The War of the Gargantuas (1966)

I almost skipped over this movie when it was showing on a Kaiju marathon. That would have been a mistake. The War of the Gargantuas was absurd monster fun.

Unlike a lot of Toho monster movies where the monsters don't show up for half an hour (Godzilla I'm looking at you), the monsters showed up early and often. The big green Frankenstein/Gargantua introduced himself when he fought a giant octopus at sea. The enormous sasquatches were called Frankensteins because their origins were from a lab. For the millionth time, Frankenstein was the name of the mad scientist who created the patched together monster, not the monster. But I digress. The initial brotherly love between the gargantuas was sweet until the ginormous good guy realized his bro was a man-eating monster.

In one scene, a singer aboard a ship belts out what felt like the longest song in movie history called "The Words Get Stuck in My Throat". An interesting choice of words right before the ship was attacked. Big Green liked to eat people whole and then spit out their clothes when they got stuck in his throat.

The actors were about what you'd expect from a monster movie from 1966. I was surprised to see Russ Tamblyn who starred in West Side Story (Riff) show up as one of Frankenstein's scientists. He looked like it was the last place he wanted to be, and I've read he was difficult to work with. Too bad. The people who came to watch the movie were looking to have fun and he missed out on the party. Ifukube Akira's score, familiar from his work in the Godzilla movies was well done as always even if some of the work sounded as if it were spliced in from other films.

What I was most impressed with were the miniatures. The houses were detailed, the forests were well done as well as the weaponry and ships. At times in these movies, the miniature buildings were obviously cardboard, these miniatures looked well crafted.

The biggest drawbacks were the monster costumes. They were bad, not King Kong (KK vs Godzilla) moth eaten costume bad, but not great. On the positive side, the costumes did allow for greater body movement, so unlike Godzilla and his buddies, the monsters' movements were less stilted. Many of the scenes from the movie featured one or both of the Frankensteins which made this flexibility advantageous.

This is a movie only for people who enjoy these old monster movies. You can't go into it expecting great acting and a riveting, logical storyline. War of the Gargantuas was ridiculous, but fun. As always, I score older niche movies on a curve.

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