G Watch: Godzilla v. Biollante (1989)

Watched:  01/30/2024

Format:  DVD

Viewing:  First

Director:  Kazuki Ōmori

Selection:  Me

For the most part, it's not that hard in our modern era to get your hands on most Godzilla movies.  In fact, you can find most of the Showa Era on Max and I've noted the Millennium era movies might be popping up on Hulu.  Plus, there's now that streaming Godzilla Channel on Pluto.  I have a pretty good run of the movies on disc on various formats, so I am good as long as those discs don't let their electrons scramble or something.  And, I've seen almost all of the Godzilla movies (one day I'll finish All Monsters Attack).

But Godzilla vs. Biollante (1989), in any format, eluded me for a long time.  It was out there on disc, but not through standard retailers.  You more or less had to go through eBay if you wanted to get a copy, and even those were pretty expensive as it hasn't been re-released in a decade.  And it never seems to show up on cable or streaming outlets.  It seems the distribution rights are weird on this one film for reasons I don't quite get, but it was originally put out by Miramax in the US, which is probably part of the problem.  

But, yeah, I found a disc cheap as I could, but still more than I wanted to pay, and finally just pulled the trigger.

This movie came out about five years after Return of Godzilla in 1984.  Which was a pretty long time between G movies, especially a direct sequel (I guess theoretically making it the 3rd in the Heisei continuity which refers to the 1954 film, but second of the Heisei era).  And I can't help but feel some things were lost in translation.

But, basically, we're five years after Godzilla came back and fell into a volcano.  In the interim, Japan's preparedness force has been thinking about how to deal with their unruly giant lizard.  They've put together a school for kids with ESP, and begun thinking about bacterial weapons to use against G. 

It seems that after the 1984 attack, mercenaries came in to Tokyo to try to claim genetic samples, leading to a string of mischief.  But only Japan seems to have their samples.   The mischief, though, includes the death of a young, female scientist whose father freaks out and - spoilers - merges her genetics into a rose bush.  And then...  merges that with Godzilla cells.

It's fucking wild, y'all. Because it turns into a giant, mutant rose bush.  

Anyway, there's a whole plot about a shady Middle Eastern country and a shady American company wanting those darn Godzilla cells that plays a bit like espionage, complete with a cool dude dressed like John Wick but it's 1989.  

I would *love* to get a better understanding of how English worked in this movie, because a few characters speak English, and clearly sometimes it's the actual actors - and I think they're delivering the lines phonetically and with competing accents and incomprehensible dialog.  And sometimes characters say things that make no sense at all.  And other times it's like two young American dudes (while incognito, one wears an American flag painter's cap), and their dialog is clearly lifted from bad 1980's action movies.  Wikipedia says Toho outsourced their English to a Chinese company, and I'll be honest:  that didn't go super well.

There's also the intro of Miki, the psychic character who will be in all the Heisei-era movies from this point forward, showing up as a teenager? in this movie, and she's used basically as a living Godzilla detector as G decides to wake up and get out of the darn volcano.

The main characters are kind of the scientist who wants to make his daughter an immortal living plant, a young woman who works at psychic institute who maybe is related to the scientist?  I wasn't sure.  Her boyfriend, who works for a boring company but wants to study in Massachusetts (I assume they didn't just want to commit to MIT or Harvard in the script).  Weirdly, they don't really have plot lines, but they're in a lot of the movie.

But you care about Godzilla, and, friends this movie does not disappoint.  Lots of Godzilla as the heel, but showing up to fight the wayward ways of the genetic scientists making chimera - making this a pretty forward thinking G movie, imho.  

Pretty clearly inspired by the Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors, the creature in this movie is buckwild.  Godzilla is fighting a gnarly rose bush in at least two different forms - one a 25-story rose bush, and the other a mutant plant with a crocodile face.  It is cool af.  And despite what I read were terrible puppeteering challenges, it looks great on screen.  I get the hype over the Biollante monster suits and FX.

I don't want to spoil the ending, but let's just say Jamie and I cheered after Biollante's fight is done.

But before that: amazing Godzilla v Army action, the intro - I believe - of the Masers, lots of smashy-smashy, and a quality showdown with our monster.

Hopefully this gets re-released because I'd like a better handled copy with new translations andsubtitles on the English=speaking guys.