A follow-up to the 1964 monster mash-up, Ghidorah, the Three-headed Monster, Toho's Invasion of Astro-Monster (1965, but released five years later in the U.S. as Monster Zero) continues to chart the big lug's transformation from Atom Age Menace to lumbering reluctant savior of the planet.
Starring American actor Nick Adams (who'd previously appeared in Toho's Frankenstein Conquers the World) with his voice dubbed into Japanese on the subtitled version (as with the Ghidorah DVD, Classic Media provides both English and Japanese versions of the flick), Astro-Monster takes place in the future year "196x," when a new planet has mysteriously appeared on the other side of Jupiter. A pair of World Space Agency astronauts named Glenn (Adams) and Fuji (monster movie regular Akira Takarada) travel to the new planet, which turns out to be inhabited by pale-faced aliens who live underground. (First indication that the planet is inhabited: our astronauts spy a trail of shoeprints in the planet's soil – proving that a decent pair of well-heeled footwear is appreciated throughout the galaxy.) Planet X, which looks a lot like the crappy asteroid soundstage in Michael Bay's Armageddon, appears to be under siege from King Ghidorah, last seen flying off into the solar system in his debut flick, and the aliens tell our heroes that they need the help of Earth's mightiest homegrown monsters to destroy the three-headed beast. If Earth is willing to let the X-ers "borrow" Godzilla and Rodan, the aliens promise to provide humanity with the cure for cancer.
Unfortunately, the people of Planet X – humanoids in snappy wraparound shades, vinyl spacesuits and helmets with a single antenna on top – don't really intend to honor their part of the bargain. Turns out they wanna conquer Earth for its water, and once they've captured Godzilla and Rodan, carting 'em through space in giant bubbles, they take control of all three monsters to use as weapons against the Earthlings. To this end, we get a prolonged monster bash on the barren Planet X and an even bigger monster fight back on Earth. More buildings (including a Mobil oil refinery) get trashed in this outing than in Ghidorah, but there also appears to be a greater number of visible wires this time out, too.
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