Image via Toho
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Jeremy Urquhart
Published 45 minutes ago
Jeremy has more than 2100 published articles on Collider to his name, and has been writing for the site since February 2022. He's an omnivore when it comes to his movie-watching diet, so will gladly watch and write about almost anything, from old Godzilla films to gangster flicks to samurai movies to classic musicals to the French New Wave to the MCU... well, maybe not the Disney+ shows.
His favorite directors include Martin Scorsese, Sergio Leone, Akira Kurosawa, Quentin Tarantino, Werner Herzog, John Woo, Bob Fosse, Fritz Lang, Guillermo del Toro, and Yoji Yamada. He's also very proud of the fact that he's seen every single Nicolas Cage movie released before 2022, even though doing so often felt like a tremendous waste of time. He's plagued by the question of whether or not The Room is genuinely terrible or some kind of accidental masterpiece, and has been for more than 12 years (and a similar number of viewings).
When he's not writing lists - and the occasional feature article - for Collider, he also likes to upload film reviews to his Letterboxd profile (username: Jeremy Urquhart) and Instagram account.
He is also currently in the process of trying to become a Stephen King expert by reading all 2397 novels written by the author.
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If you’ve seen your fair share of giant monster movies, then you're probably familiar in the know when it comes to how silly they can sometimes be. And even if you've not seen many, you can probably guess why, since classic giant monster movies often involve one or more actors in big rubber suits, sometimes stomping around miniatures of varying quality, and sometimes battling each other.
Certain films (like the original Godzilla) can still be taken seriously when watched today, but then others feel a good deal goofier. Also, for what it’s worth, most of the following titles were probably supposed to feel campy, goofy, or humorous to some extent, so them being described as goofy really isn't a bad thing. You probably won’t find much that’s frightening or thought-provoking here, but these movies are fun if you like giant monster films that are willing to feel over-the-top and bombastic.
10 'Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah' (1991)
Image via Toho
Get used to seeing the name Godzilla pop up a bunch here, because the series is noteworthy for how large and varied it is (tonally and genre-wise), so there are a fair few Godzilla movies that are pretty amusing. Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah is a film about time travel, and using it to seemingly take out Godzilla before he’s too powerful, and even for movies about time travel, it’s pretty gonzo.
Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah does something new with the series, even if the time travel stuff is likely to feel familiar to certain other stories if you know your science fiction.
It’s a bit uneven, but most of Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah is a lot of fun, and you do get the sense that, to some extent, the ridiculousness was intentional. It does something new with the series, even if the time travel stuff is likely to feel familiar to certain other stories if you know your science fiction. But time travel with big monsters? It’s something a bit different. It gets a pass. It’s a blast.
9 'Gamera vs. Guiron' (1969)
Image via Daiei Film
Since Godzilla, a big lizard monster, was popular, other people wanted to capitalize on the success of said series, and Gamera was probably the next-best thing. Granted, the Gamera series was pretty messy for a decade or so, feeling like a knock-off of Godzilla, albeit a sometimes fun one, but then Gamera became a bit more prestigious thanks to a genuinely great trio of Gamera movies in the 1990s.
Before then, though, Gamera vs. Guiron was probably your safest bet if you wanted an entertaining movie about Gamera, because it’s one of the most bizarre. Guiron is a monster with a big knife for a head, much of the film takes place on a planet other than Earth, and it’s also bizarrely violent for something that otherwise feels so kid-friendly (and honestly kind of childish). It’s a mess of a film, but oddly engaging, largely because of how weird and offbeat it’s willing to get, even by the standards of a series that features, as its titular character, a giant turtle that flies and breathes fire.
8 'Godzilla vs. Kong' (2021)
Image via Warner Bros. Pictures
Somehow, even though Godzilla vs. Kong is incredibly silly, it’s not the goofiest movie that features both Godzilla and King Kong, as that honor would have to go to their first smackdown (more on that in a bit). This one does indeed deliver what you'd hope for, based on the premise, and honestly not too much more. Well, there is more, but it’s forgettable.
This is one of those giant monster movies that amplifies the idea that “monster movies have boring human characters.” It’s not accurate, since Godzilla Minus One and the original film (plus however many others) do exist, but some giant monster movies really focus on the giant monsters, making the non-monster stuff a bit boring. In that sense, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire could’ve been a step in the right direction, or maybe it was a bit too much. There’s an argument to be made either way, and maybe it deserved this spot in the ranking more than Godzilla vs. Kong, but oh well. There’s only so much you can say about these types of monster flicks.
7 'Death Kappa' (2010)
Image via Tokyo Shock
According to Letterboxd, one of the three production companies that funded Death Kappa is called “Fever Dreams,” and that sounds about right. This movie dives into any genre it can, being about a nuclear disaster that causes a monster to threaten the whole of Japan, but then there’s also a mythical water goblin that gets irradiated too, and so people start hoping said water goblin will save Japan.
And yeah, just writing all that out feels like a fever dream. Death Kappa is kind of a horror movie, on top of being a disaster film, an absurdist comedy, a fantasy movie, an action film, and a bit of a sci-fi one, too. Calling it tonally all over the place wouldn’t even qualify as surface scratching, and while most of the time, you need to see a weird movie to believe it, seeing Death Kappa still might well not be enough to actually believe that it exists.
6 'Godzilla vs. Hedorah' (1971)
Image via Toho
Godzilla vs. Hedorah is a bit of a nightmare, but in a good way. There is something genuinely off about the way this one feels, because the main enemy is unique and more than a little unsettling. Hedorah is an alien being that feeds off pollution and mutates, standing in for environmental destruction the same way Godzilla himself initially stood in for the devastation nuclear weapons could cause.
So, two existential threats to humanity, made into literal monsters, battle it out in what would have to be one of the most stylistically unique Godzilla films ever. The quirks here, plus the odd tangents, are sometimes amusing and sometimes more deranged and therefore kind of creepy. Godzilla vs. Hedorah just feels like it doesn’t care, and it boldly does its own thing in a way that’s hard to wrap your head around, even after multiple viewings. It’s one of the strangest Godzilla films, and maybe also one of the most compelling and memorable.
5 'King Kong vs. Godzilla' (1962)
King Kong vs. Godzilla - 1962Image via Toho
Somehow, King Kong vs. Godzilla functioned almost like a parody of crossover movies at a time when crossover movies weren’t nearly as popular. Some Universal Horror movie monsters had shared the screen, but the era of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and other shared universes? Still decades away, at this point, but King Kong vs. Godzilla already felt like that sort of movie pushed to its logical extreme.
And it came at a time when King Kong had only been in a couple of feature films, and a time when Godzilla himself had also only been in two. It was important for the overall legacy of both individually, as well as for making them share the screen for the first time, but the whole thing is surprisingly flippant and goofy, rather than reverential or anything. Maybe they still needed more of a legacy before you could take that approach, but it makes King Kong vs. Godzilla a novel watch nowadays, and that climactic fight is still a blast.
4 'King Kong Escapes' (1967)
Mechani-Kong striking a pose in King Kong Escapes (1967)Image via Toho
After King Kong vs. Godzilla, there was a sequel of sorts in the form of King Kong Escapes, which was a Japan/U.S. production, setting it apart from the other King Kong movies. Actually, calling it a sequel isn't exactly accurate, but it does have a similar feel and style, as well as having comparable special effects, and Ishirō Honda did serve as director for both.
Narratively, King Kong Escapes kind of does for King Kong what Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla eventually did for the Godzilla series, but some years earlier! There’s a robot called Mechani-Kong that ends up going head-to-head with the real King Kong, and like many giant monster movies of its era, it’s best when it focuses on the monsters battling. The schlocky stuff delivers, but there are admittedly other stretches of King Kong Escapes that prove a little patience-testing.
3 'Godzilla vs. Megalon' (1973)
A strangely wholesome Godzilla movie, Godzilla vs. Megalon came just a couple of years on from the aforementioned Godzilla vs. Hedorah, and was a whole lot breezier and more kid-friendly. Gigan, who can be a fairly vicious foe, returns from the previous movie, Godzilla vs. Gigan, and Megalon also has a pretty neat design, but neither feel like they ever really have a chance of winning.
That’s largely thanks to Jet Jaguar, who steals the spotlight here as an eventual ally of Godzilla, being a robot that can change size on the spot, meaning it can pretty easily battle kaiju-sized foes. Godzilla vs. Megalon is very silly throughout, capped off with the infamous “Godzilla flying kick” scene that pretty much justifies the film’s entire existence (though the tender handshake shared between Godzilla and Jet Jaguar only a little later proves almost just as iconic).
2 'God Raiga vs. King Ohga' (2020)
Image via SRS Cinema
Very few people have heard of God Raiga vs. King Ohga, so that’s either a testament to it very much not being for everyone, or it being extremely underrated. It functions as an absurdist parody of kaiju movies, at least seemingly, or maybe just hopefully. If it’s not a deconstructive and purposefully incompetent movie, then it could well be one of the most lazily assembled films in cinema history.
Nothing makes sense, no special effects look convincing, and countless filmmaking errors (again, hopefully of the intentional variety) remain in the finished product. God Raiga vs. King Ohga is a bit like multiple fever dreams packed into one feature-length movie, and you'll either be forever changed by what you see, or you'll swear it was just a dream and keep on trucking with your everyday life. Scientists are still trying to determine which option is preferable.
1 'Godzilla: Final Wars' (2004)
Godzilla in Godzilla: Final WarsImage via Toho
Of all the movies in the Godzilla series, the one that’s clearly the goofiest would have to be Godzilla: Final Wars. It’s also one of the more divisive Godzilla films, since it takes very little seriously and is almost exhausting in how much it throws at you. There are aliens trying to take over the Earth, using past Godzilla foes to do it, and then an eventually unleashed Godzilla ends up having a series of rematches with most of them.
All the while, the human characters get in on the action, and so Godzilla: Final Wars is just non-stop chaos, explosions, smackdowns, and (sometimes comical) firefights. If you wanted to call it one of the goofiest action movies of all time (with or without monsters), it wouldn’t exactly be a tricky thing to argue. It’s decidedly not for everyone, but if you can get on board with what it’s putting out, it’s endlessly silly fun.
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Action
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Release Date
December 4, 2004
Runtime
125 minutes
Director
Ryuhei Kitamura
Writers
Wataru Mimura, Isao Kiriyama
Cast
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Masahiro Matsuoka
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Rei Kikukawa
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