War of the Gargantuas (1970)

There is a reason we still watch and love Jurassic Park today beyond the fact people like watching dinosaurs eat lawyers. It's because, past all the special effects and CGI, the story underneath it all is sound. Sure, it's total B-movie logic and isn't much past being an effective monster movie, but even when the dinos aren't on screen the human characters and their motivations are strong enough that you are just as happy to watch them go about their business as you are watching raptors tear each other apart. (...okay, maybe not quite, but still pretty close.)

Most kaiju, or Japanese giant monster movies, face this problem a lot. A lot of movies in the Godzilla franchise, like Godzilla vs. Megalon or Terror of Mechagodzilla, seem to be working backwards, thinking of cool fight scenes then making a plot around how these guys would meet up, usually by aliens or mad scientists, and having a team of spies or police or whatever have to take them down while Godzilla deals with the monster. Because the two concepts are never truly connected in a meaningful way, these movies tend to feel lopsided, and the viewer rightfully doesn't really care what's going on with the humans, but just wants to see some monsters destroy buildings.

I was expecting something like this with War of the Gargantuas, a movie with a history so convoluted it's hard to imagine it being made at all, much less with any sense of competence. The movie is technically a sequel to Frankenstein Conquers the World, a remake of Frankenstein that happens to be set in Japan and involves 100 foot monsters, which in turn was a spin off idea of King Kong vs. Godzilla, a movie originally pitched by Kong animator Willis O'Brien as King Kong vs. Frankenstein. But, surprisingly, what I found was a really good, solid monster movie. It's not Citizen Kane, but it's decent for what it is, and strangely enthralling throughout.