The War of the Gargantuas (1966)

[Space Hunter M]

F*ck it, I'm going to admit that I never though the song was that bad. Now, the singer on the other hand, leaves something to be desired.

Yup. Thank goodness there's a Karaoke version on the official soundtrack album.

[Crazy Jim Films]

The song is pretty bad but it's an enjoyable kind of bad. Ya dig?

[Space Hunter M]

So bad it's good? Yes!
Makes me wonder if it was intentional.

[The One and Only]

I remember first seeing this flick when I was four, and kept thinking at the time the monsters were named "Dracula" for some reason. It wasn't until I was fifteen that I got see WOTG, at least a goodly portion of it when I could retain it decently in my noggin. One thing I always wondered when watching the film dealing with Sanda and Gaira's viscious, and destructive sibling rivalry dealt with the origin of the Gaira's genesis. As many here may already may know, sometime after Sanda had escaped Doctor Stewart's lab. He had sustained a nasty injury which caused a chunk of flesh to rip off. That particular piece of meat made its way to the ocean, absorbed protien rich plankton, grew, and ended up generating a whole new Gargantua, the green one, Gaira. The fears of Stewart and his fellow scientists, which fell on deaf ears of the military for the most part. Whose first inclinationation was blast them to smithereens, and deal with any possible aftereffects of those bits regenerating into a whole swarm of Gargantuas afterwards. I wondered if this little plotline was the inspiration for the INHUMANOIDS brawler, Tendril.

On top being hellastrong, being about as bright as a sack of hammers, but being sadistic as a four year old boy who enjoys pulling the wings off flys. If the Ravager of the Mantle sustained an injury that resulted in a piece of him coming off, that same piece would actually generate into fully grown Tendril monster as well. But it wasn't as durable as the original, and die within a few days.

[GotengoXGodzilla]

War Of The Gargantuas could have Toho's greatest daikaiju film. It had just about everything it needed to be greater than anything it had done before, even Godzilla. The effects, the music, the action, the writing, the acting, and a story that was interesting and ultimately timeless were all there. But in the end, it really comes off as an above-average monster film and had lots of potential, but squandered it at the wrong moments.

There are three things that utterly destroy this film for me. One is the "The Words Get Stuck In My Throat" song. It completely destroys the pacing of the film and any tension or suspense that was going on up until that point. On top of that, that scene serves no purpose to the film, it's just there for a musical break that was entirely unnecessary. The second is the human characters, who are boring and uninteresting. I think the reason I don't like them is because of the writing of the monster scenes. Those scenes are written so well, that compared to the writing of the human scenes, I really wish that there were a lot more monster scenes. The characters are just distracting and kind of bog the film down from some of the better parts.

But neither of those two can compare to the main problem I have with the film, which is, of course, the ending. I could completely forgive the pointless musical number and the uninteresting human characters, if the film had a proper ending. The film was building up the tension and suspense better than any other monster film had done before, and presented some of the best monster action I've ever seen...and then the ending had to show up and just got it cut right then and there, with no proper falling action or resolution. It really just comes off like the writers thought about the ending of the film for about 15 minutes, and then said, "Screw it! We can't come up with anything, so let's just have a volcano come up out of no where and eat the two of them up! Damn, we're good at our jobs!!" Really? Having the two of them being killed by a random volcano was the best ending that they could come up with? They might as well have been killed by Godzilla just randomly popping up and shooting them with his ray, and then leaving. That would have at least provided me with a laugh. But this? This is just sad and kind of depressing. All of the creativity and thought that these filmmakers put into the film, but they can't come up with a proper ending.

That ending really pisses me off. I get angry just thinking about how these people, who were my inspiration to get into filmmaking, couldn't come up with an ending for what could have been their best work. If they had come up with anything different, I would love this film to death. Instead, they pull out a random deus ex machina within the last two minutes of the film that was never mentioned before then and just end it there. It really comes off like an insult to the story up to that point. Just think about it for more than 15 minutes, and I'm sure they could have come up with something better than that.

[Cimmerian Dragon]

The song is pretty bad but it's an enjoyable kind of bad. Ya dig?

It's just perfect for a wanna-be Westernized club in the swingin' sixties.

[Goji]

Wasn't singer Kip Hamilton a friend of Henry G. Saperstein? I can't recall where I heard that, but that could have something to do with the "pointless" singing number seeming so forced.

Man, it's times like these I really wish we had gotten commentaries on the WOTG/RODAN set..at least Bringing Godzilla Down To Size basically made up for it.

[GotengoXGodzilla]

Wasn't singer Kip Hamilton a friend of Henry G. Saperstein? I can't recall where I heard that, but that could have something to do with the "pointless" singing number seeming so forced.

Man, it's times like these I really wish we had gotten commentaries on the WOTG/RODAN set..at least Bringing Godzilla Down To Size basically made up for it.

Oh, I'm sure there's a perfectly good reason for why that song is in there. Maybe by doing it, some company in America promised to give Honda more money to make the film. I don't know for sure, but I bet it's something like that.

However, that doesn't excuse how badly it was incorporated into the film. One thing they could have done is have the romantic leads share a beautiful moment together while that song was going on. Or, they could have had the main cast of characters discuss how Gaira might be the monster that they helped create, and therefore their own fault. These are just things I'm coming up with off the top of my head.

If that song had to be in the film, that's fine. But the sign of good filmmaker is taking things, like a forced song that has almost nothing to do with the film or story, and using it to your advantage. But, they don't do that here, which is why I find the song so utterly destructive to the film.

[Cimmerian Dragon]

^ Of course, one thing I really love about, say, 40s crime films is that any trip to a nightclub was an excuse for an otherwise irrelevent musical number. I absolutely love that.

Of course, the singers were typically a hell of a lot better than this.

[Bentley]

Great film, throughly enjoyable. They need to remake this with someone competent at the helm, this really stands as what good classic kaiju films can be.

Of course, there are the issues already mentioned before me, but they can be worked on in the sequel

[Tohosaurus]

Love this movie. One of my favorite Toho monster movies. It's different than a lot of other ones.

[dustman]

finally just watched this movie and i absolutely loved it! now one of my top favorite kaiju films.

[ScootaVaran]

As a little kid this movie scared the crap out of me. The first Toho monster that made a effort to eat humans.
Now that i'm older I really love this movie.

[Giga Kaiju]

I just watched it a couple of days ago and i have to say that is one of the best Kaiju movies of the Showa series, (and i havent watch the prequel but i think that is better for some reason but i later try to) i liked the interactions between Gaira and Sanda
also with some of the humans. The acting...well it wasnt perfect but i didnt get bored of it, it was ok.
Ps. The scene of Gaira underwater before killing the fisherman...

[Kaiju-King42]

I like this movie a lot. It just clicks with me. I can't really explain why...the words get stuck in my throat.

[Giga Kaiju]

^ I see what u did there...

In all seriousness when i watched that scene it was bad, i dont know the difference of the Japanese and American version
of the song but it sounded so bad is good.

[menschenjaeger]

Kip was terrible. I loved her.

To me, the ending is the ONLY real problem, and not a big one. They both had to die, for the sake of the narrative.

I showed it to a friend in college, and once when Gaira roared, he asked "Did...he just say the brown word?" That pretty much destroyed me for ten minutes.

[kaiju115]

Even though War of the Gargantuas is not one Toho's better movies, & theres some moments that don't help the film at like that woman sing that awful song "words get stuck in my throat" ugh, I like it for what it is. Not as good as Frankenstein vs Baragon, but still fun to watch.

[Goji]

You lost me after that first sentence. This is one of Toho's most beloved monster films outside of the Godzilla series.

The more you know...*ding*

[Captain Aktion]

Haha, I had this DVD on loop for around 12 hours last night and this morning...needless to say, I love this movie.