War of the Gargantuas - 1966

My library here has a little "new to the library" section on their website which has stuff cycling through whenever you go to their homepage. On that, out of nowhere one day, appeared War of the Gargantuas. I clicked on it and hit reserve without thinking. It had been a while, thought I. It might be fun.

Yeah, I've seen this before. I don't know which kaiju films I've seen and which I haven't seen, but this one I know I've seen. I was always interested in the more obscure, unheard of entries to any franchise. I love things like the two Bond films with Timothy Dalton, I love the bizarre unheard of crossover movies that exist later on in franchises when they get weird. I love things that exist in a state of obscurity, and appeal to little. I think it's something about the process of finding a "hidden gem" which people don't know about. That is a really cool prospect to me.

War of the Gargantuas was apparently a inspiration for Tim Burton, Quentin Tarantino, Brad Pitt, and many others. Why, is anyone's guess. At this point, 12 years had passed since Godzilla had come out, and there were about 6-7 Godzilla films out. There had been a cesspool of other kaiju films in Japan, and shit, I count a quick 18 kaiju films in total released by this time. This was one of many released in the year 1966, the others being Ebirah Horror of the Deep, Gamera Versus Barugon, and all three Daimajin films.

Given the quick cluster of kaiju films around this time, for me, it's very hard for them to stand out. Far as I can tell, Gargantuas was made to introduce Frankenstien to the kaiju theater. Originally, it was going to be Frankenstien in the King Kong Versus Godzilla film. The original Gargantuas film was called Frankenstein Conquers the World, and I believe the Mary Shelley estate stepped in and told them not use the name anymore. Or something like that. Hence the Gargantuas name in this film. Ah, who knows, who cares.

I didn't quite enjoy this film. it felt like every other. First they try to kill the creature, then that doesn't work, then there's two of them with one being good and one being evil and mankind thrown in being all scared. People do stuff, things get destroyed. Obvious miniatures are thrown around. Eventually, there's big kaiju fights and the film ends. Yup, seen this before.

It's not my favorite. 2 average kaiju film stars.