Godzilla vs King Ghidorah (1991)

 "You can tell your son about it when he's born, Major Spielberg."

I thought it was about time I continued with my Godzilla marathon, and this is a massively fun film to return to. This is the best kind of unashamed B movie, which quite properly luxuriates in what it is and doesn't care what you think.

I mean, let's recap the plot: people from the future arrive in Japan giving dire warnings of destruction meaning Godzilla must be destroyed before his birth, but secretly planning to destroy future economic superpower Japan by arranging the creation of the monster King Ghidorah. Fortunately not only is Godzilla brought back bigger than before by a random nuclear sub but the Japanese person amongst them, at one point seeming to be a possible love interest for the male lead but ending up as his great grandaughter (er...) is able to return to her time and bring back a cyborg King Ghidorah to save the day.

Yes, that all actually happens. Gloriously mad, is it not?

This film, with its different backstory for King Ghidorah, with (despite some misdirection) no aliens about, underlines the fact that the films from 1984 onwards are a different continuity. It also adds a nice bit of backstory in that the creature that became Godzilla in 1984 was previously a dinosaur in the South Pacific that saved some Japanese soldiers from an American assault in 1944.

There's lots of splendid city destruction with models. there's lots of cheeky "tributes" to Hollywood too- the computer interface of the time machine looks an awful lot like Doc Brown's DeLorean, while the pursuing android looks suspiciously like the baddie from Terminator 2: Judgement Day. This sort of thing makes the film even more fun.

There's one big caveat, though; Japan never underwent the equivalent of West Germany's de-Nazification, and it shows in the nationalistic subtext here. There's a definite glee in Japan's future economic domination; the android antagonist is definitely coded as American and, worst of all, the Imperial Japanese Army is presented as honourable. Let us be clear: it had absolutely no honour whatsoever, and its officers were not gentlemen.

Disturbing subtext aside, though, I enjoyed this splendidly silly film.

Godzilla vs Biollante (1989)

 “Biollante is just a cross between a plant and Godzilla...!"

It’s been more weeks than I realised since the last Godzilla film so here's the next one- and it's one of the most impressive with a cool antagonist and high production values.

There's a lot of fun here, from the concept (we get to see a Godzilla cell merge with a plant cell to create Biollante, because that's how genetics works...) to the appearance of Biollante, with the rubber tentacles and Venus flytrap maws. Its all very '80s, with the industrial espionage (we get to see the contemporary industrian rivalry between the Americans and Japanese in this decade from a Japanese perspective, ESP nonsense, car chases and action, 80s fashions, 80s action film music and all those things which are fun to look back on from a vantage point of thirty years later.

And yet, despite the B movie silliness of the concepts, the plot is bloody good and the whole film is superbly shot. It's also positive to see a new monster antagonist for Godzilla after all these years, and a different type of monster at that. We carry directly on from the previous film, with the same impressively realised Godzila (the set piece where he destroys Osaka is extremely well done) with excellent use of his familiar fanfare. Brilliantly, it's Godzilla who remains the antagonist throughout, with Biollante being the eventual means of his destructtion in a well-plotted series of events.

I'm not ranking these films in order of best to worst, as this isn't that sort of blog, but if I were, this would rank quite highly as a genuinely good monster film that nevertheless offers plenty of low camp fun.