by canofhumdingers » Wed Oct 14, 2015 5:46 pm
Wanted to expand on my vote above...
Gigan is good, but I also feel it's overrated around here. It's a very safe, by-the-numbers Godzilla film with a rather memorable human cast. But it also suffers from its shoestring budget. It's good, but not great. It's certainly in the top half of the list for me, but that's about it. (Although Gigan himself is an awesome monster and probably my second favorite pure villain behind Ghidorah).
GTTHM on the other hand is the peak of the golden age, imo. It's easily my favorite Showa film and possibly my favorite Godzilla film. It certainly has its flaws too (such as the rapid fire day-night-day editing), but they are generally less glaring (and often corrected in the U.S. cut) and usually a direct result of the extreme production schedule (which I guess Gigan also had...). But it has a fun cast, a really cool and unusual outerspace-fairytale-60's spythriller-story, one of the best Godzilla suits, great monster fights, the introduction (and best appearance/execution, imo) of the coolest villain monster in the series, the first multi-monster mashup, and a great score. There are films in the series that might be better from a technical or critical level, but none deliver the same overall package that is Ghidrah the Three-Headed Monster!
It is the quintessential Godzilla film.