TALKBACK #12: Godzilla vs. Gigan

[Benjamin Haines]

^ Very interesting. For a title change like that to occur so late, I guess maybe they took a look at what they had during post-production and realized that King Ghidorah really took a back seat to Gigan in the film. Or maybe they just thought a new monster's name would be more marketable/enticing to kids.

[Russzilla]

[H-Man]

Was that picture taken at the end of filming or during it? It doesn't really make sense to take a huge cast and crew photo any other time but after production has wrapped, but the date on the plaque is 11/2/1971 (Showa 46). That seems like a long way off from the premiere date March 12, 1972. Surely there couldn't have been that much post-production to do.

[MekaGojira3k]

Well regardless of post-production weren't all of the Godzilla films lined up spring releases? Maybe they just finished the film earlier but stuck with the March release schedule.

[ebirahsmeg1]

[klen7]

[MekaGojira3k]

Neat stuff. I especially love that Megalon was an idea/name being thrown around that early.

[king_ghidorah]

Need to rewatch this again. This movie flips a lot in my ratings because the strongest parts of it have nothing to do with the kaiju stuff. The last time I tried to watch this I was very entertained for the human stuff, and kind of just nodded off when the kaiju bits started to happen.

[ebirahsmeg1]

Here are some random, interesting behind the scenes photos of the two lovely main ladies(Tomoko Umeda and Yuriko Hishimi) from GvsGigan:

[Jared]

I love this cheap little movie. The first half features some of the series' most entertaining characters with a creative comic-book effect, and the second is just pure-out monster spectacle, no holds barred. A lot of stock material abounds, for better (Ifukube) or for worse (stock footage used in extremely poor taste). Regardless, it isn't difficult to assume that the people who made GODZILLA VS. GIGAN had a hell of a time doing it.

[EricDent]

I watched this earlier via the recent Blu-Ray release from Kraken Releasing.
While it looks a lot better than I remember it ever did, I kinda wonder why there were no song subtitles for the ending song (and yes I tried all the sub options).

Does anybody know who actually drew all that manga style art?
It looks very similar in style to Speed Racer.

[MrShape666]

I always get a kick out of the fact that the theme park the cockroach guys are building looks pretty lame. If you look at it, it looks like it wouldn't take more then an hour or two to see everything. Of course, they're main plan was world domination, not competing with Disneyland, so it makes a certain kind of sense.

[battrafan]

[Gojira07]

Rewatched this last night, was fun to finally be able to see the speech bubbles - its funny, it didn't really add anything to the movie, but after 20 years of "mystery" knowing it existed but never seeing it was kind of rewarding. This one has always been a personal favorite, but I had a thought while rewatching last night that really stuck with me. Its such a shame how much this movie relies on stock footage, because (Ghidorah aside) the new SFX shots specific for this film are all great. Gigan's initial attack on Tokyo might actually be some of the best looking and paced destruction we get post 64 and before TOMG. Gigan has a few shots that are genuinely epic. I would love to edit that attack and cut out all of the stock footage and see how it plays.