Japanese Title: "Kaiju Soshingeki"
AKA: "Attack of the Marching Monsters"
Rated: G (Original Dub)
Released: August 1, 1968 (Japan)
May 23, 1969 (U.S.)
Length: 89 min. (Japan)
86 min. (U.S.)
Gojira Movie Number: 9
Whoa! What a movie! To begin, I should probably say that this particular version is Toho’s "international version" and it stinks! The dubbing is terrible and I thought the movie was pretty dull. I don’t know if the other version’s lines/story would have made it better or not, but this one was lousy.
We open with a narrator (why is there a narrator anyway?) telling us that it’s the year 1999 and there’s space ships going to the moon every day to our moon base. There’s also a mentioning of some kind of under-the-sea base, but it has no bearing on the movie. I can’t even figure out why they mention it. It sounds cool, but they never show anything of it. ARGH!
We also learn that all the earth’s monsters have been collected on put onto one island, known as Monsterland (AKA "Ogasawara island"). They are kept on the island through a bunch of "sophisticated" devices that annoy the monsters. There’s some kind of gas for Mothra and Gojira and a magnetic field to keep Rodan in. (I guess that means Rodan has a lot of iron in system!)
All this ends up looking like is some kind of weird documentary. Eventually, we find that the narrator is a reporter, but that’s near the end of the movie.
The two main characters are Katsuo, a spaceship pilot, and Kyoko, his girlfriend, who works on Monsterland as an observer. Soon after they have a phone conversation, the island gets gassed. We learn that an alien race known as the Kilaaks are behind this atrocity. There’s even a spaceship seen on the moon…it’s a typical saucer-shaped white thing (although it looks like a black outline in this scene), but it has an "ethereal" yellow color surrounding it and it just looks cheap and unimaginative by today’s standards.
Thus, the Kilaaks take over the minds of everyone on the island, including the monsters. They then send the monsters out to destroy the major cities of the world. They claim that they do this to prepare the world so that they can live in it, but this doesn’t make sense when you find out what the Kilaaks actually need to survive.
Katsuo must save Kyoko and he and his comrades raid Monsterland. They meet the Kilaak queen and find Kyoko and a doctor. They only escape with the doctor though. Soon after, the doctor is questioned, but he won’t say anything and instead of restraining him, they look at a wall while he gets up and leaps out a window. Yeah! Then they have a shoot-out with the alien-controlled zombie people…but no one can aim and the zombies quickly leave. The doctor is checked out and they find some kind of transmitter on him or in him. They figure this is how the monsters are being controlled too. In fact, they find some dumb looking rocks that have transmitters in them.
The Kilaaks move to the an area near Mt. Fuji and the army/space troops try to take them down. Here we learn that even Godzilla can’t hurt the spaceship. It’s impervious to ALL attacks! If they wanted the monsters dead, then they ought to have rammed the ship through them…Well, the fools in the ship find a cave nearby after seeing a spaceship and shouting "This has something to do with those Kilaaks!" They then meet with the Kilaaks. They all turn out to be chicks wearing fake chain mail. This chicks mouth off about taking over the planet and then release the fools so they can go tell the other earthlings how doomed they are.
Somehow, we doomed earthlings figure out that a major transmitter is on the moon and Katsuo and crew go there to take it out. They get followed by a spaceship that doesn’t do anything except look stupid. Then they land in a hole that ends up blowing a bunch of flames onto the ship…they act like the ship will explode, so they take a moon ship out and drive towards the base, which they blast. Somehow, their spaceship withstands all the heat and they can use it again…when they destroyed the base, they learned something new. The Kilaaks are rocks! When they get cold (like, less than a thousand degrees or so) they go to rock form and hibernate until it gets hot again.
Well, now we know what to do. Blast those evil critters with some cold stuff, just like "The Blob". They go back to the base and since they now have a transmitter of their very own, they can control the monsters. Unfortunately, the Kilaaks still have a trick or two up their collective sleeves too. They release Ghidrah to kick our monsters tail. That was stupid. Ghidrah can’t take on that many monsters. He gets vanquished fairly quickly in a violent manner. Lots of monsters chomp his necks and stomp on them too. To get him down, Gorosaurus stands on his tail and smacks Ghidrah.
OK. Here’s a list of good and bad stuff from the movie:
Good Stuff:
 | Some interesting monster battle scenes. |
| imagination? |
Bad Stuff:
| The dialogue…the acting…the plot… |
| The special effects |
| The "Fire Dragon" and his "battle" with Katsuo’s ugly spaceship. Not to mention the awful faces that Katsuo and his friends make. |
| Why was Katsuo’s spaceship so big? Watch it land on Monsterland and you’ll see what I mean. It was more than ten times Gojira’s size! |
| And last, but not least, there’s a stupid reporter that sees Minya and says calls him Gojira before realizing his mistake. You cannot mistake Minya for Godzilla! Come on! Give me a break! |
Well, I think that covers all the stuff you need to know. Watch at your own risk.
It gets:
