Invasion of Astro-Monster

Another of the movies that I recently watched because it was about to leave the Watch TCM app was one of the lesser Godzilla movies, Monster Zero. I have to admit to not having seen all that many of the Japanese monster movies, and since the synopsis sounded intriguing, I decided to watch it.

The first thing I noticed is that the opening credits were in Japanese kanji, but without English subtitles. That's because the movie was made in Japan in late 1965/early 1966, and then dubbed (and apparently a bit of post-production) into English for ultimate distribution in the US, with the English-language version not being released until 1970. After the credits, we're treated to a World Space Agency, which has found a "Planet X" that was hitherto unknown to Earth because it was hidden by Jupiter, never mind that this would seem to violate all the laws of physics about how the gravitational field of such a body would perturb the orbits of other bodies in the solar system. (Or, like the asteroids, the mythical Planet X could have broken up under influence from Jovian gravity.)

The World Space Agency is organizing an international mission to the planet, with two astronauts: Japanese Fuji (Akira Takarada), and American Glenn Amer (Nick Adams, who was in the Japanese original; this isn't like Godzilla, King of the Monsters where Raymond Burr's character was inserted for American audiences). Meanwhile, Fuji is protective of his kid sister Haruno who works at the space agency. She's got an inventor boyfriend Tetsuo who her brother thinks is not going to amount to anything so Haruno should be looking for someone better. Of course, we know the two plot strains are going to come together by the end. Tetsuo, for his part, is about to become a success while the mission to Planet X is going on, as a little-known educational toy company offers to buy one of Tetsuo's inventions.

The two astronauts reach Planet X, where they're fairly quickly absconded by the inhabitants of the planet, who live underground due to the presence of the monster Ghidorah. The "Controller" of Planet X tells the two earthlings about this and requests Earth to send Godzilla and Rodan to Planet X to destroy Ghidorah. In exchange, Planet X will send Earth a formula to cure all disease.

Now, all of this should set off alarm bells in any rational human being. And, to be fair, Glenn wants to explore around the subsurface digs on Planet X. But it's not as if they have much choice as the Controller could easily destroy the two of them. So they go along, and find out what the real truth is, which is that Planet X is intending to take Earth over as a colony. And the humanoids of Planet X have even already sent some of their number to Earth, where they're mind-controlling a small number of the Earth population. (At least that would explain UFOs.) If Earth doesn't go along with it, Planet X will send Godzilla and Rodan back to Earth to wreak havoc.

I have't seen enough of the Japanese monster movies to know where Monster Zero fits in with the rest in terms of quality, but apparently this is seen by the fans as a lesser effort. It certainly does have the feel of a lower-budget movie, as though a studio that originally started a series decided to abandon it and a different studio with lesser financial means taking it over. (In fact, the Toho logo is still up there.) The plot isn't much, although for the Godzilla movies I'd think it's more the monsters you'd want to see and not so much the plot. And in that regard, there's not so much of the monsters either.

But Monster Zero is still fun enough even if it's not terribly great. Bigger fans will probably suggest other movies to those who don't know much about the Japanese monster films, but Monster Zero certainly isn't one to be avoided.