They are laughing at you
Guilala! Mocking you for your looks. Showing you no respect. You are the
Rodney Dangerfield of Kaiju. They say you look like a chicken with antennas.
Really? Here is one for them. Why did the chicken cross the road? To destroy
Tokyo. What do they expect? Yesterday I was small enough to fit in a jar
of peanut butter and today I am 200 feet high. It's an adjustment. Growth
spurts are never easy. I am still learning to stomp and spit out fire. I
was sorry about Ginza. It looked like a nice place to shop. Not so much about
Shinjuku. It looked like it needed renovating. And I know it is silly of
me, but watching hundreds of people running in panic is kind of cool.
Why should Godzilla and Rodan have all the fun.
Shochiku decided somewhat late in the game to come up with their own Kaiju.
It didn't really go well and this film is considered bottom shelf Kaiju.
But I quite enjoyed it. It has a great look to it with a 1960's pop color
scheme, retro models that looked stolen from the 1950's, some good disaster
shots, a man in a rubber suit, space exploration, weird interaction between
the characters and a hot Gaijin female who saves Japan with smarts. Ok, they
perhaps could have spent more time coming up with a different look for Guilala
- big googly red eyes, squiggly antennas. a chicken mouth and a lizard skin
might have sounded good in the planning stage, but it is hard not to laugh
the first time you see it. It feels like it came out of Sesame Street. But
it is kind of lovable in its gawkiness. I felt the same way as a teenager.
The Japanese are trying to fly to Mars but the previous trips have ended
up with the crew and spaceship losing contact and disappearing. In his pep
talk to the new crew, the boss says, all those people floating in space forever.
I hope it doesn't happen to you. They suspect that UFOs and aliens are preventing
them from reaching Mars. Can you blame them? It is a four-man crew - Captain
Sano (Shun'ya Wazaki) is the babe magnet of the Space Program, Miyamoto (Shin'ichi
Yanagisawa) runs communications and adds comic relief, Dr. Shioda is supposed
to check blood pressure and most interesting is the Biologist - Lisa played
by Peggy Neal. Neal was from Mississippi and went to university in Tokyo
and got a few acting gigs (The Terror Beneath the Seas). Damn, how many females
I wonder had the guts to go to Japan to school in the 1960's. She has a thing
for Captain Sono even though when he disagrees with her, he simply pushes
her out of the way. Love is a funny thing.
On the way to Mars, the Doctor gets sick and they have to stop off at the
Moon Base which has an open bar and music to dance to. Michiko (Itoko Harada)
is also stationed there and she also has a thing for the good Captain. Anyway,
back to Mars, their ship runs into trouble when the UFO's - looking like
freshly baked puris - brings the ship to a stall and tries to pull it in.
They get away but see these small unidentifiable things on the ship and go
out to knock them off - but keep one for scientific study. Oops.
Back on earth with Michiko as well, they celebrate not dying by having a
party! And that little whatever becomes Guilala by morning and begins causing
havoc. Only Lisa thinks of a way to stop it. The big drama at this point
is who will the Captain end up with - Lisa or Michiko. My money was on Michiko.
And the aliens and Mars? Completely forgotten about. Easy to make fun of
this film, but I am just glad that films like this exist.
