Top 10 Worst Godzilla Movies!

Other than humanity (Roland Emmerich specifically), what would you say has been Godzilla’s most formidable foe over the decades? King Kong? MechaGodzilla? That f*cked-up Giant Crab thingy?

As we rightly highlighted in our Test of Time for the original 1954 GODZILLA earlier this week, there have been 30 goddamn sequels to the mega-monstrosity over the past 65 years. Another is due to rampage theaters across the globe this week via GODZILLA: THE KING OF THE MONSTERS. Now, due to the sheer law of averages, we know that there are really only a handful of truly high-quality sequels in the GODZILLA canon. Most however are embarrassingly bad, chintzy, cartoonish, derivative, and unintentionally hilarious. And we’ve picked our ten favorite to poke some fun at this Friday. You ready? Hell yeah! Here are our Top 10 Favorite Worst Godzilla Movies to date!

#10. GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN (1955)

It’s astounding to see the mighty fall from grace Godzilla suffered just one year after originally marauding the filmgoing masses in 1954. The first sequel to the undying franchise, released as GIGANTIS, THE FIRE MONSTER in America, takes every high point of Ishiro Honda’s trenchant anti-war metaphor and turns Godzilla into a risible shell of itself as it does battle with a ludicrous prehistoric beast called the Ankylosaur. The production is woefully inferior to the first film, devolving a serious-minded and FX-driven parable into mindless piece of frivolous entertainment. Put it this way, Godzilla may have raided again, but director Motoyoshi Oda never made a single ever again. Godzilla retired his ass!

#9. GODZILLA VS MEGALON (1973)

As you’ll notice when our list progresses, this Jun Fukuda fella is almost solely responsible for every damn horrendous Godzilla sequel since the aforementioned GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN. In GODZILLA VS MEGALON, Fukuda directs Godzilla in a battle to save to the underground kingdom of Seatopia (yeah, really) as it squares off with not only a giant beetle, but Rodan as well, Godzilla’s primary foe from the film released one year prior. If that wasn’t ludicrous enough for you, consider how a size-shifting robot named Jet Jaguar uses his independent mind to conjure Godzilla into battle. Believe it or not, Toho actually had a fan contest to allow children to choose the next hero in the film franchise, and Jet Jaguar was the winner. What a gimmicky crock!

#8. GODZILLA 1985 (1984) 

What in the mother*cking hell? How does Raymond Burr appear in the 1956 version of GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS, disappear for 30 odd years, then reappear in the atrociously bad GODZILLA 1985, which, having been released in 1984, couldn’t even get its own title correct? Craziness! Even more insane is how GODZILLA 1985 had every reasonable opportunity to be decent. Not only had the special FX advanced greatly in Japan by the mid-80s, the chance to do something special for the 30th anniversary was there as well. Alas, both opportunities were utterly squandered in a movie that, despite knowing how bad it is, laboriously pains to become what we call around here an “awfully good” movie. Unfortunately, nothing good can be spotted!

#7. GODZILLA: FINAL WARS (2004) 

As controversial as this one might be, for GODZILLA: FINAL WARS actually has its fair share of fans and defenders, there’s no way in a flame-roasted hell that we’d ever think the film ranks very well among not only GODZILLA flicks, but among director Ryu Kitamura’s finest films as well. Hell, FINAL WARS makes Kitamura’s MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN look like an undisputed masterpiece by comparison. Marking the 50th anniversary of the titular mega-monster, FINAL WARS pits Godzilla against a race of monstrous extraterrestrials, space mutants and the old standby, Gigan. Alas, with an overstuffed runtime of more than two hours, a parade of cheap-looking CGI and the uninspired design of primary foe Monster X, FINAL WARS is one giant hokey, jokey cartoon!

#6. GODZILLA VS MONSTER ZERO (1965)

How’s this for a Swiss watch of a premise. Aliens from Planet X, found on the dark side of Jupiter (say what now?), solicit the help of Godzilla and Rodan to defeat their prime existential threat, the kickass beastly baddie known as King Ghidorah, a f*cked up flying three-headed dragon of sorts. Now, while King Ghidorah ranks high among Godzilla’s all time adversaries, as far as the exciting realization of such goes, nah, this movie ain’t it. What makes it more disappointing is the fact it’s directed by Ishiro Honda, the director of the original GODZILLA movie who ought to have known far better than to turn his global smash hit of antiwar allegory into a limp and lifeless piece of assembly-line entertainment. Wait a minute. A Honda selling out? You don’t f*cking say?!

#5. GODZILLA VS THE SEA MONSTER (1966) 

And here it is folks. GODZILLA does battle with a gargantuan sea crustacean. What could possibly go wrong with this asinine equation? Sheeeet. All hail Jun Fukuda for almost single-handedly destroying GODZILLA with what, four or five different entries on this list. Here we’re treated with the sheer lunacy of a plot that concerns a shipwrecked barge crashing on a bizarre deserted island. You know what’s up next. A dormant Godzilla is suddenly awoken on the island and forced to do battle with a gigantic crab-monster, amongst other heinous creatures. In fact, the condor on the film is just the Rodan costume redressed, signifying how cheap and careless the moviemakers felt about the material.

#4. GODZILLA VS SPACEGODZILLA (1994)

Good god. I mean, of all the GODZILLA pictures, this is not only one of the absolute worst, but its title is so lazily unimaginative that it serves as a round referendum of the entire film-watching experience. Indeed, GODZILLA VS SPACEGODZILLA is a face-palming laughing stock of epic proportions, boasting a premise in which Mothra takes into outer-space a combined genetic code using DNA from Godzilla and Biollante (a giant flower, actually one of the better assailants of the franchise), the result of which is an ultra-jacked-up Zilly extending his reign of terror to the cosmos. Even sillier? Godzilla doesn’t only face off with the JASON X version of itself, he must battle evil intergalactic robots as well. Dead ass.

#3. ALL MONSTERS ATTACK (1969)

Oh dear, now we’re into some serious award-winning schlock and swill up in this batch. If you’ve never seen ALL MONSTERS ATTACK, congratulations, please keep it that way. This kiddy cartoon of a movie essentially amounts to an anti-bullying family film. Peep this sad setup. A teased and taunted schoolboy in Japan makes a wish to visit Monster Island. When his wish is granted, the kid forms a sappy bond with Godzilla’s son (see below), who also happens to be bully victim. Not to make light of bullying, but good lord, this shite’s hardly north of a goddamn Teletubbies episode. Somehow worse is the fact that the film is directed by Ishiro Honda, the one man as director of the ’54 OG that should have known better. Damn you, Honda!

#2. SON OF GODZILLA (1967)

As we’ve learned above, anytime Godzilla’s son makes an appearance, a terrible movie is to be found. Such a trend stemmed from Jun Fukuda’s SON OF GODZILLA, which, as you can witness in horror with your own two orbs, resembles a nonthreatening cross between a lump of clay and deformed baby seal. WTF was Toho thinking with this abomination? This shite is so terrible it marks the second GODZILLA flick in the franchise, after the aforesaid GODZILLA VS THE SEA MONSTER, to be sold directly to TV rather than released theatrically. And rightly so. Plot-wise, the embarrassment continues. After locals of an island discover a large egg that hatches a young Godzilla, dubbed Manilla, papa Zilla shows up to save his kin and then go on to teach him survival skills and whatnot. Pfft. GODZILLA? More like THE LAND BEFORE TIME BEFORE TIME!

#1. GODZILLA (1998) 

Nope, not even Ferris Bueller himself could save the soulless and preposterous American redo of GODZILLA, helmed by German spectacle-hound Roland Emmerich, in what is largely considered one of the all time movie remake flops. To be fair, no one could. Not Bueller, not Jean Reno, Hank Azaria, Kevin Dunn, Michael Lerner, Harry Shearer and all the other bona fide character actors who took a hefty paycheck to participate in a big, dumb, loud, unbelievably glum mess of a movie. It starts with the idea of even trying to appropriate such an international classic with an American bent, and extends right on down to the insipid screenplay that strips all of the salient parts of the original and replaces them with hollow, totally vapid action sequences that kind of make Michael Bay’s contemporary, ARMAGEDDON, an undoubted masterwork by comparison. Trust me, I’m looking at this sad bastard on the SyFy channel right now as I type. Man, f*ck this movie!