A giant, shaggy, green humanoid is rising out of the sea to lunch on unsuspecting humans. Due to their previous work, Dr. Paul Stewart (Russ Tamblyn) and his assistant Akemi (Kumi Mizuno) are called in to help find, and perhaps kill the monster. As the military moves in, Paul and Akemi attempt to prove that this isn’t the adult form of the gentle brown creature they once studied.
It might be nostalgia, but War of the Gargantuas has always worked for me. For a kid (and I was a kid when I first saw it) looking for cool giant monster action, this was the answer. It still ranks as one of my favorite kaiju eiga from the ’60s and ’70s. That has less to do with what it does than with what it doesn’t do. It avoids the mistakes of so many of the others. There are no cute kids. There is no irrelevant human storyline that runs while the monsters are off stage: no alien ape-men, no greedy developers, no toy manufacturers or inventors, and no thieves. There is no unfunny attempts at slapstick. There’s no comedy-relief sidekick. There’s no half-hearted attempt at a theme. There’s no guy in a poorly made rubber suit crawling around on his hands and knees pretending to be a quadruped.
What it does have is a couple of monsters going at it, a lot of city smashing, some folks eaten (loved that), and everyone else trying to deal with it. The monsters look like color coded abominable snow men, and while the makeup isn’t perfect, it is miles ahead of the simplistic rubber suits or marionettes that were so common in other films. (The juvenile gargantua’s appearance is reminiscent of a ten-year-old with a store-bought werewolf costume, but he’s not on screen long).
War of the Gargantuas has a confusing relationship with the inferior Frankenstein Conquers the World. In Japan, where it goes by the title, Frankenstein’s Monsters: Sanda vs. Gaira, it is a sequel. The Brown Gargantua is a regenerated Frankenstein, named Sanda. Yes, Frankenstein is now the name for a species; they even use the word Frankensteins. But is Sanda supposed to be the same Frankenstein that was in the earlier film? He doesn’t look the same (the monster in that film was an Asian guy with a flat head). It depends on who the other characters are. In both movies there is one American research scientist, a Japanese doctor who is somewhat subordinate, and a female assistant that is emotionally involved with the American, but still calls him Doctor. Are these the same people? They have different names, but they do the same jobs, and the girl is portrayed by the same actress. The American is played by second tier actor Russ Tamblyn (“When you’re a jet you’re a jet all the way”), replacing second tier actor Nick Adams. Replacing Nick Adams is always a sign that a project is on the right track. Like Adams in the previous film, Tamblyn speaks English, so is dubbed for the Japanese release. In the American version, all references to Frankenstein are removed. Dr. Stewart is not a specialist on Frankensteins, but on giant monsters. It makes the story less coherent, but as any connection to the earlier movie is a bad idea, it is an improvement.