I can genuinely say that, without exception, I love each and every Godzilla film Toho has ever made. Even the stupid stuff. Hell, the number of Japanese sci-fi and monster movies I don't like can easily be counted on one hand with fingers left over for flipping people off who run them down for being "fake" or cheesy. It was the goddamned 1960s, you dumb-ass! American special effects were ten times worse than their Japanese counterparts, and I still like a big ol' rubber-suited monster kicking scale models around than I do watching some computer generated shit.

But of all the Godzilla films of my youth, one stood out among all the others as my absolute favorite. And though these days my favorite tends to be Godzilla Versus Mothra, I still have a warm and open spot in my heart for the most bad-ass of all Godzilla films, Godzilla Versus MechaGodzilla.

And I mean bad-ass. From the opening scene of Godzilla's buddy, Angilas, getting his mouth ripped open, you know this is some serious ass-kicking shit. When, later in the film, Godzilla is wounded (son of a bitch!) and blood goes spurting like a geyser or a Lone Wolf and Cub film, you know this isn't a straight-up kiddie film. You're not going to get kindergarten students in micro-shorts dancing a jig with a pot-bellied baby monster. Everything about this movie is bad-ass. The music is bad-ass. The women are bad-ass. Godzilla is even more bad-ass than usual. And MechaGodzilla -- don't get me started! Ghidrah may be Godzilla's most frequent foe, but MechaGodzilla is the only baddie bad enough to go the full twelve rounds with our favorite thunder lizard.

Our action begins with the aforementioned mauling of poor Angilas. What's even more shocking than the buckets of blood gushing from his flapping jaws is the fact that his buddy Godzilla is doing the damage. Or so it would seem. A small wound to Godzilla reveals a shiny interior, and we, like Angilas, figure something weird is up.

But that doesn't stop Godzilla from immediately setting out to wreak havoc across Japan. No sir, this film wastes no time in delivering the giant monster mayhem. When Godzilla sets to smashing up a petrol plant, he gets a surprise visit from ... Godzilla! This freaks everyone out as the two Godzillas face off amid the fiery wreckage. This is easily one of the coolest looking Godzilla fights ever, with smoke and flame surrounding the battling lizards.

Before too long, the impostor Godzilla is stripped of his skin, revealing a sharp looking robotic body. MechaGodzilla! Turns out a race of green space monkeys intend to conquer the planet, and they are using MechaGodzilla to do it. I never understood why, if these space guys are so smart they don't just hit us with a big neutron bomb or something. Instead they always build robots and send monsters. Oh well. It's more fun for us that way, so I suppose it's more fun for them as well. Anyway, these haggard space monkeys aren't nearly as sexy as the space ladies who try to conquer us in Destroy All Monsters, so this time around I have no issue with Earth trying to prevent the take-over.

But rest assured, marauding sexy space ladies in metallic clothes, when you come for the Earth, I will be first in line to sell my race out and do your bidding.

MechaGodzilla is a tough son-of-a-bitch, and the humans feel Godzilla could use a little help. Thus, they summon King Caesar, the ancient mythical guardian of Okinawa. King Caesar won't wake from his slumber until a cute island girl runs down to the beach and sings a jazzy go-go tune to him. Can't say I blame him. When he does awake, he is supposed to be one of those Foo Lions you see dancing in Chinese parades and stuff.

King Caesar isn't really much help. He mostly snarls and shoots rainbow beams out of his eyes before just settling down for his inevitable ass whuppin' at the hands of a superior foe. This means, of course, that Godzilla has to get the job done on its own. To do this, he whips out a super power no one knew he ever had before.

The effects in this film are top-notch, especially after everyone seemed to be just sort of slumming around in the last couple of films. MechaGodzilla is nearly as cool and tough as his own theme song, which is one of the best monster songs ever. King Caesar's song is okay because a cute island girl sings it. And as for Godzilla? Well, what do you think? As always, he's accompanied by his traditional Akira Ifukube originated tune, a song that will dominate monster music forever, in much the same way Godzilla dominates the monster movies.

One of my most vivid memories is of watching this film with my friends from down the street, Roman and Mandy. When Godzilla gets jabbed by MechaGodzilla's finger missiles and spurts blood and falls down, we were all devastated. "Godzilla's down!!!" I remember us yelling in horror. And when the Big G gets back up to kick some cyborg ass, we were cheering wildly. This movie still makes me feel like that.

It was followed up with the inferior Terror of MechaGodzilla, which we will get to soon enough. That movie wasn't much, as far as I am concerned. But it does have Godzilla running in slow-motion, so it's not a total loss. In the 1990s, MechaGodzilla was dusted off one more time, with a new, curvier look that isn't as menacing as the old, spiky model. He was also controlled by mankind instead of marauding aliens. The movie was pretty fucking good, the best of all the new Godzilla films, but the old Godzilla and MechaGodzilla still rule the day in my mind.

If you have fond memories of watching Godzilla movies on tv on Saturday afternoons, then Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla is probably one of the films you saw. Released in the States in 1977 with an awful English dub, this movie is the stuff of which surrealistic memories are made. With the ridiculous story, hokey props, bizarre special effects, and the surprise bonus monsters hidden inside, we almost reached Godzilla Heaven with this tape in our VCR.

All of this fawning should not imply that Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla is a good movie in general. It is, however, a good Godzilla movie, which makes all the difference in the world. That's why it was probably a good thing that Chris' wife, Christina, wandered in during the screening for her first real Godzilla experience. Imagine what she'd been missing up to this point!

Our story begins on Okinawa, portrayed here as a being somewhat backwards and rustic, which is apparently how the Japanese of the time viewed the outlying island. After some hokey posturing by the local royals, we learn that a strange metal has been found in a cave that also holds some prophetic cave drawings about monsters destroying the world. (Why are cave drawings always prophetic? What, cavemen didn't doodle?) Scarily enough, though, the prophecies start coming true and Godzilla appears out of Mt. Fuji, has a brief skirmish with Angorus, and then starts on a tear through Tokyo. This is fairly shocking, because Godzilla was portrayed in the 70's Godzilla films as a superhero defender of Earth. But fear not, it turns out that the Godzilla destroying the city is a disguised cyborg version of Godzilla created by the Black Hole aliens. The real Godzilla confronts his mechanical twin breifly, and then the human charcters are basically left to deal with the world's problems.

Most of the human portion of this movie is structured like a spy movie, presumably because spy movies were wildly popular in Japan at the time. Unfortunately, Japanese spy movie conventions are silly. Spies invariably wear sunglasses and dark clothes, and the bad guys wear either facial hair or vinyl bodysuits. ("Hey Cletus, you think that guy's a spy?" "Yup, I reckon. See that black turtleneck he's got on?") It almost plays like a parody of the James Bond films, except for the fact that everything is presented so seriously.

Our human heroes -- featuring Interpol Agent Namara, an intrepid reporter, the somber Professor Miyajima, and various female hangers-on -- go through various encounters with the aliens. In the end they are (inevitably) captured and watch from the control room as MechaGodzilla threatens to destroy Godzilla. This affords them the opportunity to eavesdrop on the aliens' plans and then foil them after Namara picks the lock on his handcuffs.

This brings us to one of the more ridiculous points of the movie: the alien technology runs a wide spectrum from incredibly advanced to jaw-droppingly primitive. In one scene, the humans force an alien captive to yell "the password" through a solid door so they can storm the headquarters. Somehow they can create MechaGodzilla, who can fly, magically regenerate missiles, and basically kick butt, but a simple peephole in a door is beyond them. When we first saw the alien weapons, we wondered what household object had been cannibalized to make these ray guns: garden hose nozzles? kazoos? salt shakers? tampon applicators?

Not only was the alien technology funny (did we mention the Light Fixture of Death?), but the aliens themselves were great too. We hope it was the English dub, but hearing aliens from "the Black Hole in Galaxy 9" (or something like that) utter lines like "Reach for the sky!" only made us laugh harder. As if being shapechanging aliens whose natural form looks like a cheap gorilla suit weren't challenge enough, their ridiculous dialogue made Christina snort her milk.

Godzilla vs MedhaGodzilla introduces another monster beside the aforementioned MechaGodzilla, and that's King Seeser, the "legendary" protector of Okinawa. Unfortunately, when the universe was handing out legendary protectors, Okinawa slept late and got the left-overs: King Seeser looks like a big friendly doggie and he can't do anything useful in a kaiju (giant monster) battle. Somehow, we don't think slobbering MechaGodzilla to death will work.

You may be asking, "What does an alien invasion have to do with Godzilla and other giant monsters?" The answer is, "What difference does it make?" Godzilla vs MechaGodzilla is all about style, not substance. While that style may be twenty years out of date, it's still great fun -- maybe even more fun that it was back then.