Invasion of Astro-Monster revives King-Ghidorah from Ghidorah, The Three-Headed Monster, Rodan, and Godzilla, but doesn't give any of the monsters much screen time. It is telling that my 4-year old son's comment about the whole joint was "are there going to be any monsters?" The sense you get watching Invasion of Astro-Monster is that the Godzilla franchise became as much about getting people out to the movies as anything else. The suspense of watching and waiting for monster mayhem was a great tool for holding people in their seats while some human drama played on the screen.

Invasion of Astro-Monster, as the title suggests, feels more like a sci-fi movie than previous entries. The effects are nice for the period and don't have the cheapness that we associate with lesser B-movie monster flicks. The space scenes show some nice travel and landing on a strange planet, lots of cockpit shots, and visions of life underground on a distant planet. The spaceman costumes are the best! Invasion of Astro-Monster even features a Western actor, Nick Adams. The dubbing in Japanese is perfect but the expressions on Adams' face are All-American. Adams and his Japanese counterpart are traveling to Planet X at the beginning of the movie. The planet turns out to be inhabited by a very strange bunch of nervous spacemen. I'd be nervous also if Ghidorah was tearing up my house. The spacemen propose a strange deal to the two astronauts: Return to Earth and broker a deal for Godzilla and Rodan to come to Planet X in order to drive off King Ghidorah. In exchange, the spacemen offer the cure for cancer. Someone should have reinforced for the folks on Earth that old adage about when things are too good to be true... As soon as the spacemen have the two Earth monsters, they obligingly hand over some audio tapes containing the cancer cure while Godzilla and Rodan hand Ghidorah his three-headed ass. The astronauts depart Planet X watching the Earth monsters in their rear-view mirror like wistful parents looking back at their kids while driving away from summer camp.

If anyone tries to give you the cure for cancer on a reel-to-reel tape, you should start asking questions. Audio tape is better for delivering doomsday messages about spacemen taking over Earth, which is exactly what comes out when the eager scientists press "play" back on Earth. To make matters worse, the spacemen are turning the Earth monsters against their old home and bringing out Ghidorah for back-up. Spacemen controlling Earth's most powerful monsters like puppets? What will Japan do to save us all this time? As luck would have it, an inventor always seems to have the answer. Unlike the dark, brooding inventor of the first film that made the ultimate sacrifice, the inventor of Invasion of Astro-Monster is a kooky guy that is carrying a torch for the Japanese astronaut's sister. He realizes just in time that the spacemen of Planet X live in mortal fear of a sound emitted by his "Lady Guard" personal alarm system. Cleverly disguised as a purse-sized compact, the Lady Guard proves to be the undoing of the spacemen and the key to freeing Godzilla and Rodan from the weird Planet X mind control. All's well that ends well, except that the hot Planet X ladies turn out to be clones. I ran into something like that during college, but that's a story for another day.

If you didn't get enough of King Ghidorah in Ghidorah, The Three-Headed Monster, you will definitely need to jump on Invasion of Astro-Monster. The focus on developing story rather than spending 50% of the movie knocking down Japanese cities may please some and irritate others. Regardless of where you fall in this spectrum, if you like monster movies or old sci-fi you will appreciate this great piece of film history.