Godzilla’s Revenge AKA “How do ya like that, weirdo?”

I rank and review every Godzilla movie from worst to best starting with number 30 on my list, the most horrible and irritating Godzilla movie ever made: Godzilla’s Revenge (1971).

There’s no such thing as a bad Godzilla movie – well, except for Godzilla’s Revenge. But first, here’s a little back story.

When I was around five or six years old, the Henderson Library and the Henderson Children’s Library merged into a crazy, super library (full disclosure: not actually that big or impressive). My family were library goers, so this was a pretty big thing. The new, improved library was across the hall from a bowling alley. You always got a nose full of bowling alley smells (bowling shoes, lane polish, hardwood) before you entered the library and got a dose of library smells (musty books, paper, dust).

On my family’s first visit to the new super library, I was set loose in the children’s section and was free to find whatever books looked interesting to me. I found a selection of small hardcover books with orange covers about old-timey monster movies like Frankenstein, King Kong, and the most fascinating one, Godzilla. I’d heard about Godzilla and saw a few pictures and some clips on TV, and I loved the idea of a fire-breathing dinosaur. This book described all the Godzilla movies in detail and each movie sounded more fascinating and amazing than the last. Except for Godzilla’s Revenge. Even as a kid, the premise of Godzilla’s Revenge insulted my intelligence.

Fast forward around 20 years later – I had grabbed a copy of Godzilla vs. Megaton on VHS, really enjoyed it, and was on a mission to rent any other Godzilla movie I could find. When I rented Godzilla’s Revenge, my childhood suspicions were correct. It was truly, truly horrible. There were numerous issues:

• All the monster carnage takes place in a child’s dreams. Even worse, a boy fantasizes about befriending Godzilla’s annoying son Minya, and any movie that features Minya is always ridiculous. He blows smoke rings and makes donkey noises, for crying out loud! So it’s even worse when you have to sit through a movie where a child actually wants tot be friends with him.
• Most of the fight scenes are recycled from previous films. The monster carnage is always the best part – not as interesting or fun when you’ve already seen it. The new footage involves Godzilla fighting a really lame and childish monster called Gabara.
• Minya speaks! There was a kid on our street named Carter that had a really annoying voice and called other kids “moose face” as an insult. Minya sounds an awful lot like Carter.
• The original 1954 Godzilla film was a beautiful and moving allegory about nuclear destruction that came on the heels of Hiroshima. This movie contains a very dumbed down message for children about bullying. To spell it out for kids, the message plays out in three different storylines where characters are bullied: by kids at school, by bank robbers, and by the oafish monster Gabara. Kids resent being tricked into learning lessons when they really just wanted to be entertained and amazed.
• The unedited Japanese version isn’t any better. Sometimes when you watch the original Japanese version, the lack of a campy English dub and harsh edits makes the film much easier to watch. In this case, the film is still garbage.

The only saving grace of Godzilla’s Revenge is a really weird piece of music from the soundtrack, highlighted by phenomenal surf guitar and frantic xylophone playing.

It’s obvious that after roughly 15 years of making Godzilla movies, the producers ran out of steam. The Godzilla series took a two year break after Godzilla’s Revenge and returned with some of the strongest entries in the series. Godzilla’s Revenge was a clearing of the palette, and a quick cash cow using recycled costumes and footage to make a few bucks before they could figure out what to do next.

Give this movie a hard pass, unless you’re curious.