The other day I found this movie at a nearby video shop by chance. Contrary to my anticipation, I found this movie quite fun. The movie I saw was in Japanese and Nick Adams' voice was dubbed, but his acting was pretty good, though he pulled up his pants a lot.

This brought me good memories of Mr. Adams. As a kid about ten years old at that time, my father (who was the USA representative for Toho and manager of the Toho La Brea Theatre) and I went to the LA airport to see him off. He was going to Japan to take this movie. He was very friendly and relaxed, he was with his wife and his little boy, he looked very happy and energetic. I remember asking him, Mr. Adams, how are fight scenes taken in movies? He replied with a nice big smile and with a fighting gesture, we really fight and punch! Gasshou! meaning I join my palms together for Mr. Adams and for my late father.

It's the old, old story: an alien race in Devo sunglasses barters a cure for cancer against the loan of Godzilla and Rodan, the only known proof against King Ghidorah, the scourge of Planet X. This is like kids putting a black widow and a praying mantis into a jar so they'll fight. In the last Ghidorah movie it also took the larval Mothra to defeat the flying three-headed beast, but Toho has a short memory and a shorter budget. Guys who wear vinyl suits and never take off their helmets are usually up to something, but only Nick Adams smells a rat with plans for world domination. His suspicions are confirmed when he sleeps with one of the aliens and she immediately pressures him to get married. This means war.

Philosophically, there's something reassuring about the pre-Gamera rubber monster. It is a corporeal manifestation of our worst, most nebulous fears, and as such it is a comfort. The central fact of a giant monster is its implacability. In the best Toho films, giant monsters tend to want nothing. They don't want to eat us; they aren't sending a message. They're just here, and they're just terrible. Ghidorah makes his entrance in this movie, cruising over a landscape already blasted and inhospitable, by blasting it and making it even less hospitable. No reason; just wanted to destroy something. That's what a rubber monster does. It cannot be appeased. The only personality trait it possesses is anger. It is made of the stuff that governs the universe: it is unadulterated chaos personified. All we can do is stare, and hope that another giant monster knocks this one off its present course.

In fewer than fifteen minutes of actual monster action, nobody gets anywhere near Tokyo, but Rodan whips hurricane winds over a small town while Ghidorah strafes it. There isn't much destruction, but what there is of it is quality miniature work - shingles flying, Buicks rolling through showroom windows, the Mobil Oil offices on fire. Godzilla is more acrobatic than usual, though his suit sags at the joints to accommodate his new athleticism. He employs the Ali shuffle here for the first time, dancing between Ghidorah's death rays, but not for about an hour and a half, and not for long.

Nick Adams wears a Byzantine combover, which from certain angles seems to feature no fewer than five partings, but he was a Toho kids'-movie favorite, probably not least because he gave the Japanese actors a blonde to be taller than. Adams' suicidal rebel image, cultivated after the death of James Dean, played out when he died of a drug overdose three years after his appearance in this film. Maybe he saw doom in the specter of another diminutive blonde on the Japanese rubber monster movie horizon - Richard Jaeckel.

This was one of the first Godzilla films I can recall watching on prime-time network television when I was growing up (back then it went under its Americanized title of simply, MONSTER ZERO). Though pretty far-fetched, it's still a highly enjoyable offering in the Toho series and gives us another chance to see Godzilla and Rodan join forces against the popular three-headed King Ghidorah (Monster Zero).

This time the widescreen English dubbed version is an asset, as American actor Nick Adams adds some spice to this one, since it's always fun to hear his nasal Brooklynese voice delivering such entertaining macho lines of gibberish as: "you stinkin' rats! What have you done to her?" Adams plays one of two astronauts sent to the newly discovered "Planet X" where he meets an alien civilization forced to live underground in order to avoid frequent attacks by Ghidorah up on the surface. The leaders ask our heroes to help them obtain the services of Earth monsters Godzilla and Rodan to help them vanquish 'Monster Zero'. But all may not be quite as it seems...

Some fans don't like the fact that the monster battles are kept to a minimum this time, but they're pretty good when they arrive and it's an added kick seeing the desolate looking Planet X in outer space, with its mountains, craters and dark, star-lit skies. The addition of aliens, flying saucers and double-crosses help make this a good time for Godzilla lovers. *** out of ****