r-c-s Review of Terror of Mechagodzilla

Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975)

very average remake of the previous mecha movie

[4/10 · 30 November 2005]

While the previous mechagodzilla movie was better, this one is a poor excuse for a remake. Special effects are duller and the budget is (apparently) much lower. As with other such monster movies, they try to thicken the plot with many subplots, including a love story, submarine searches, alien invasion etc. In the end (being a bit more than 70 minutes), none of them develops clearly and -as with monster movies in general- are felt somewhat superfluous. Alien invaders from a planet victim of a black hole have rebuilt the disposed of mechagodzilla and plan to team it up with another marine monster called Titanosaurus. This second monster was the reason why an acclaimed scientist got fired from his job to end up in poverty. He's thus resentful & plans revenge. Both subplots will come in the spurious Go Nagai ( the Japanese anime/robot artist ) series Daiku Maryu Gaiking, where inhabitants of planet Zela want to invade Earth to avert their doom caused by a black hole. One episode features a once prominent scientist laughed offstage for his offbeat theories joining the spacemen resentful for the death in poverty of his wife&child. Godzilla does NOT appear from the first 50 (yes 50) minutes of the movie, besides stock footage from the opening titles. The scientist's daughter has been turned into a cyborg following an accident in her father's laboratory, and she's thus a puppet run by the aliens despite her kind feelings. Her path crosses with a clumsy interpol agent's later convinced of the truth in the old scientist's theories. Once all those subplots seem to clearly go nowhere, in fifteen minutes you get the alien base blown up, the cyborg girl, her father & some aliens die; other aliens die while trying to escape while men in rubber suit wrestle one another. Even the bond sets of the alien base look very cheap & stitched together from garage sales. The English dubbing is especially bad; Besides the voices, it's not very clear.. The only good thing is godzilla is still a positive character here.