Break out the bibs and butter, because Godzilla vs the Sea Monster is the Greatest Movie EVER!
Click on the movie poster or the title above to download the review.
Review in a Nutshell: Godzilla hackey-sacks with a giant shrimp. What more do you want?
This movie contains:
You don’t have to be evil to sport an eyepatch, but it helps.
JUMBO SHRIMP!
Is that Godzilla, or a Stoned Cookie Monster?
ERRATA: “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” was actually released in 1969, so Godzilla vs the Sea Monster was actually blazing trails.
The Greatest Movie EVER! Podcast 
More a suggestion than a comment, and it probably would have been better if I made this comment earlier, but my PSP downloads all my podcasts, and I almost never come to the site, but anyways, here it goes. I think you should tag the episodes with your co-host, so we can statistically prove who you think are the best. There are other reasons too, I suppose. Also, I really like your podcast.
I agree with you. I think this and most of the Showa Godzilla films are incredible FUN. And like you, I hated Final Wars for all the idiotic human character nonsense (I feel the same about most new Godzilla films) while loving all the human character nonsense in the older films.
I think there is something very different about the two. The new human characters are often so generic, so bland, so obviously false (hey — another 18 year old pop idol girl in plastic armor is going to fight Godzilla; oh look, a team of brooding Matrix kungfu guys with anime hair). The humans in the old films are always so insane — the corn eating hippie, Nick Adams, space monkeys — and they are played by genuinely charismatic actors.
It’s probably no coincidence that the only characters of the modern era anyone remembers are the ones weird enough to have been from the old movies — the balding android from King Ghidorah, the father-daughter team from G2000, and Don Frye as Don Frye.
I know there’s nothing quantifiable in that statement. It’s purely opinion. But it holds true for me. If one sees that as contradiction, then so be it. Like Whitman said, if I contract myself, I contradict myself. I am a large person I contain multitudes.
I also believe this movie began Toho’s long love affair with go-go dancing scenes in their monster movies
Showa era Godzilla flicks are the best. Although I do enjoy aspects of the later eras of G-films.
The bizarre leaps of logic are hilarious. Were they doing drugs during the script writing? e.g. In Godzilla versus King King, JSDF air lifted Kong with weather balloons! WEATHER BALLOONS!
Shinichi Sekizawa must have been high when he wrote “Ghidrah, the Three-Headed Monster”. The plot was aliens from Venus wearing large Elizabethan white Ruff collars threatening earth with a three headed dragon. Pure awesomeness.
Keith, I agree. Showa era G-films had the best human characters. I always liked Akira Takarada’s characters.
Y’know, I’ve always been meaning to pick up the Showa series on DVD, but somehow I’ve consistently managed to not get around to it. If I’m honest, I was kinda more of a Heisei guy (you can call me a heathen if you wish), but that’s probably more to do with Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah being my first Godzilla movie.
But, thanks to this podcast, I’m starting to feel the love for the Showa era again.
Keith, while I take your point about the Showa era having more memorable characters, there are a few more from the Heisei and Millennium eras that stick in my mind than the ones you mention, such as Gondo from Godzilla vs. Biollante (“All this intravenous stuff’s no good for you – stick to smoking!”), Yuki from Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla (no amount of brain bleach will remove the HORROR of naked man-butt), Katagiri from Godzilla 2000 and Akane from Godzilla Against MechaGodzilla.
Okay, the last one might be contestable, but all’s I’m saying is, if I were a sixty-metre tall robot built around the skeleton of the monster I was constructed to battle and armed with a chest cannon that can turn anything into an absolute zero popsicle… I’d want Yumiko Shaku at my controls.
Paul, I’m not bothered if you ignore the rest of the series, but at some point in the future, please could you do a Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah podcast? I’d love to hear your opinions on time-travel shenanigans, Terminator rip-offs, cheap looking laser guns and probably one of the greatest scenes in Godzilla lore (Godzilla reuniting with Shindo in Shinjuku).
Quick follow-up for clarification: I meant to say “Heisei or Millennium series” in my last paragraph.
I also hated Final Wars. Such a stupid Godzilla movie. Never did see this one but I have a special place in my heart for Godzilla vs. Megalon. Wore out my VHS when I was 12.
Saw this and Godzilla vs Megalon thanks to MST3K. I need to see these films without Joel & the Bots riffing from the bottom of the screen.
No Love for the Don Frye mustachio.
Good review of a fun flick. Jun Fukuda is usually woefully under-appreciated and kicked aroun by the kaiju kids, so happy to hear you single out his solid bits in Sea Monster. I’ve always wondered what he could have done with the time and budget of the G films that came before and after his mid-sixties to early-seventies stint, but he’s gone to the great Japanese film director graveyard in the sky, so we’ll never know…
My thoughts on the Heisei series: started strong and things we’re fun until they became a parade of lumbering creatures standing on opposite sides of the screen lobbing optical beams at each other. They really needed some variety in the kaiju action department, but only Final Wars and GMK dared to try anything different.
In answer to your statement, I was born and bred on the streets of Dublin in a place called Finglas but when we fight for pennies and shillings we use sledgehammers to settle it. Garbage bag trousers are optional, of course. Oddly sledgehammers come up again when non-Irish people try and greet me with a jig…;)
When you and M.O.M. talk about the dancing early in the film, are we talking Batusi-levels of bopping or what?