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 he Godzilla series was meant to end with
"Destroy All Monsters", a whiz-bang Armageddon of a finale. But
there was a problem: "Destroy All Monsters" made a lot of money at
the Japanese box office, so producer Tomoyuki Tanaka decided to follow the
philosophy, "You can fool some of the people some of the time and
that's good enough for me," and made this wretched excuse of a film.
"Godzilla's Revenge"
presents us with Ichiro, a lonely latchkey child who is bullied by a gang of
neighborhood kids, overlooked by his parents, and his idea of entertainment
is scavenging for electronic parts in abandon factories. Ichiro escapes from
his dreary reality by imagining he's on Monster Island, home of Godzilla and
his son Minya. When he's kidnapped by bank robbers, Ichiro slips back to
Monster Island where the father and son lizard act teach him self-confidence
and courage -- exactly what he'll need to escape from the band of thieves.
In order to properly describe what an atrocity of a
Godzilla film this is, you'd have to exhaust the English language of
negative adjectives and have to start inventing new ones. The most obvious
problem is the film's title. "Godzilla's Revenge" doesn't make
any sense since Godzilla is reduced to a supporting player. He's not out
for revenge, or much else for that matter. It's understandable that the
filmmakers would want Godzilla's name in the title, since after all, he's
a huge box office draw. But "Godzilla's Revenge" is incredibly
misleading, not to mention nonsensical.
The title gaffe could be forgiven if Shinichi
Sekizawa's script was a kaiju monster fest, which it isn't. Instead we get
a treatise on the break-up of the nuclear family aimed at the small fry
crowd. The screenplay's only saving grace is that the Godzilla scenes
exist solely in Ichiro's head, so it doesn't occur in the continuity of
the Godzilla series. Another gripe is the bully of Monster Island, Gabara.
What exactly is he suppose to be? His physiology is just plain baffling.
He's an incredibly bad creation, looking like a product of a one-night
stand between a troll and a bullfrog.
Gabara is almost as bad as the blatant use of stock
footage from previous Godzilla films to pad the running time. What the
filmmakers seem not to have taken into account was the fact that
Godzilla's appearance alters from film to film, resulting in Godzilla
looking like he's morphing from one look to another in "Godzilla's
Revenge".
The musical score is nothing to cheer about either,
Kunio Miyauchi's compositions sounds like they belong on a bad cartoon
instead of a Godzilla film. It does nothing to enhance the film, and in
fact it's just incredibly annoying at times. The acting is adequate save
for the performance of Eisei Amamoto, playing a toy inventor who is a
neighbor of Ichiro and becomes a father figure to the boy. Amamoto usually
plays a villain, so he's going against type here, although that's a good
thing because it allows the actor to show a compassionate and emphatic
sided.
"Godzilla's Revenge" marks the beginnings
of dark days for the monster series. Godzilla stopped being a frightening
destructive force of nature, and was neutered into entertainment for small
children. At least they got the worst of it out of their system at the
very start. "Godzilla's Revenge" is probably best for very young
children who'd benefit from the film's positive message, but for adult
fans of Godzilla and the genre, it'd be best to shun this movie like a
leper.
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