Ghidorah's Re-Match

 

It is apparently a natural law that--in any monster-based movie universe--the monsters will eventually team-up or fight one another. Just as it happened with the Universal Monsters in the 1940s, so did it happen with the Gozilla universe in the 1960s.

Invasion of the Astro-Monster (1965) as the sixth Godzilla film. By that point, the Big G had fought King Kong and teamed-up with Rodan and Mothra to fight Ghidorah, the Three-Headed monster.

Poor Ghidorah. We are told that he's a Cthulu-level threat that destroyed Venusian civilization. But during the original Showa-era Godzilla films, he appears three times and it defeated handily each time. And on two of those occasions, he was being used as a mind-controlled puppet by alien invaders. 

Invasion (alternately titled Monster Zero) is his second appearance. The action begins on the newly discovered Planet X, located outside the orbit of Jupiter. Two Earth astronauts arrive to explore and make contact with the planet's inhabitants.

Planet X's civilization exists completely underground because (or so the aliens claim) the surface is repeatedly ravished by Ghidorah. Is Earth okay with the aliens transporting Godzilla and Rodan to Planet X? In return, Earth gets a miracle drug that will cure all disease.

That sounds like a good deal, but it turns out the aliens are back-stabbing rats. There's no miracle drug and the aliens are soon mind-controlling all three monsters and calling on Earth to surrender or be destroyed.

Controlling Kaiju to capture Earth is a plan that will be repeated again in 1968's Destroy All Monsters. I think the latter film is better, but Invasion is still a lot of fun. There's some great design work. Planet X's surface is a desolate rock-strewn wilderness that looks pretty cool. The Earth spaceship is neat, as is the Planet X spacecraft (a variation of the standard flying saucer). The monster fights are a lot of fun, though Godzilla's absurd victory dance after an initial fight with Ghidorah is a little bit too silly even for a Kaiju movie. The Godzilla films always worked best when they treated the idea of giant monsters seriously rather than dipping into slapstick. 

But I can't help feeling a little bad for Ghidorah. He's supposed to be a terrifying Destroyer of Worlds. But he just can't win a fight no matter how hard he tries.