, and especially in the Godzilla franchise, of which he directed five, Ibera Harada-Deep from 66, son of Godzilla 67, Godzilla versus Gigan, 72, Godzilla versus Megalon from 73, and of course today's movie, his last in the franchise. He also directed 77's The War in Space, but otherwise seemed to have directed a lot of espionage and comedy films, kind of like Groovy Spy pictures. And these seem to have been his preference in comparison to the Kaiju movies, films such as the ESP, Espionage, Thrill or Esp in 1974. Oh, okay. ESP and SPY in the same word. Yeah. Like ESP Spy. Yeah, so it's not like he was later trash in the Godzilla films, but I think later on people interviewed him and he was like, I don't, you know, it's like I don't really like to look back on those so much or maybe he had mixed feelings about his time with the Godzilla films, but still appreciated that people still love them. Well, you can feel his love for funky spy subject matter in this movie because it's half of what the movie is, is spy stuff. Yeah. All right, there are three other credited writers. I'll try and roll through them pretty quickly here. We have Masami Fukushima, 1929 through 1976, Japanese sci-fi author who was known as the demon of SF and apparently played a big role in popularizing science fiction in Japan and translated many popular names such as Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clark, so forth into Japanese. And he also wrote various works of short fiction. Shinichi Sekizawa, 1920 through 1992, a frequent Godzilla scribe beginning with 62's King Kong versus Godzilla. And this author's Godzilla credit stretch from there to 1989's Godzilla versus Bio Lante, story credit there. And then we have Hiroyasu Yamaora, born 1938, Japanese screenwriter who worked on various sci-fi and Kaju projects with this being the biggest. All right, now let's get into, we have factions at play here. Let's start with the humans. We have basically our star is our human star is Masahaki Daimon playing the character Kasuke Shimuzu. He was born 1949, Japanese actor best known for this film, but his credits also include 73's Lady Snowblood, that's a cult favorite Lady Samurai movie, and the TV series Ultraman 80. This guy does a fine job, I don't wanna be mean here, but he kind of mugs like a grumpy toddler the entire film and is kind of just sort of your cookie cutter good guy. I don't know, he bored me a little bit. He is surprisingly action oriented given that his character is not supposed to be some kind of secret agent or whatever, but and yet he is always like bristling for a fight and ready to tackle the bad guys. So he comes off like he's supposed to be just a tough guy. He's a tough, tough guy. And when he's actually in action, it is entertaining. I really like the sort of spy fisticuffs and crime sequences. Yeah, and so when it's action oriented, yeah, he's great, but the rest of the time there's a lot of him sort of like reacting to things and I just don't get a strong sense of reaction from this guy. You can, he feels like the kind of character who makes a tough frowny face when he's getting his picture taken. Yeah. And people are like, come on, you can smile. Yeah. And it's tough because we have some other character actors in this film that are far more charismatic. Yeah. This character in the movie does have a brother who is less grim than Keisuke. Yeah, he has a, his more handsome brother is the character Masahiko Shimuzu played by Kazuya Aoyama born 1951. Japanese pop musician turned actor, turned seaweed corporate CEO, apparently as a family business. So he didn't actually have that many acting credits. I think he was just getting out there and exploring his creative side before stepping up and being the seaweed corporate overlord that he was born to be. Does he specialize in a particular kind of seaweed or is it like a combo or nori? I didn't have the fortitude to really research the business that much. I was just like, oh, okay, seaweed. All right, good going. It's an important business. It is. I love some seaweed products. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So yeah, that's where the true calling was. He's out there doing good work. Supply us with our precious MSG. Yes. Okay, we also, if you've seen enough Godzilla movies, you might be asking, well, where's our photojournalist? Well, we have an archeologist who is sometimes mistaken for a photojournalist and basically fills the same character profile. Yeah. Yeah, this is the character Seko Kanagosuku played by Raiko Tajima. And she was born in 1949. Japanese actress who, I think she did other live action acting work, but she also did a great deal of voice work in anime. So her other credits include, and this is voice work, I believe, 79's The Roses of Versailles. All right, now let's get into some people that are maybe a little more recognizable and also for my money anyway, more charismatic and entertaining on the screen. The first of two professors, we have Professor Miyaiyajima. He's a physicist and he was played by Akihiko Hirata with 1927 through 1984. Hirata was a Godzilla and Toho veteran at this point. Having appeared in the original 1954 Godzilla film, he's the guy with the eye patch in that. He's the important scientist in the first one who comes up with the oxygen bomb who sacrifices himself. Yes, exactly. So key role in that. But after that, he was in various other related films. He was in 56's Rodin, he was in The Mysterians, 61's Mothra, 62's King Kong versus Godzilla, 63's Atragon, which we've watched on the show, 64's Ghidorah, the three headed monster, Ibera, the horror of the deep, let's see, Son of Godzilla. And then he's also in the follow up to this film, Terror of Mechagodzilla, which would prove his last Godzilla film before his death in 84. So he's a great presence in this film. His character has one of the most hilarious Chekhov guns in movie history. I can't wait to talk about that. He does, he does. All right, there is another professor. We also have Professor Wagura. He's an archeologist, a very esteemed archeologist played by Hiroshi Kozumi. He was also a Godzilla and Toho veteran at this point. In fact, he played professors in both 64's Mothra versus Godzilla and Ghidorah, the three headed monster. This character is absolutely useless in a fight. Yes. All right, but now we're getting to a really cool character and actor here. We have, let's see, I don't wanna spoil who he is. We'll just say he's the guy with sunglasses at this point. I'm gonna, in our early version of the plot summary, I'm gonna be calling him the Rock and Roll Spy. Yeah, Rock and Roll Spy here is played by Shin Kashida, born in 1939, died in 1982. He just oozes cool for much of the film and walks a nice morally ambiguous line, where again, we're asking ourselves, is he a hero, is he a villain, is he with the aliens, is he with the humans, when's he gonna do something? I can't wait. Is he gonna keep wearing those sunglasses no matter how dark the environment is? Going into actual cave environment. Cave. Still wearing shades. In an unlit cave with aviators on. That's how cool he is. Yeah, he's not gonna take those off. So, I mean, that must be some hangover he's playing with. Well, you might think he's a vampire and based on some of his other credits, you might be right. Very distinctive looking character actor here. They earned him a place, an endearing place in Japanese cinema and TV. Coming off stage work, he had a stage background. Very well regarded actor whose short career leaves us wondering like, what else, where else we might have seen him if he had lived longer? We've actually covered a Kashida film before because he played one of the masters of death in 1980's Shogun Assassin. So, I believe he was the one with the iron fist weapon. They each had like a signature weapon that they used. Were these the guys with the big straw hats that come down way over their heads and kind of swoop out? Exactly, yeah. These were in the original 1972 Lone Wolf and Cub Baby Cart at the River Styx, which was one of the two films incorporated into Shogun Assassin. These are the Hidari brothers. And so, yeah, he's one of the Hidari brothers that ended up being called masters of death and of course, end up inspiring the three storms in Big Trouble and Little China. He also appeared in 72's Lone Wolf and Cub Baby Cart in Peril in a different role. And he appears in two films in the 1970's Toho Dracula trilogy, 71's Lake of Dracula and 74's Evil of Dracula. I believe he plays the vampire in both of them. These have been on my list for a while, but I haven't checked one out. But just visually, I would say that Kashida makes for a great Dracula or a great vampire. Yeah, I'm looking at the screenshots you got here. I wanna see it now. Yeah, and his other credits include Lady Snowblood II, Love Song of Vengeance from 74, among other pictures. So yeah, really cool actor. Cool. All right, let's talk briefly about the alien faction here. There is an alien supreme leader by the name of Kurunuma. And he is played by Goro Mutsumi, who lived 1934 through 2021. Japanese actor whose other credits include 66's War of the Gargantua's, 1970's Stray Cat Rock, delinquent girl boss, said to be a fun film. And he also pops up in Loan Wolf and Cub, 1974's White Heaven in Hell. He's also in the war in space and returned in terror of Mechagodzilla, though I think playing a different role. This guy's pretty terrific. Plays the leader of the alien invasion from Black Hole Planet III, like a mob boss with a cigar or like a, and at times also like a Bond villain, you know. Gloting and boasting about his plans. The aliens here feel like a mafia, which is an interesting choice. Yeah, and that's why Interpol was involved, I guess. Like the alien invasion, yes, they have a giant robot to destroy whole cities and take out our natural kaiju protection system. But they are, yeah, they're essentially a criminal organization that has to be rooted out at that level. I mean, it's true, they could not have built the base that they did without doing some smuggling. And that's Interpol's turf. Yeah, cause this was discussed, they built it in Mount Fuji, which is fascinating to think about. Did they, I thought it was in Okinawa. Cause don't we see, don't we see the characters like running out of the base onto the beach in Okinawa? Hmm, let me try. Oh man. No matter what the answer to this question, I would say there is definitely some geographic contraction taking place in the film. We do see Godzilla, I think, get launched out of Mount Fuji at some point. Yeah, I believe I'm right on this. I think Mecha Godzilla appears from Mount Fuji. Yeah. But disguised, of course, as Godzilla as we'll discuss. Yeah, yeah. But it gets complicated too, because there's the black mountain that is kind of like the black Mount Fuji that is a symbol in the clouds of the coming, you know, prophesized monster invasion. So there's some interesting, maybe not even fully formed Mount Fuji iconography going on in this movie. Yes, there is a vision of black clouds above the white clouds, and that looks like Mount Fuji. You're correct that Godzilla is, well, Mecha Godzilla disguised as Godzilla is launched out of Mount Fuji. But then I think, I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong about the base. The base, you're right, might be in a different mountain. I mean, you could be right, but then I don't understand how the characters who like run out of the base are in this, like they get to the base from the cave in Okinawa, remember? Yeah, that's right, that's right. That's right, because there's a, yeah, there's like a hidden button that they push. Okay, so you're correct on the location of the base. It's, I think it is fast and loose with where the places are, yeah. All right, oh, we also have an alien henchman that's pretty fun. Daigo Kusano, who lived 1939 through 1991, plays this alien agent number one. And his credits include a couple of lone wolf and cub movies. This guy has great minion energy, clearly. Okay, we also have the Okinawans. We have two main Okinawans of note. We have this character Nami Kuna-gami. She is the Azumi Royal Family Princess. And she is played by Belebelo Lin for 1951, South Korean-born singer, one of only four film credits. Her song in this film was released as a single by Toho Records, so you can look it up on discogs. Yes, there is a musical number, a full song performed in Godzilla versus Mechagodzilla. Yes. Yeah. And then there's also this old man, he's the Azumi Royal Family High Priest. And I think he's like her grandfather too, right? Yes, that's right. Forrest is referred to as grandfather. And he is played by Masao Imafuku, lived 1921 through 2015. He was only 53 at the time. I don't know that I've seen other films with him, but you get the impression that this is maybe one of those actors who made a lifelong career of playing old men, with some help from makeup. But his other credits include 68's Kill and 71's Demons. I didn't think to notice if his long white beard was stuck on, but it may well have been. Yeah, he's very much that. Yeah, he's a lot of fun, but yeah, it may have been a stuck on beard. Yeah. All right, and then we have the monsters. We have to give credit to the people in the monster suits. They're doing a lot of the heavy lifting here. Playing Godzilla, we have Isaiyō Zushi, age unknown as far as I could tell. Now retired Japanese monster suit performer, here in his only performance as the king of monsters. Original Godzilla actor, hero Nakajima, had retired by this point, I think it's 72. Zushi otherwise worked in Tokusatsu Kajū TV programs. Okay, playing Mechagodzilla, we have Kazunari Mori, also unsure on this actor's age. Japanese suit actor best known for his performance as Mechagodzilla in this film and its follow-up, 75's Terror of Mechagodzilla, otherwise worked in TV. And then playing King Caesar and Ann Gearest, we have Kenichi Kasumi, born 1950. Japanese actor who started out in these various Tokusatsu monster suit pictures, wearing the monster suits on TV shows such as 72's Red Man and Go God Man, possibly Mirror Man as well. But by the late 1970s, he slouched off the chrysalis of the Kajū suit to assume the birthday suit of numerous Japanese erotic and sexploitation pink films, apparently appearing in a variety that included both horror and LGBTQ themed pictures. He also has writing credits on 11 pink films active through about 2016. Hmm, interesting. Yeah. And then finally, the score. This is a score by Masaru Saito, 1928 through 1999, Japanese composer who also worked on numerous Kurosawa films, including Throne of Blood, as well as several Godzilla films. Joe, you might have more to say about this than Mason, you know, the gear and the makings of music more than I do, but there's a particular guitar sound that pops up throughout this picture that I think is fuzz-tone guitar distortion. And I pretty much only know this because of Time of the Apes, a film cut of the Japanese TV series Saru no Gundon that was featured on the MST3K. It has a similar sound, different composer, but it provoked a Joel MST3K riff that says, they've entered the valley of the fuzz-tone guitar. And that always stuck with me, even though I really have never, I don't have a clear idea of what a fuzz-tone guitar is, but I recognize the sound. Well, you're probably right. I can't recall just sitting here the moment in the soundtrack that you're thinking of. So I don't know exactly what you're talking about, but you're probably correct. Fuzz is one of the main distortion effects that people apply to guitars. You know, the standard ones people think of are like overdrive, distortion, and then fuzz. And I think, yeah, they're probably going fuzzy here for a very boxy, squared-off sound. Mm-hmm. Yeah. No gloss, no filter, just stories, spoken without fear. Addiction is a disease, and it should be looked upon as any other disease. How did you cope with a reckless father like me? Join me, Pooja Bhatt, as I sit down every week with directors, actors, musicians, technicians, and beyond. You don't need to work with the biggest people and the biggest sound to have great music. I have gone through the Saab Siddhi Khachakar, reached the pinnacle, stung by the sneaker, I've fallen down again. Yeah. I am not writing actively anymore, and when I see my old work, it kind of saddens me. I'm only as good as the last shot that I gave. Mom's gone, but don't shut the theater. The show must go on. Listen to my weekly podcast, the Pooja Bhatt Show on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Come for the honesty, stay for the fire. All right, so that's a rundown of the people and some of the factions here. Okay. Let's get into the plot of this bad boy. All right. Well, so you get a bit of pre-credit stuff at the beginning of the movie with these cool, like, hollow drums and jazzy horns, and then the action opens with a pan through a dark, spooky landscape with big crags of volcanic rock. Those are sticking up everywhere. And then from a hollow in the earth, we catch a glimpse of something moving. It is a big, thorny plate. And then we see that that plate is the back of a monster that begins to trundle about through the rock field. And then we can see it's Anguirus. This is the Toho Kaiju that is kind of based on the, a type of dinosaur called the Ankylosaurus, right? It's not exactly an Ankylosaurus, but it's pretty close to that. And then if you're thinking about it, just in terms of Kaiju movies, like this is a crawling suit. There's a dude in there on all fours crawling around. Yeah, that's right. We may have mentioned this earlier, but Anguirus was actually the first monster Godzilla ever fought. That's kind of weird to think about. You might think of like King Kong being first, but the first Godzilla movie has no other monster. It's just Godzilla versus human ingenuity versus science. But in the second Godzilla movie, Godzilla raids again from 1955. We meet this guy and they throw down. Anguirus appeared in many other movies of the series. First as an enemy of Godzilla, and then later as an ally. By this point, they're positively chummy, I think. Yeah, you can imagine how this, this basic design was picked for Godzilla's first enemy though, because if you're looking at a bunch of dinosaur, like paleo art representations, you often see a T-Rex, a bipedal dinosaur, battling four legged dinosaurs, often like a triceratops or something. So it made perfect sense. It's like he should battle something on four legs. So Anguirus lumbers over the rocks in the twilight and then lets out this sad whale at the sky. It's almost like he's calling to someone, a long lost friend maybe. Then we see a mountain in the distance with dark ocean waves in the foreground. And suddenly the mountain starts exploding with sparks and lightning. A Godzilla squeal plays, you know that sound. Eh, and then title, Godzilla versus Mechagodzilla. Oh man, this title comes strong too. It's like the text is just coming at you multiple times. And then you got like the two colors, it looks amazing. Then a very abrupt change of tone. Suddenly we're hearing soft whimsical music that's playing while we see credits playing over pretty scenic images of historical buildings and nature scenes in Okinawa. I assume all of the shots here are Okinawa. Yeah, yeah, they filmed in Okinawa. And just a geographic reminder for folks out there, the Okinawan islands are a cluster of islands making up Okinawa prefecture, the southernmost and westernmost prefecture of Japan. It's essentially roughly halfway between the four main islands of Japan and Taiwan. It's a two and a half hour to three hour flight from Tokyo. Yeah, much further south than the rest of the Japanese islands, warmer climate. I think within Japanese culture, the sub-regional culture of Okinawa is considered kind of the island version of Japanese culture. It's like tropical weather and a more relaxed attitude, I think is commonly what's thought there. Yeah, yeah, and of course, there's a lot of other ins and outs concerning the history of Okinawa. Some of which they actually get into in this film, I was rather surprised at. Yes. Talking about historic independence of these islands. Yeah. So after the credits in Okinawa, we are at the ruins of an ancient stone castle overlooking the coast and a priestess dressed in brightly colored ceremonial robes is in the middle of performing a ritual song and dance in front of a crowd. And I hope you like her singing because, again, later in the movie, actually during the climax of the action, everything will stop to give her a three minute long musical number. Which I'm here for. I think that's probably what's lacking with the more recent Godzilla films, especially the US versions. That is true. Yeah, they could use musical numbers where we've got to summon the monster with the sweet song. And like monsters, they don't just want to fight all the time. Sometimes they want a sweet song. Yeah. So visiting the area are the brothers Masahiko and Keisuke. I think at first they're portrayed as being like tourists. They're here taking pictures and watching, you know, visiting the sites. But Keisuke says he is working on an upcoming expo. I don't know what that means, but we do see him later at either a construction or excavation site. So he's some kind of boss of some development. Yeah. And there's probably much to be dissected here about the positioning of a like just sort of a corporate suit as your main hero in a Japanese film from this era. You know, like I'd have to read up on that. But so much has been written about Godzilla films. I'm sure someone has had a feast of this. I'm not sure why Masahiko is here. Maybe he's just visiting his brother while his brother is doing this project. Yeah. I mean, he's younger, maybe a little more happy, go lucky. Maybe he hasn't had to like settle into like a salary man position yet. Yeah. So they're watching the performance when suddenly the priestess stops in the middle of her dance and she gasps and looks into the distance terrified. And then we see inside her head as she has a terrible prophetic vision and she faints. The vision is, of course, a city under attack by a giant monster. The buildings are crumbling. The skyline is in flames. So she collapses and the two brothers go to her side. We learn that her name is Nami and her grandfather, the priest, comes running out of the castle concerned for her. She explains what she saw. She says, a giant monster is going to destroy the city. All who flee will be crushed under its mighty feet. And then later, the brothers are traveling along a coastal highway together by truck and they're talking about what happened. They mentioned that the woman and her grandfather are descendants of the royal house of Azumi who once ruled Okinawa. So they're not just like, you know, performers at a tourist festival. Like they're actually the inheritors of this great royal line. Keisuke drops Masahiko off at a local cave so that he can go spelunking. Masahiko explores the cave and inside he finds a weird metal scale on the floor. The scale shines like the sun. And when Masahiko gets closer to it, we hear a rapid clicking sound, a bit like radio static or like a Geiger counter going nuts. And this is a real cave location. I didn't look up to see where they actually filmed it. If it is indeed an Okinawan cave, but it is a real cave and it looks really nice. Yeah. Nice formations. Meanwhile, Keisuke goes back to this dig site that he's in charge of. Again, I don't know whether this is an excavation or a construction site. Maybe they're digging a foundation. And his workers have uncovered a different cave with a megalithic stone frame around its entrance. Keisuke goes inside and he finds a room with ancient paintings on the wall and there's a shrine holding a statue of a four legged creature. Yeah. And as we'll learn, this is a Shiza. So the find is a sensation. The dig site is flooded by reporters who want pictures of the artifacts. Keisuke is joined by a woman named Seiko, who is an archaeologist specializing in ancient Okinawans. She studies the artwork of the cave and determines that the statue of the four legged beast must be King Caesar, the guardian deity of the Izumi monarchs. And she says that the Izumi House has a legend, quote, long ago, mainlanders came here to Okinawa. They tried to destroy the house of Izumi, but a monster appeared gleaming like copper to save the royals and their subjects. Its name was King Caesar. So she takes the statue away back to her office at the university to learn more about it. And at her office at the university, we see her translating in her office. She says a black mountain will appear in the sky. And when it does, but then meanwhile, so that like trails off. And meanwhile, we see out in the hallway, a creepy guy dressed all in black spying on her. So this movie is going to have multiple different guys dressed in black spying on our main characters. So I'm going to distinguish them first as mustache spy and rock and roll spy. This guy is the mustache spy. He is small framed, nervous looking with a thin mustache, kind of a bony face. He peeks in through her office door while she isn't looking and he's about to slip inside and do something. We don't know what we don't find out because suddenly this spy gets spooked by a noise down the hall and he runs away. And then who should come around the corner? But the other man in black, this is the rock and roll spy who is bigger. He's taller. He's got shaggy hair, aviator sunglasses and a long black coat with a big Dracula collar. Once again, this guy would fit right in in Danger Diabolic. He just he's got that that funky cool 70s look. Absolutely. This guy smokes a lot too. He comes around the corner, smoking a cigarette. Then he swagger's down the hall and then also leans into Seiko's office and we get a close up of a ring on his finger. It has a black rectangle and the camera focuses on it like it's some kind of device. Must be doing something. Next scene is we have some characters on a plane to Tokyo. So on the plane, Keisuke and Seiko happened to bump into each other again. So they met at the dig site. Now they're meeting. They're meeting again by accident. I noticed this is a this is a roomy flight. People are just walking around the aisles look very wide. People are freely changing seats to talk to each other. Yeah, I don't know how much of this is just the this was the golden age of of sort of luxurious flight. Or if this is, of course, a fake airplane where everything's spaced out a bit more for filming purposes, but everybody's smoking too. Or a lot of people are smoking. Yes. So Seiko explains that she has deciphered the mural, but she still doesn't understand what the statue of the lion dog monster represents. So she's taking it to another professor named Wagura for help. And their conversation is interrupted by the rock and roll spy, who's also on the plane. He's sitting on the road directly in front of them, chain smoking cigarettes, and he winds up and says, Oh, you know, Professor Waguura, he's the famous archaeologist, isn't he? And when they ask who he is, he claims to be a freelance reporter. And then he laughs at himself almost like a freelance reporter. That's a good one. So we they're they're talking there. And then suddenly everybody on the plane starts freaking out and pointing out the windows. We look out the windows to and we see a giant black cloud shaped like a pyramid hovering in the air. And Caseke says it looks like a black mount Fuji. Which again, is kind of neat, you know, the Mount Fuji being this, you know, an important symbol of Japan and this cloud being like a black, a black evil inversion of it. And of course, that's the whole dichotomy between Godzilla and Mechagodzilla as well. Right, totally. Oh, and here we get finally the first recitation, full recitation of the words from the mural, because Seiko repeats them. She says, when the black mountain rises above the clouds, a great monster will come forth and destroy the world. But it doesn't stop there. There's a second half. It says, but when the red moon sets and the sun rises in the West, two monsters will join forces to save the world. All right. Then also once they get to Tokyo, Caseke and Seiko share a taxi. And so they're taking a taxi from the airport and then it stops at the professor's house. Seiko gets out because this is where she's going to talk to Professor Wagura. Caseke gets out too and goes up to the door and it turns out he, this professor is Caseke's uncle. So he didn't say anything about it because he was, quote, having a bit of fun. OK. So this is like a theme or running theme. This guy loves to deceive Seiko, the archaeologist. Yeah. Good nature deception. Yes. So they are on, they're now on the quest to understand the statue, but they're not the only ones in research mode. Caseke's brother, Masahiko, is also trying to figure something out. He is visiting the laboratory of the great scientist, Professor Miyajima, to understand the scale of metal that he found in the cave in Okinawa. Professor Miyajima takes a look at this piece of metal and he concludes space titanium. I love this especially because Masahiko then follows up with like you mean titanium that comes from space and the professor just kind of grunts. It might be a very grunty height, but it still made me laugh. Yes. Yeah. Exactly. Titanium from space. In this scene, we get some charming little effect. There are some lasers in the lab and I think they're represented as red ink drawings on the film cells. We also meet Professor Miyajima's adult daughter, Ikuko, who will, of course, be coming along for subsequent monster-related adventures. Because of Weiner. Does not seem like a very necessary or consequential character to me. Suddenly, there is an earthquake and I thought this was funny. The ground starts shaking and of course everybody, the three characters are in the room and everybody grabs hold of something to study themselves, but one of them grabs hold of the microscope. Yeah. Unless that microscope is bolted to the floor, you're not really going to get much out of that. Yeah. There's an earthquake in my kitchen and I grabbed the blender. And we find out that earthquakes keep happening. The news reports, we actually hear them talking on the radio. The news reports say that nobody knows what's causing the earthquakes, but quote, some say a huge creature is burrowing underground. Perfectly reasonable in the Godzilla film universe, because again, this has happened pretty much every year for over-attack game. Yes, exactly. It's seasonal kaiju attack. So that night, Seiko and Keisuke's uncle are studying the inscriptions on the statue while Keisuke is unpacking his things and suddenly there is an attack at the house. The mustache spy breaks in through the window and he's pointing a pistol with the silencer at the two professors. He demands the statue at once. They do not hand it over. So he tries to take it by force, but then Keisuke intervenes. So he bursts into the room. He disarms the spy and they're wrestling on the ground and it's a tough fight. Like the spy at various points is like, you know, he gets it gets him by the neck and it's looking dangerous. Keisuke is really a man of action in this movie. The first time I was watching it, I was trying to remember what his job was. And I didn't remember they said he was running an expo. So I was thinking, is he supposed to be a secret agent or something? Is he like a James Bond type job? But I don't think so. It just seems like for whatever reason, he is completely fearless and an expert at hand to hand combat. Yeah, I think you're right. Yeah. But I will again say that in these moments with this kind of like close knit spy crime action, I feel like it's very enjoyable. I think the movie does a good job with it. And we also at times get some like frantic camera work to sort of heighten the sense of like confusion and action. Yeah, I mentioned this earlier, but in this scene, Keisuke's uncle is absolutely useless. Like they're fighting and the gun is on the floor. Keisuke's fighting for his life and the uncle just stands there watching like, oh, what do I do? Eventually probably the one of the more realistic moments. Oh, maybe, yeah. As opposed to your random salaryman having this like background and action, you know. Yeah. Most of us would probably be paralyzed with fear in this scenario. But try to remember two against one is good odds. If somebody is viciously attacking your friend, go and grab them. Try to help your friend. Yes, do the math, Professor. Do the math. Yeah. So eventually he does pick up the gun, but then he still doesn't intervene to help in any way. The fight comes to a draw and the spy jumps out the window to escape. So Keisuke runs out after the spy into the dark, but cannot find where he went. However, we see the other spy, the rock and roll spy looking on from afar, smoking a cigarette and, yes, wearing the aviator is in the dark. It's pitch black outside. Yeah. Yeah. People he does eventually take them off, but yeah, not for pretty much anything. Yeah. But I thought this is a good little action and intrigue scene. I liked it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's when he runs out into the street trying to look for the assailant, that we get some of that frantic camera work. But that was pretty nice. Yeah. After this, we get the movie's first monster attack. So a volcano erupts. I guess this is supposed to be Mount Fuji. Yeah. I think so. And out comes kind of like a big rock, right? It kind of ejects what seems like a rock. And then the rock turns into Godzilla. Is that right? Yeah. Or yeah, maybe it was Godzilla all along or it hatches Godzilla, but now suddenly, oh, it's Godzilla. So our character is a monster. And it's a monster. And it's a monster. And it's a monster. And suddenly, oh, it's Godzilla. So our characters watch on TV as Godzilla marches across the countryside heading toward the nearest city. Kiskei's uncle is reminded of the prophecy when a black mountain rises over the clouds, a great monster will come to destroy the world. And then Seiko had a line that made me laugh out loud. She said, yes, but I never imagined that monster would be Godzilla. But then what, so that was funny at first. But then when I thought about it, I thought, actually, at this point in the series, what she said makes perfect sense because at this point, Godzilla is not here to destroy. Godzilla is a friendly protector monster. Yeah. And maybe she doesn't even remember the first Godzilla, which I guess was like technically a different Godzilla monster. I think maybe. Yeah. And then we see other reactions. Back on Okinawa, we see the priestess and her grandfather talking about how the only thing that can protect the world from Godzilla is their own monster, King Caesar. But where is he? We don't know. Maybe he'll maybe he'll come forth, but he's not appearing yet. Also, the grandfather seems pretty keen on letting Godzilla stomp the mainlanders. He sees this as fitting revenge for their invasion of Okinawa many centuries ago. Yeah, I was kind of surprised at this, this part of the plot. But yeah, grandfather is like, yes, it's almost like he is praying to Godzilla at this point. Yeah, yeah, crush them. So Godzilla stomps around and smashes some buildings, not as we occasionally see in Kaiju movies by like accidentally walking through them and just haphazardly causing destruction. He is actively malicious. He pounds down hospitals with his fists on purpose and he's making a face like, yeah, take that. And then suddenly a new monster shows up and Geras is here. He tunnels up out of the ground like a graboid and starts fighting Godzilla. And a case guy who just happens to be driving nearby says to himself, and Geras attacking its friend, Godzilla, it doesn't add up. Yeah, these two are friends. These are known friends. Why are they fighting? And this fight is brutal. Godzilla fights like the devil. I feel so bad for poor and Geras. This Godzilla grabs and Geras by the tail, slams it on the ground, takes hold of its snout and then pries the jaws back until blood and gore squirting out of the corners of its mouth. And then at this point, the first time I watched it, I thought, oh, OK, Anguirus is dead here. But then when I watched it the second time, I realized there was a thing I hadn't caught the first time we see Anguirus kind of scuttle away into a hole in the earth. So maybe it's supposed to be that Anguirus survives. That's good. Because both times I watched it, I felt like I just witnessed a murder. Yeah. Godzilla just murders this poor, poor Khajiu who just is like, where is my friend? Why is this thing that looks like my friend killing me? Why has my friend betrayed me? Yeah. But in this fight, there is a clue that all might not be as it seems. One of Godzilla's scales gets knocked off, revealing underneath it a kind of gleaming reflective metal. Keisuke goes to survey the battlefield right after the fight. At one point he says, what a mess. And he finds another piece of space titanium. This time it's a brick of space titanium. And he takes it to Professor Miyajima. In this scene, we get the, I mentioned this earlier, one of the weirdest Chekhov guns in any movie I can think of. It is Professor Miyajima's super magnet tobacco pipe. So he's got a smoke pipe, clearly for tobacco use only, which separates into two pieces. It's got the bowl and the mouthpiece. And the professor explains that when the two pieces are separated, they can be activated to generate an extremely powerful magnetic field that destroys any positive and negative electrodes in the area. And Keisuke says, that's some pipe. That is some pipe. Seems like it has a very specific purpose. I wonder if it will factor into the plot later on. Yeah. I mean, wait, yeah, I just wanted to make a pipe that destroys electrodes. So then we cut to Godzilla breathing fire on a factory. This whole part of the city is in flames. Godzilla is smashing it up good. And our heroes drive out in a car to get a look at Godzilla when suddenly in the middle of the rampage, the earth shakes and a second Godzilla comes up out of the ground, busting up through the roof of a warehouse. And Keisuke says, to Godzilla's what's going on? An interesting little, little fact here is the, the murder Godzilla that we saw, the one that has already lost a scale and there's some suspicious metal underneath. This is apparently, they apparently used like a promotionary Godzilla costume, like one that was worn at events and all. I read this. It's separate from the, the updated Godzilla costume that's used for the true Godzilla. So I think this maybe helps to establish something feeling not quite right about the, the doppelganger. Yes. And I think the director was not happy with this. Like they wanted to be able to, or maybe the effects director, they wanted to have the specially made suits, but budget constraints meant that one of the Godzilla suits had to be the one that they used for public, public events. But I don't, I think it kind of works, you know, I don't know. I feel like it would be unfair if divine forces allowed a perfect Godzilla facsimile to be unleashed on the world. True believers should be able to tell this is not Godzilla. So we're about to get a big reveal. We cut away while this fight is going on to somewhere else, which I originally took to be a spaceship, but we will actually learn it's an underground bunker. We've already had the discussion about where exactly is this unclear. But we meet a new character, a guy who comes off like a mix between Clotu and Tony Soprano. He's in a silver space suit, but no helmet with a big silver smudge on his face. And he is smoking a big fat cigar. So he is like an alien mafia boss who loves stokies and green wine. Where does he, his green wine, I guess, probably comes from elsewhere, assuming he's not drinking absent. But the cigars, are these space cigars? Space tobacco, yeah. Is it space tobacco or is he a big fan of Terran tobacco? And if that is the case, like, what's the big plan? Like, are we still going to grow tobacco or are we only going to grow tobacco? Like, what is the long-term plan for planet Earth here? Unclear, yeah, but they do want conquest. We will learn in just a few minutes. So this guy says, I didn't expect the real Godzilla to show up so soon. The Earthlings must be surprised. So they're not leaving us in suspense about the other Godzilla tremendously long here. But here we get to see the second monster fight of the movie. And this is now Godzilla versus Godzilla. We already know one of them is fake, but they both still look like Godzilla at this point. It's kind of like in Mortal Kombat in those matches where you have to fight yourself. Near match, yeah. But our heroes look on while the two Godzilla's bash each other in the middle of this exploding industrial area. And one Godzilla loses a big chunk of skin revealing a patch of metal underneath. And then Professor Miyajima says, that explains it. The Godzilla from Mount Fuji is a cyborg. They say its body, oh, he says its body is made of space metal. Mechagodzilla would be a fitting name. So they name it in the film. But then, yeah, shortly after, we'll hear the aliens refer to it as Mechagodzilla as well. So I don't know, this just shows you how good the professor is. He's like, Mechagodzilla is the fitting name for it. That's what aliens would call it. Yeah, aliens would call it this as well. Yeah. So the two Godzilla's trade blasts of radiation breath at each other. But the alien boss laughs while watching the fight on the screen. He says, Godzilla, you're a fool if you think you can beat my cyborg. And he presses a button and a Mechagodzilla's fake Godzilla skin burns off revealing the full metal body underneath. So now we see its true form here at the soundtrack changes to a jazzy, drum heavy kind of club number. And here, Rob, do you want to describe the look of Mechagodzilla once it is revealed and it's true and horrifying glory? Oh, yeah. I mean, Mechagodzilla is amazing looking classic Mechagodzilla here. More than just a Godzilla terminator endoskeleton or just a mech version of Godzilla. First of all, his face is just pure mechanical malice. And then also you mentioned earlier about how they they looked at the way like a European soldier in armor would have moved and like the Middle Ages. You can clearly get a sense of that from the design as well. It looks like body armor. It looks and looks like a big suit of armor. But yeah, just an absolutely demonic face, just a silver icon of pure world. Cleansing destruction. Yeah, I think it has car tail lights for eyes that orange, that orange kind of plastic with the, the, I don't know, some kind of internal textures that diffuse the light in a certain way as metal shark teeth, like real triangular teeth, finger rockets that, man, it shoots off more than 10 rockets. So they must be self replenishing. Like it shoots its fingers off as rockets, and then it's just got more finger rockets to go. It's just got coils and coils of finger rockets inside of it. Yeah. And shoots rainbow eye lasers. So the two Godzilla's here, the Mecha Godzilla and the real Godzilla do a lot of beam versus beam in this fight. Like Godzilla's shooting his radiation breath and Mecha Godzilla is shooting its eyeball lasers and their explosions. Eventually the real Godzilla is wounded and falls into the water of the bay. And we see blood frothing in the, in the churning water. Mecha Godzilla is also wounded and falls down inside the alien Mecha Godzilla control room. They announced that Mecha Godzilla's head control has stopped working and they need to recall him for repairs. So the boss admits we'll have to postpone our attack on Tokyo, bring him back for maintenance and we'll attack Tokyo later. So a stalemate, a rare sort of stalemate here between Godzilla and antagonist. Right. Mecha Godzilla fires up his feet rockets and then flies away kind of iron man like, oh man. And I love, love, love Mecha Godzilla's flying form. You know, it looks like this super heavy, chunky jet. Yes. Doesn't really have wings. Like the arms go sort of straight back. Yeah. But the arms are kind of, they are sort of like swept back wings. I'm not saying it makes aerodynamic sense what we're seeing here, but I love the, the presentation. Professor Miyajima deduces that Mecha Godzilla must be under alien control. Yep. And he, he tells Masahiko that they'll have to fly to Okinawa to investigate. To go to the cave where he found the space titanium. So that's what they're going to do. Next, we get a scene of the aliens doing maintenance on Mecha Godzilla. And inside the way the lights are put together with all the reflective surfaces. It looks like Saturday Night Fever. It's yeah. I like to say kind of a funky vibe here. The aliens have. So the aliens determine repairs are going to take too long. They don't have the specialists they need. So the alien boss says, I know what we'll do. We're going to kidnap the greatest earth scientist to do the repairs for us. So, Owen, he also at this point says, send Agent R1 to steal the statue of King Caesar. We can't have King Caesar getting woken up in the middle of all this. So the aliens have things scouted out pretty well. They know exactly what are the main kaiju threats to their Mecha Godzilla plan. And indeed, like what monsters is Mecha Godzilla intending to take out? Like clearly Mecha Godzilla here is mainly deployed to destroy Godzilla. And once the Godzilla is destroyed, then they can just eradicate the earth or whatever their exact plans are. I was thinking about how, as is often the case in movies like this, the aliens are able to watch events on TV in places where there were there's no conceivable way there are cameras there. So I don't know how their TVs are working, but they just kind of have omniscient television. Yeah, they're spy drones and deployed in ways we can't imagine. Yeah. So anyway, there is more archaeology research. The two professors put together that in order to wake up King Caesar, you have to put the statue they found on the stone shrine at Izumi Castle. And the statue is key to summoning the monster that can protect them from Mecha Godzilla now that Godzilla appears to have been defeated. So they're only hope now is King Caesar. So Keisuke and Seiko are sailing to Okinawa also. So all of our characters, I think, are going to Okinawa. And so for me, there was a genuine laugh out loud moment here where it cuts to the two of them cuts to Keisuke and Seiko leaning on the railing of an ocean liner and saying, I doubt the aliens expected us to change ships. Yeah. And I mean, also actually trying to get to Okinawa in a hurry. Like, I mean, I know that going by ship to Okinawa is always an option, but this looks like more like a cruise liner. This doesn't look like the pleasure. It looks like a pleasure cruise. It doesn't look like its main purpose is to get you from point A to point B. We're like really quickly. It feels like a line that was inserted to untangle some kind of plot pacing problem, but I'm not sure what that would be. Yeah. Anyway, it can't have worked too well throwing off the tail because both of the spies are on the boat peeping at them. They see they were not able to shake a single follower here. Yeah. Yeah. Both the spies are here and we see the rock and roll spy just slamming cigarettes on the upper deck. So Masahiko, the professor and the professor's daughter, Ikuko, go to the cave in they go to the cave where the space titanium came from. And then while they're in the cave, they get ambushed by aliens in silver jumpsuits. Aliens take them at gunpoint to the secret Mechagodzilla layer where they meet the big boss, the guy who likes cigars. And he explains to them who the aliens are. They are a strike force sent by Black Hole Planet 3 and he is their leader. Their mission is what else? They got to conquer Earth. And I thought about this a little bit. I assume Black Hole Planet 3 is the third planet orbiting a black hole of some sort. Yeah, I guess. Yeah. Okay. It's like an interstellar, you know. Yeah. What is time like for them? They're from the Matt Damon planet. The professor, the professor, when he gets this speech, he says, space aliens, as I suspected. Always correct, the professor. The cigar boss gives them a pitch. He's like, we need Mechagodzilla working so that we can conquer Earth on schedule. But his head got dinged up in the fight with Godzilla. Since you are the greatest scientist on Earth, we need you to fix him. And first he appeals to the professor's pride and curiosity. Like, wouldn't it be an honor to work on such a project of great alien technology? The professor is stone faced. And then he goes for a new tactic. They take Masahiko and Ikuko away to what they call the death chamber and say, OK, well, now you've got to repair our Mech or your daughter and her friend will die. And he reluctantly agrees. And all through this, this, these scenes, the boss alien is drinking green liquid green wine, I guess is what it seems like. Somewhere else on a dark and stormy island, we see Godzilla. Godzilla is not dead. Godzilla climbs ashore. The wind is whipping. There's a storm in the air. It's dark out and he stands up on the beach and starts absorbing lightning strikes. This seems to be now how Godzilla powers up and he gets so powered up. His body is emitting sparks. It feels like what's one of those great power up shows. I get the feeling I never really watched Dragon Ball Z, but I get the feeling that this is a lot of what Dragon Ball Z is. Oh, yeah, yeah. I forget that there's a particular term for this in Japanese media, but yeah, the power up scene where one even often changes form. There's not really a form change here, but it does feel kind of like the Godzilla quickening. Yes. Absorbing all this lightning energy. And I also liked it how it like in this film anyway, clearly establishes Godzilla is kind of an elemental force. Yes. Which is nice, whereas King Caesar is more of a like clearly divine element with some other attributes we'll get into. And then of course, Mechagodzilla is alien technology. Interesting. Yeah, OK. Well, the way Godzilla is absorbing lightning strikes here ties in, I think, to the vision of Godzilla in this movie as having electromagnetic related powers, which is fairly new as far as I recall. We can discuss that later. It's going to be key going up against a metal adversary. No gloss, no filter, just stories, spoken without fear. Addiction is a disease and it should be looked upon as any other disease. How did you cope with a reckless father like me? Join me, Pooja Bhatt, as I sit down every week with directors, actors, musicians, technicians and beyond. You don't need to work with the biggest people and the biggest sound to have great music. I have gone through the sub-CD, Hachakar. Reach the pinnacle, stung by the sneer, I've fallen down again. Yeah. I am not writing actively anymore and when I see my old work, it kind of saddens me. I'm only as good as the last shot that I gave. Mom's gone, but don't shut the theater. The show must go on. Listen to my weekly podcast, the Pooja Bhatt Show on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Come for the honesty. Stay for the fire. Rural Britain, is there any greater value out there than giga-clear full fiber from only 19 pounds a month? It's out of this world. Speed and reliability. Fast upload and downloadiness. Right here in rural tranquility. Saturn's rings. Is that a bull? Gigaclear, faster broadband for rural Britain from only 19 pounds a month. Teas at seas apply. 18 month contract. Prices may rise during contract. Check availability at gigaclear.com. Huns, the GCA. I'm whispering because... As the queen. Queen of social media. It's about time for my ASGMR series. So I'm recording this on my phone and then I'm going to use Canva to edit and upload it. Oh, sorry, babes. I'll make that whisper when I edit it. Anyways, Canva makes social media edits so easy. I'll upload this in a minute. Canva. Make everything iconic. How do I stop recording, Taren? The Southwest. Famous for our countryside. So if you want a career in green skills, working with nature, animals or clean energy, study where it all happens. Cannington College. From our borough culture to animal management. Hands on learning with cutting edge facilities, including the Cannington AirQuine Centre and National College for Nuclear. Register now for our next event, Wednesday the 29th of April from 6 until 8pm. Search UCScollegeGroup.ac.uk. So back on the pleasure cruise in the middle of the night, the Mustache Spy sneaks into Seiko's room in the middle of the night and steals the red box with the King Caesar statue inside. And he gets away with it, but then he is surprised in another room by Keisuke. And they fight again. It's a fisticuffs rematch. Keisuke tries to get information out of him. He's like, why does he want the statue? Who is he? The spy draws a knife and attacks, but Keisuke manages to shoot the spy in the face with his own silenced pistol. However, the spy is not killed. This was one of the weirdest parts of the movie for me. Instead of dying, the spy collapses and then undergoes a transformation. He, like the other aliens, has looked totally human so far. But once wounded in the face, he goes through a werewolf transformation effect, except he's not a werewolf. He is a were gorilla with a gorilla mask like they used in Planet of the Apes, but only for half of his face, the half that got wounded. So now he has a Phantom of the Opera style half mask, but it's a gorilla mask. Yeah, like some, they're basically space gorillas. Yes. Wish I love. And he, at this point, does not speak human language, but starts grunting and making uke-uke sounds like a movie ape. Yeah. Amazing. So, Keisuke chases the gorilla spy out onto the deck of the ship, which is completely empty. There are no other passengers. The ape man throws some deck chairs at him and they catch up and end up fighting again. And just when it seems like the gorilla alien has the upper hand and is about to shoot Keisuke, someone else off screen shoots the alien and then the alien tumbles into the ocean, clutching the statue. So like, oh no, did we lose the statue? Yeah. And who did the shooting? Might not be hard to guess at this point, but somebody, somebody saved our hero here. But so obviously we're in suspense for a moment. Like, didn't we need that statue to summon King Caesar? Is there any way to get it back from the bottom of the sea? I was thinking, oh, are we about to get a submarine plot where they send the submersible down to find it? No. Fortunately, Keisuke deceived Seiko yet again, hiding the real statue in the ship's safe and leaving a fake decoy statue in her room without her knowledge. When she finds out about this, she says, you made a fool of me. And then Keisuke says, it sounds like he's reciting a proverb, deceive your friend to deceive your foe. And then they both laugh. I didn't, I didn't know where that proverb was from. I looked it up. It seemed just based on a quick googling, it looks like it might be an adaptation of a saying of Sun Tzu. Okay. Yeah. Anyway, they have a whole conversation with the captain of the ship about how their voyage was so pleasant. And then they kind of show a sizzle reel of the ship coming into the harbor and dropping anchor. And it again kind of feels like a part of the movie sponsored by Okinawa Cruise Line. Yes, it really does. But when Keisuke and Seiko arrive at the hotel, they find that their friends have been missing for several days. Uh-oh. So Keisuke goes to the cave to see if he can find any clue about what happened. Meanwhile, we find out that inside the secret base, the professor is finished with his repairs on Mechagodzilla. The big boss alien is very pleased with his work. He invites the professor to drink green wine with him and celebrate the glorious rebirth of their cyborg. But the professor is not interested. He just wants the prisoners freed and the Stoge boss is like, okay, yeah, come on, follow me. But what do we think? Are these aliens going to keep their word? Of course not. They just open the door and they chuck the professor into the death chamber along with his daughter and with Masahiko. And then they turn on the heating elements and the steam jets. So it seems that the death chamber is basically a bakery oven. It's a steam injected oven. At least they'll get a good sweat in before they expire. It'll give them a nice crispy crust. Yeah. So back in the cave, Case K is looking around and he finds something. It is the professor's monster magnet tobacco pipe. Yes. He then gets held up at gunpoint by an alien in a silver jumpsuit. And Case K asks, where are my brother and the professor? The alien says, you'll be joining them soon as a corpse. But before the alien can kill Case K, someone else shoots the alien from offscreen. And who is it? It is, of course, the rock and roll spy, the one who has been saving Case K the entire time. So he hops into frame with his glorious shaggy hair. He's still dressed in the black outfit and, yes, wearing his sunglasses in the cave. And the rock and roll spy transitions from guns to melee and beats up the alien. At one point, he does a, is it called an elbow drop? What he does on him? Oh, yeah, I think so. That's a, drops the elbow. So the unconscious alien's hand that like he falls in the ground and we see the alien and his hand warps into a hairy gorilla hand, but the rest of his body doesn't transform yet. The spy finally introduces himself. He tells Case K his name is Nambara. Who is he? Is he another alien from a rival planet? What's the deal? No, he explains. He is with Interpol. Yes, the International Criminal Police Organization. He says, quote, we got wind of their strange activities six months ago. We cast a net to apprehend them. You and your friends got caught in it. I was really confused at this point. So does that mean that Interpol planted the King Caesar statue in the cave under the expo site? I mean, I didn't get that from it. Okay. Yeah, I think I just assumed it was more like, okay, we have alien invaders working to some degree like a criminal enterprise. So it falls under Interpol's jurisdiction. So it must be an international effort as well, right? Oh, yes. Otherwise it would be purely like a Japanese police effort. I don't know much about Interpol. My understanding is that they are mainly a sort of information sharing organization. I did not think Interpol had enforcement capabilities of its own. Yeah, because when they were hunting Hannibal Lecter, then they leaned on Interpol for information, but in this case, they're deploying agents. Maybe it's different. If it's Hannibal Lecter, you just let other authorities know about it. If it is alien invaders, well, then you have to send out your super cool agents to deal with it. So Nambara here, the Interpol agent. Also, what is the... Interpol agents in this world generally understood to be cool, like Rock and Roll kind of lifestyle, or I would think of them as being a little more bureaucratic office dwellers. But maybe... Well, the field agents, I guess, are cooler. Yeah. So Nambara interrogates the defeated alien and demands to be taken to the secret base. And so they go there. They find a secret button that opens the door hidden inside a stalactite that's like a breakaway. Yeah. Yeah. There are more scenes, of course, of the steam jets going in the death chamber. And I noticed that the people in this steam injected oven are hugging too much for a room that's supposed to be too hot. They're all clutching each other. And this goes on for a long time. I started to think the death chamber is feeling a bit like padding. Like, yes, we know the steam vents are blowing. It's hot. So Nambara and Keisuke discovered that there is a password to enter the base. The password is you say the people inside say alpha and then you say sin taras. So our heroes go inside and they beat up some aliens, put on alien jumpsuit disguises, and they set the prisoners free. They escape the base. They leave the cave. They go to the car. But then Nambara thinks, wait a minute, this car might be booby trapped. So they leave the car and trigger it remotely. And yes, indeed, while they're in the cave, the aliens put a bomb in their car. Well, don't usually think about that happening. Yeah, like I said, these are very criminally aligned aliens. So there's another, it feels again like a mafia theme, like a mafia once again, almost inspired by the godfather, one would think. Because there's a car bomb in the first godfather movie, too. Yeah. Anyway, so the plot, the plot, there's another plot going on at the same time, which is we see Seiko, the archaeology professor at the hotel with the King Caesar statue. And she looks out the window and sees a red moon outside, just like in the prophecy. Remember the red moon. So we have the characters kind of all splitting up into different factions for the final mission. The professor, Nambara and Masahiko are going to go back into the alien base to destroy Mechagodzilla's head control. Meanwhile, Keisuke, Ikuko and Seiko are going to meet up and take the statue to Izumi Castle and perform the ritual to summon King Caesar. You got all that straight? Yeah, it might just be enough to pull this off, because we can maybe stop or at least weaken Mechagodzilla and hopefully summon a creature to battle it. Right. So the latter group, they go to the castle, which is now shown to be on the beach. They meet with the priestess from the opening scene and her grandfather, who are being held hostage by another group of aliens from Black Hole Planet Three. But they are saved by the intervention of a second interpole agent. Let's get another one in there. The prophecy comes true because, remember, it said that the red moon would set and the sun would rise in the west. How is that possible? Well, they see a sun rising in the west, and it turns out it is some kind of reflection or mirage in the sky. And then the sunlight reflects off of the jewels in the eye sockets of the King Caesar statue. And this creates laser beams that blast a hole in the side of the mountain opposite the bay, revealing the face of the actual giant King Caesar. But he's not awake yet. He is still slumbering inside the rocks. He must be awakened by a descendant of the Azumi royals. So here we get the movie's musical number sung by the priestess Nami. Rob, I took a I found online somebody claimed this is an English translation of the lyrics to the song. I don't know if any of the lines really stand out at you. It says, even the great burning sun pierces through the curtain. Beautiful morning sun from sleep. The star wakes my she's a beloved star of the beach. We are waiting for you to be here. It's kind of beautiful. That's not the whole thing. There's a lot more, you know, in treaty, just begging for she says hell, but we strongly implore you that sort of thing. Beloved fruit of the coconut tree. We are waiting for you to be here. She says strongly hell. Yeah. But okay, this does succeed in waking up King Caesar who comes out of the mountain to defend the world from the Mechagodzilla attack. Of course, the aliens are sending out Mechagodzilla now. Mechagodzilla is going to do the rampage. Rob, would you like to describe King Caesar here? Yeah. Sorry, they call them King Caesar in the movie, but also there's some King Caesar. I wonder if they pronounce it differently at different times. Um, I mean, it's always sort of pronounced. I mean, I have more recent history with the, with the Japanese language version. And I don't know, it always sounds to me like they're saying she's a, but it is very widely translated as King Caesar in English. So I mean, you can, you I think as, as English speaking fans of Godzilla, I think you can use either. As long as you don't get too wrapped up in the idea that this has any connection to Roman Caesar or anything. Yeah. But, um, yeah. So at first she's a King Caesar is of course in the rock and there's kind of this idea and the, the alien boss is referencing this that, well, we'll go and destroy King Caesar before it can even climb out and do battle. Uh, but eventually she's just going to get out and we see more of it. Uh, as we mentioned, certainly a lion dog feel a little bit like a were bat, uh, in its furriness. Um, but one interesting thing to think about is, is to ask the question, how are we to understand a King Caesar? Uh, are we supposed to think of this as a flesh and blood incarnation of a God? Um, as I think has been fan speculation for a long time, uh, or equally pondered by fans is King Caesar, a kind of golem, uh, a statue, an artificial entity with maybe flesh on the outside, but something else on the inside, kind of like an ancient analog of Mecha Godzilla. Uh, Joe, for, for your purposes here, I included a couple of cross sections. I found online one is definitely from an old Japanese trading card. There are, there are lots of wonderful kaiju, um, like dissection illustration showing you the possible insides of monsters. And these are all amazing. Uh, and one of them here definitely has like an organic inside for King Caesar, but another one has very, um, almost like ancient robot feel inside. Like, yeah, has like bricks for bones and, uh, golden bones and minerals, which again, we have to remember that they're using a statue of a lion dog to summon him. So there is this connection with the artificiality of that. So maybe on some level, this faded combatant of Mecha Godzilla is like an ancient version of the same sort of thing. The ancient holy mech versus the futuristic unholy mech. Yeah. Yeah. So I like thinking about this creature like that. By the way, King Shiza or King Caesar, uh, to my knowledge, has never really come back in a Godzilla film. There's a, there's a later Godzilla movie, uh, from a different era where God's always fighting a bunch of monsters and they sort of, they bring back the design of King Caesar, but they don't draw in any of like the Okinawan stuff or certainly they don't explore, um, this creature's background or interior structure. It's just positioned as like an alien enemy of Godzilla, though at the same time, I will say when they bring the character back, they make King Caesar more curvy. Oh yeah. Yeah. So it's like a little sexier, feminine appearance. Yeah. Yeah. But, um, but yeah, so I think Godzilla fans might agree. This is a character that really needs to come back in a major way. Totally. Yes. No gloss, no filter, just stories spoken without fear. Addiction is a disease and it should be looked upon as any other disease. How did you cope with a reckless father like me? Join me, Pooja Bhatt, as I sit down every week with directors, actors, musicians, technicians, and beyond. You don't need to work with the biggest people and the biggest sound to have great music. I have gone through the sub-CD, Hachakar. Reach the pinnacle, stung by the snake and I've fallen down again. Yeah. I am not writing actively anymore and when I see my old work, it kind of saddens me. I'm only as good as the last shot that I gave. Mom's gone, but don't shut the theater. The show must go on. Listen to my weekly podcast, the Pooja Bhatt show, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Come for the honesty, stay for the fire. The fight here at the end of the movie is a multi-stage fight. So first you've got Mechagodzilla versus King Caesar one-on-one. Any comments on this part of the fight? Well, I would say King Caesar puts up a good fight. So he has no actual ranged weapons himself, but via the gym and his head, he can absorb and then blast back energy projections, which is a good way of making up for this lack of ranged ability. But then the main feature of King Caesar is that he's fast. He's a lion dog, so he can really try and close the distance between himself and Mechagodzilla pretty quickly. But in this case, Mechagodzilla is well-prepared and has all the firepower in the world. So after this initial stage of the fight, we get a twist, which is that Godzilla reappears and joins the fight. So remember the prophecy said there would be a monster that would attack the world, and then when the sun rises in the west, then the two monsters would appear to protect the world from the monster that attacked. So the second one here is Godzilla. You mentioned earlier two-on-one odds. That's pretty good, right? So you might think that our good guy monsters have the upper hand here, but, man, we start seeing some amazing full-on assaults from the ultimate mobile weapons platform that is Mechagodzilla. My favorite scene is one where Godzilla is coming from one direction, King Caesar is coming from the other direction. Mechagodzilla swivels its head around so that it can fire projectile weapons in both directions, just unleashing a full-scale bombardment at both of its adversaries, just an amazing moment. And then later on, we see a full frontal projectile assault that is also just all the fireworks. Again, Mechagodzilla has so many weapons. He's got the finger rockets. I think he has toe rockets. He has some other kind of laser weapon that comes out of his chest. He's got the eye beams, everything in the world. He can generate a force field that surrounds him, that Godzilla cannot be penetrated. Right, right. And then when he takes to the sky, he has the aerial advantage and can basically do strafing runs on monster enemies. So it looks pretty tough, but this fight reveals a previously undisclosed Godzilla power. I think, I can't actually verify this has never appeared in a movie before this, but I think it has not. And that power is generating a kaiju-sized magnetic field. So we see Godzilla pulling objects to his body with this great magnetic field. Like he's pulling electrical pylons into his body. And then finally, while Mechagodzilla is trying to fly around in jet airplane mode to escape, Godzilla pulls Mechagodzilla to himself with his magnetic power so that it cannot rock it away. And then, I guess, comes the real grappling part of the fight, which is Godzilla's... That's how Godzilla gets the advantage, is the grappling. And certainly Mechagodzilla can still handle his own up close and personal, but I don't think it's quite as well as Godzilla. Like Godzilla, this is where he's going to have the clear advantage as a grappler. Right. There's a concurrent side plot also involving a great magnetic field. Our other three heroes inside the alien base, they try to sneak in, they get caught in a trap, they're held prisoner, and while they're tied up, they hatch a plan to use the professor's super magnet tobacco pipe to destroy the control room and sabotage Mechagodzilla's controls. They do succeed at doing this, but I did wonder... It seems like Godzilla and King Caesar have sort of already won the fight at this point. Yeah, I don't think we really had that moment in the fight where it's like, Godzilla can almost pull it off if only somebody in an alien base somewhere were to blow up a key mechanism. Like we don't really get that. So, but I don't know, maybe they just needed to destroy the base to prevent Mechagodzilla from being repaired and coming back maybe. But also the base is collapsing in flames after this, and we see our heroes trying to like run out and escape and there's like stuff falling all around them. And I think the movie leaves significant questions unanswered about which characters survive getting out of the base. Like they see the base exploding and Ikuko, the professor's daughter, says, Oh, my father. And then another character says, I'm sure he got out all right. Oh, I mentioned before the base collapses, the alien boss gets killed. And when he dies, his face is not exactly a gorilla mask like the others. It's like 80% gorilla mask, but green with these yellow horns on the face. I didn't know what the difference was there. Maybe he's just kind of green from all the green wine he drinks. Or he's an elder and the elders grow tiny little spikes out of there. We just, we have so many questions about the basic physiology of these aliens. Yeah. Also after the fight is over, I really like the way King Caesar just goes back in his hole and reburys himself. Yeah. He sucks all the rocks over his face. Yeah. I mean, almost like he's not again, like maybe he's a slumbering creature or slumbering deity, or maybe he is again, an artificial being that is only activated in times of great need. Yeah. So at the end of the movie, we find that the ancestors of the royal house of Izumi can rest in peace because everything has been settled. Of course, the world is saved from the rampage of Mechagodzilla and from the alien plot that's all been put down. We do see Masahiko is okay. So he was in the base. He got out all right. We see him unharmed. But what happened to the other two guys, the Interpol agent and the professor? I think we never see them again and nobody says anything about whether they survived or not. I think you're correct because some characters from this film will pop up again in the terror of Mechagodzilla. But yeah, I don't think our cool sunglasses agent actually shows up again. I think he had other cool movies to do at that point. Well, you should do a crossover. Like that got the Interpol agent and Diabolic. If they worked together, can you imagine the adventures they would have? So yeah, in general, I like the synergy of like spy movie and big monster battle. I think it worked pretty well here. I agree. Yeah. And again, the monster battles do not disappoint. A lot of fun. All right. Well, I think that does it for my thoughts on Godzilla versus Mechagodzilla. Yeah, yeah, same. But for your listeners out there, if you have additional thoughts, insights, bits of trivia, interpretations of what we see in this film right in, we'd love to discuss it with you. We'd love to feature it on future episodes of Stuffed to Bull your Mind, Listener Mail. There's a lot to talk about here. And this movie's been around long enough and been a popular Godzilla film long enough that people have a lot of thoughts. For instance, in at least the book Ready Player One, I don't remember if this is in the film adaptation or not, but the most powerful mech that a player in the virtual world can take on is the Mechagodzilla. And so the villain of the piece ultimately like takes on the form of Mechagodzilla to battle the hero. Again, I just can't recall if that's actually in the movie as well, but it's definitely in the book. All right. Well, just a reminder to everyone out there that Stuffed to Bull your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. If you want to support the show, just rate, review, subscribe, wherever you have the ability to do so, be it on a podcast format, or if you're watching the video version on Netflix, give us some thumbs up. So you want to see more of it so that you're essentially subscribed to it, that sort of thing. And if you were on Letterbox.com, you can follow Weird House there. Our user handle is Weird House. And we have a nice list of all the movies we've covered over the years and sometimes a peek ahead at what's coming up next. Huge thanks, as always, to our excellent audio producer, JJ Pawsway. 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