Attack of the Galactic Monsters (Review)

Attack of the Galactic Monsters

1983 (Yeah, whatever!)

Directed by Godzilla, probably. Maybe. Just an educated guess!

Attack of the Galactic Monsters is one of two (so far) movies that have popped up recently purporting to be edited for American TV movies (usually attributed to Hawaiian TV if a location is mentioned), the other being Monster King Godzilla. This one popped up on the website (!) and is largely a paste job set around the 1977 Toho movie War in Space. UPDATE: It looks like the link is now dead. Be sad=( If you though War in Space was too boring and far too long, and had far too much characterization of the cast, this this is the movie for you! It chops out over 2/3rds of War in Space, and inserts footage of Godzilla kicking various monster butts from the TV series Zone Fighter, a tokusatsu series that guest starred Godzilla occasionally.

Both Attack of the Galactic Monsters and Monster King Godzilla have little real information about them. People theorize that they are legit, or they are a hoax, or mention that they may have seen the tapes at bootleg stands at cons. No one has any real proof in any way. If these are a big hoax, someone spent a lot of time on them, including transferring everything to a VHS tape before digitally saving it for the masses on the internet. One thing that is suspicious is there is no obvious gaps for commercials. I had lots of experience taping things off TV as a lad and know what a tape looks like when it’s paused to cut out commercials, and there are none of those artifacts that I can see. It is possible it was taped with commercials intact, but then they were digitally edited out before the upload. It is also possible that this is the master tape so of course there are no commercials. But neither explains the odd running time, 55 minutes is not really a good running time for a tv show with commercials. So who knows? What I know is I got some extra Godzilla flicks to review on here, and that is totally jawesome.

As so much is cut out from the War in Space film to shorten it and add in Godzilla fights, the movie makes little sense. They barely explain any of the characters’ names, and instead rely on you just going with it. So just go with it! I haven’t seen War in Space in like 20 years, so I needed a cheat sheet, but there should be enough info below to let you know what is going on if you have seen the film or not. Basically, in War in Space, aliens invade the Earth and blow the crap out of it. so Captain Takegawa and the flying drill ship the Gotem (design based on Atragon‘s Gotengo ship) goes to the alien planet to blow up some alien jerks. And there is a horned Wookiee with an axe. Go team Let the Wookiee Win!

The other stuff you need to know is about Zone Fighter, Toho’s best known tokusatsu series from the 1970s, where the Zone Family fought the evil Garogas, who attempted to conquer Earth via sending giant monsters. Zone Fighter and sometimes Godzilla would then horribly murder the monsters, until everyone was defeated by being canceled in the middle of the series. This movie uses up most of the Godzilla appearances and barely uses Zone Fighter at all, except for one sequence where he fights Godzilla. Will there be more info on Zone Fighter episodes shortly? Maybe….

People Roll Call!

Captain Masato Takegawa (Ryo Ikebe) – Captain of the Gotem and target of alien abduction. His daughter is Jun and she always gets kidnapped. It runs in the family.
Grinning Aliens – The villains from the planet WhySoSirius. The Garogas randomly running around in the middle of the alien footage from War in Space.
Hell, the Supreme Commander of the Empire of Galaxy – Jerk from Venus who blows up most of Earth. They then blow up Venus. Now he’s a Supreme Commander IN Hell.
Horned Chewbacca – What a Wookiee!

Monster Roll Call!

Godzilla – Godzilla. King. Monsters.
Zone Fighter – Zone Fighter is a member of the Zone Family who enjoys zoning laws and redistricting debates.
Gigan – Gigan, stop showing up in these awful films! I’m glad you die.
Wargilgar – Wargilgar loves flames. He loves shooting flames and he loves burning stuff up. He doesn’t seem to like being bathed in radioactive fire breath from Godzilla, though. What a hypocrite!
Zandora – Drill, baby, drill! Oh, wait, drilling leads to my demise? If only a lesson could be learned from this…
Jellar – Wishes he was a little bit taller. Wishes he was a baller. Wishes he had a girl that looked good and he would call her. Wishes had a rabbit in a hat with a bat and a ’64 Impala.
Kastom Jellar – Kastom Jellar grows from a ripped off tentacle from Jellar. That’s what happens when you don’t throw those old leftovers in your fridge away!
Jikiro – Jikiro has a magnetic personality. So magnetic he gets horribly murdered by Godzilla and Zone Fighter.
Spideros – OMG it’s a spider, squash it!
Garaborg – Garaborg was Plan C in the episode he was in, after Plan A – murder by cake – and Plan B – hypnosis kidnapping – both failed miserably. Garaborg also failed miserably.

After a bunch of random scenes and even an engagement party, the evil aliens call Gotem captain Takigawa and brag that they have his daughter hostage! The boss alien introduces himself as Hell, the Supreme Commander of the Empire of Galaxy. Not the galactic emperor, just emperor of an empire named Galaxy. Their planet is dying, and they demand to move to Earth. I guess this is an empire with only one planet. The aliens then attack Earth, blowing up city after city as Earth’s defenses are powerless to stop them.

Brave Captain Takigawa does nothing, because the Gotem needs three more days of repair work before it can go into action. I guess the parts are on back order or something. Sorry, Los Angeles, I guess we’ll have to make due without you. Bye, Shanghai! Not the Arc D’Triumph! Where will we go to see triumph in arc form? London Bridge has fallen down…for good!

Captain Takigawa calls…Godzilla! Who pops out of his cave that he lived in on Zone Fighter! Why did you wait so long to call Godzilla? Did you use up all your anytime minutes and had to wait until after 9pm? Because I think this emergency of THE WORLD GETTING BLOWN THE FRAK UP constitutes getting some overage charges!

Godzilla blows up a rocket that turns into Gigan! Gigan, you alien son of an alien! Prepare to die! Godzilla kicks his Gigass!

Laser-gun armed bad guy aliens blast their way into the bunker where the Gotem is and work their way closer to the ship and crew. They demand Captain Takegawa, but instead they just get blasted up by security. Godzilla is still fighting Gigan. At one point Godzilla jams his tail into Gigan’s beak, then uses that to lift Gigan up in the air and slams him back down repeatedly. Gigan sucks!

The Gotem takes off and the alien fleet attacks. The Gotem shot at for a while, then they respond with Aerial Depth Charges (huh?) The Aerial Depth Charges blast up the alien fleet, I guess they really work, too bad this sequence is so boring with just similar shots of the charges launching and things blowing up that goes on forever and ever and is probably longer in the actual film but this is pretty long and it’s so boring I think I’ll take a nap and dream about a world where “Aerial Depth Charges” makes sense and isn’t random gibberish……Zzzzzz……

What? Huh? Oh, yeah, the film’s still going on. It’s the Final Countdown! We’re heading for Venus and still we stand tall. ‘Cause maybe they’ve seen us and welcome us all, yea! Probably not, as Venus is the location of the enemy base there. There was no mention at all before this but who am I to judge. Oh, yeah, I’m the guy on this website, I can judge all I want! So is Venus the location of the Empire of Galaxy?

The bad guys use gas to capture some monsters into balls…Holy Pokemon! The Gotem crew remembers Earth as they leave it. Their remembering, oddly enough, is mainly another monster battle set to sappy music. This bug-looking monster breaths lots of fire and Godzilla fights it. Other monsters are unleashed, things blow up, and Godzilla fights some freaky striped monster as the sappy music continues.

Special focus is spent on Jimmy – the lone white guy in the crew – who is sad because he left his girl behind. And she’s probably dead by giant monster attack now. But Jimmy dies later (or at least he does in the original film, I’m not sure if they bother to mention it here.)

Godzilla is sick and tired of all these third-rate monsters frakking Earth up, and just starts kicking all their butts and ripping off parts of their costumes. Even when centipede guy almost burns Godzilla’s suit, Godzilla keeps fighting. Godzilla literally burns one of the monsters up – the suit is torched! I guess that monster ain’t coming back.

Then Godzilla fights some drill dude. He rips off Drill dude’s tail and beats him with it. Drill guy has gas powers, but they’ve edited out Zone Fighter so Godzilla beats Drill Guy by himself. Take that, Drill Guy! You can’t drilla Godzilla!

The Gotem arrives at Venus and flies through the atmosphere as the film is padded out some. Way to edit all that padding into this short version of the film, geniuses! The Gotem lands and sends out scouts in a party van. The scouts suit up and explore. They fly up into an entrance of some building with their spacesuits’ jetpacks.

Oh no! The aliens blast one guy in the eye! He’s dead, the remaining three dudes carry on. By now there is atmosphere inside so we can see the faces of the guys. The emperor dude spots them on his magic viewer, and the astronauts have a gun battle with the grinning aliens from the tv show, killing another one of the astromen. A third gets killed soon after, the fourth captured by the Emperor.

The Emperor calls Takigawa to taunt him, but Takegawa refuses to surrender. Emperor declares he will execute the prisoners, but the prisoners escape just then, taking a gun and a glowing knife off the guard. Then horned Chewbacca comes to kill them, complete with giant axe that is all Our Hero can shoot at. Stop aiming at the axe, dummy! Eventually he throws the gun at the axe (WTF??) then throws the knife into Horned Chewie, who dies instantly. That was easy… Boo! I wanted some arm-ripping-off action! They escape in space suits back to the Gotem.

Godzilla fights two more buggy alien monsters, who try to double team him as the music gets rather goofy and epic at the same time. Godzilla kills the frak out of these monsters, those are some suits that won’t be back!

Gotem takes off, and suddenly the evil dude’s planet explodes! Wow, massive genocide! And no one bothered to actually show anyone planting bombs or anything. It just explodes because our heroes are awesome or something. Awesome at genocide. Just because you get genocided doesn’t get you a free pass. Hey, since they blew up Venus, won’t that cause problems for Earth?

The evil grinning aliens are still around, they drop another monster off, a pile-of-goo-looking octopus mofo who Godzilla sprints up to in order to kick his butt. Godzilla is really energized to beat this guy, he must have cut him off in traffic or something. Godzilla rips off part of one tentacle, then Godzilla is shocked, shocked at how cheaply the costume is constructed. Tossing the piece over his shoulder, Godzilla fails to notice a second monster of the same kind run into his back. Godzilla is hella mad now. He throws these punks around, then firebreaths them until they are a puddle of goo.

And Godzilla flashes V for Victory! Godzilla is Nixon!

The Joker aliens taunt the Gotem crew via video screen in an actual effect done by the movie mashup guy, so they take to their fighters to retaliate. Jimmy and Miyoshi are in the fighters with other dudes. They blow up some building and do dogfighting with bad guy ships for reasons no one bothers to explain. I guess the Grinning Aliens live there. The big Grinning Alien vessel dogfights the Gotem. In the long dogfight, the Gotem shoots up the bad guy vessel, but it fires some giant super ray at the Gotem, damaging it as well.

ANOTHER monster is stomping around Earth. He’s got a sword and tentacles, and thanks to a brief shot of Godzilla shooting his breath from a different scene, this monster explodes! That was quick! Then a Grinning Alien comes to Earth and turns into a Zone Fighterish/Ultramanish guy and starts fighting Godzilla. Godzilla blows him up after a short fight.

Takigawa pilots the drill part of the Gotem into the alien ship as the rest of his crew flees the damaged vessel. It is a noble sacrifice or something. Takigawa gave his life to kill grinning aliens. Pray for Takigawa’s soul.

This blows up the bad guy ship real good and all them Grinning Aliens, then their wrecked ship crashes into a volcano. A volcano in SPACE! Okay, it’s on a planet, but the planet is in SPACE! In Earth’s solar system. Um… Jupiter’s moon Io? You know what, I don’t care anymore. Whose grinning now, stupid Grinning Aliens?

The Gotem goes back to Earth and Godzilla roars, satisfied that this mashup had him kicking lots of butt. But deep in his heart, Godzilla wonders what the gentle warmness of peace would feel in his soul. Wonders, then destroys the thoughts with his fiery rage!

The end!

Wow, this film was way better than the other one, mostly because the stock Godzilla footage was more novel. Let that be a lesson to you! Use weird crap for stock footage!

March of Godzilla 2011 will continue!

Rated 5/10 (face/off, when Saturn attacks!, pew pew pew!, that’s some good LSD!, I grin at you!)

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Written by Tars Tarkas

Tars Tarkas

Runs this joint!