Goodbye Godzilla: Ending Eras in TERROR OF MECHAGODZILLA

By Christopher Stewardson

Terror of Mechagodzilla was the least-attended Godzilla film when released in 1975. This might give the impression that it was a lesser — or outright poor — entry in Toho’s famous franchise, but nothing could be further from the truth. 

By the mid-1970s, the boom years were over. Toho was releasing its new Godzilla films through the Toho Champion Festival, a children’s entertainment event held nearly three times a year between 1969 and 1978. Several key staff members had either passed on (as in the case of special effects director Eiji Tsuburaya) or had left. Toho itself had been restructured, with special effects films like those in the Godzilla series produced through a subsidiary: Toho Eizo. Meanwhile, most of Toho’s popular film series produced during the 1960s (its “Young Guy” films with Yuzo Kayama, its “Company President” comedies, etc.) had ended, in line with a wider depression in the Japanese film industry. That the Godzilla series made it as far as 1975 is a testament to its staying power, and to producer Tomoyuki Tanaka’s efforts to keep it alive. However, despite some truly brilliant films made during this period, like Yoshimitsu Banno’s bold and frightening Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971), the Godzilla series also ultimately drew to a close. Terror of Mechagodzilla would be the last film in the original run of films. 

Picking up where Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1974) ended, spacemen from the third planet of the black hole have raised Mechagodzilla from the seabed. Helping to restore the robot creature is Mafune (Akihiko Hirata), a marine biologist scorned by the world of science for his theories that sea life can be controlled. Proving his assertions, Mafune commands a gigantic dinosaur, Titanosaurus. The monster is directed by his daughter, Katsura (Tomoko Ai), a young woman who has died twice in the course of her father’s work – resurrected as a cyborg both times by the spacemen. Her body plays host to Mechagodzilla’s controls. 

As the final film in the original run of films, Terror of Mechagodzilla appropriately synthesises much from Toho’s prior Godzilla and wider special effects canon. By virtue of his casting, Akihiko Hirata obviously recalls his role as Dr. Serizawa in the very first Godzilla (1954), but Mafune is more reminiscent of Hirata’s turn as Shiraishi from 1957’s The Mysterians. Both Shiraishi and Mafune are scientists blinded by respective convictions. Shiraishi worships a decontextualised, dehistoricised idea of “science” above all else, justifying his support for the invading Mysterians and their high-tech conquest. But where Shiraishi eventually relents and destroys the Mysterians, Mafune never turns on the spacemen — and is more compelling for it. 

Upon discovering that the spacemen have placed Mechagodzilla’s controls inside his daughter’s body (the aliens having taken him up on his belief that only living tissue can work to control the robot), he crumbles in despair. But as he said to his own daughter earlier in the film, he’s gone too far now, and so he carries on. He mentions his wife dying in poverty to support him, and his own daughter has died twice in the course of proving his beliefs to the world. Shiraishi’s betrayal of mankind is enormous in scale, but Mafune’s is personalised via his daughter — and is therefore more textured. He’s justified his wife and daughter’s suffering through the importance he ascribes to his work and vengeance. Instead of sacrificing himself like Shiraishi, who rather bluntly states director Ishiro Honda’s thesis about scientific irresponsibility while doing so, Mafune gets shot to death when the alien commander uses him as a shield. A fitting end for a believable villain.

Katsura is also part of this synthesis, appearing like a more developed Namikawa (Kumi Mizuno) from Invasion of the Astro-Monsters (1965). As with her predecessor, Katsura’s mind and body are ruled by machines. She’s the mechanical undead, revived twice by the spacemen to suit their needs – with a suggestion that the spacemen may have killed her in the first place. Her body is rendered a weapon; she is made “a person who is not a person”, as the export dub succinctly puts it. It’s there in Tomoko Ai’s thousand-yard stare or the way she awkwardly turns her head to avoid eye contact, a harrowing disconnection engendered by her father’s ego and the spacemen’s invasion. At the film’s end, in her lover’s arms, she destroys herself to stop Mechagodzilla’s rampage. Death is the only release from the malice inflicted upon her.

Minor details similarly reflect these syntheses. Under their breath, characters ask each other if they think spacemen could be involved. The narrative continuity of the original Godzilla series oscillates between specific ties (e.g., Akiko Wakabayashi as Princess Salno saying Rodan will awaken from Mount Aso in Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster [1964], which was where the monster was buried at the end of his debut film) and vague connections. Nevertheless, by 1975, audiences had repeatedly seen space aliens and cosmic monsters. These conversations and their casual delivery tell us everything we need to know about the world we’re in. It’s a small detail but a good one. 

The music brings everything full circle. For the first time since 1954, composer Akira Ifukube brings back his main title theme from Godzilla. It’s played slower with a grandiose tenor, granting a palpable emotional swell when Godzilla appears for the first time. However, it’s the film’s final track that’s most effective, played as Godzilla wades out to sea. Before its last note rings out, Ifukube’s track is uncertain and worried. Bittersweet. And that’s certainly how I feel at the end of the movie. With Terror of Mechagodzilla, an era was closing. A generation of talent, a set of styles and bold realisations all coming to an end, from the scripts of Shinichi Sekizawa that had shepherded the tonal shifts and developments in the 1960s and ‘70s, to the special effects talent crafted and nurtured by artists like Eiji Tsuburaya, Sadamasa Arikawa, and Yasuyuki Inoue — many of whom had already left the series by the time of Terror of Mechagodzilla. Although figures like Teruyoshi Nakano — effects director for the ‘70s run of Godzilla films — would return for 1984’s The Return of Godzilla, the feel of the original series ended in 1975. And it’s never been equaled or bettered since. 

In some ways, Terror of Mechagodzilla is like Hammer Films’ Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974). Like Terror of Mechagodzilla, Hammer’s swansong for its influential Frankenstein series brought back director Terence Fisher, who, like Ishiro Honda for Toho, had helmed not just its breakout first entry (1957’s The Curse of Frankenstein), but several other horrors that constitute Hammer’s canon. The film also recycles ideas and elements from prior sequels. For example, the potent idea of Frankenstein using asylum inmates as fodder for his experiments was explored in a similar manner in The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958) via the bodies of the poor and sick. Similarly, when David Prowse’s monster stares at the dead man from whom his brain was taken, we see a retread of the painful loss of identity integral to Frankenstein Must be Destroyed (1969). Hammer’s financial fortunes in the decade were grim, and the company (in its most recognisable form) did not survive beyond the 1970s, and so Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell equally signals the end of an era like Toho’s film. 

Let’s look ahead. Godzilla Minus One (2023) was a significant worldwide success, earning itself almost unanimous praise. Despite routinely making baffling decisions as a company (of which its filmmaking apparatus is just one part), Toho is moving to capitalise on sustained interest in the Godzilla franchise. Takashi Yamazaki, director of Minus One, recently announced a new Godzilla film with him at the helm once again. Legendary Pictures, meanwhile, has persisted with its “Monsterverse” offerings, interpreting Toho’s pantheon through bland American blockbuster aesthetics. Yet, for all their faults, the Monsterverse films have offered a consistent stream of films over the last decade, something Toho’s domestic Godzilla films haven’t managed since 2004. This isn’t a bad thing, per se; a film like Shin Godzilla (2016) every few years is preferable to quantity over quality. But this does raise questions about eras, how they’re defined, the decisions and staff members that shape them, and the connections to their respective times and places. 

In turn, this brings us back to the end of Terror of Mechagodzilla. The three key Toho eras of the Godzilla series between 1954 and 2004 (with multiple films and recurring cast and crew — and cognizant of changes within these eras) are all noteworthy for various reasons, but the original run, the Showa era, remains the most consistently imaginative, bold, and indelible. The subsequent series in the 1990s and early 2000s are not without merit, but they are tonally and creatively more consistent — and repetitive. Granted, these later runs didn’t span 21 years (only six and five, respectively), but the Showa era nevertheless remains the beating heart of the franchise. The imagination of writers like Sekizawa, the visual dynamism of special effects cinematographers like Arikawa, or the designs of art directors like Inoue. Never equaled or bettered. 

When the camera pulls away from Godzilla as he wades out to sea, we’re also leaving behind an entire era, a whole generation of filmmakers. 21 years and 15 films. Immortal entertainment.