Godzilla. Over the years, that name has come to be a neon sign declaring, "Bad Movie Alert!" And the sight of it certainly paints quite a few mental pictures -- actors in cheap, unconvincing costumes bumbling around miniature city sets; American voices tastelessly slapped over Japanese mouths -- but hold on! This particular movie was made not in the 1970s but in 1994! Has Japan improved its movie-making abilities at all in the last twenty five years? Ha. Ha ha. Ha ha ha.

While watching this movie, I saw ALL the requirements for a top-notch bad movie. I saw the same footage of monsters being played more than once, I heard the worst possible dialogue you could imagine, and I saw backgrounds that were so obviously two-dimensional that this movie almost seemed like a play. First, I will run through the only originality in this movie's plot, then I will get back to my ranting and raving. Apparently, small portions of Godzilla were ripped off and taken into space during fights between him and two different monsters. These parts were sucked into black holes (which is where everything strange happens when bad moviemakers have no idea how else to explain the existence of an alien), and inside the environment of the black holes, they grew at an appalling rate until -- Boom! -- there was Space Godzilla. Apparently Godzilla has a sickeningly cute little son thing in this movie, and Space Godzilla shows up and roughs his son up, then flies away. At that moment, the battle lines are drawn between the two monsters, and for the rest of the movie, the government and Godzilla fight with Space Godzilla.

First, the part of this movie that actually compelled me to laugh audibly at 12:00am was the dialogue. One of the entertaining parts of any Godzilla movie is, of course, watching the tasteless dubbing, but in this movie the American dialogue itself is infinitely more entertaining than watching the characters' mouths. It's as if the writer wrote each scene with a single line in mind, and once it is spoken, nobody quite seems to know what to do next. For example, in one scene, the Chief Psychic (?) of the group studying Godzilla's behavior suddenly announces, "A space monster is coming!" There is an extremely long pause, and the other guy in the scene asks, "What?" There is another long pause, and then it switches to the next scene. Most of the dialogue in the movie is just as uncomfortable, rushed, and incomplete, but a great deal of it is funny for other reasons. Several points in this movie exhibit the bad habit of announcing what has happened directly after we have just seen it happen. In one scene, one man shoots a gun at Godzilla, who has just come out of the sea and is doing little more than pacing back and forth and roaring. Whatever is in the gun hits Godzilla and expands into some kind of communication device on his neck. The guy with the gun announces, "I got him!" The onlooker with him replies the only thing he can: "Cool!"

Straying from the subject of dialogue for a moment, a very laughable scene develops as a result of this accomplishment. The Chief Psychic is hooked up to some kind of headset resembling a medieval helmet that will help her communicate with Godzilla. She begins telling him mentally to go to some place, and then one of the guys there inexplicably rushes over to the machine and increases the signal. "No! Don't do that!" someone else cries, and there are a few sparks and the Chief Psychic grimaces and faints. What? A signal that was being sent OUT from this girl is amplified, and SHE is unable to contain it and faints? This is bad movie making at its best, friends.

Back to the dialogue. The funniest dialogue in thie movie involves someone saying incredibly obvious things or repeating the same thing, just to make sure EVERYONE understands precisely what is happening. Two of the best examples of this occur in space, where a crew of astronauts in a ship (that is, for no apparent reason, shaped like a monster) are fighting with Space Godzilla. As this scene occurs within the first half of the movie, the good guys are, of course, getting their butts kicked. After a particularly jarring shot, someone announces, "The lasers aren't working!" -- Are you ready for this? -- "I think they've been hit!"

The next happens shortly afterwards as Space Godzilla is seen coming DIRECTLY towards the cockpit, taking up the view of the entire window. Still, someone sees the need to yell, "Monster coming straight for us at twelve o'clock!" Groaaan.... The scene above also contains two more classic bad movie elements. One is the asteroid shower the ship is flying through: two invisible sheets with asteroids painted on them -- one behind the ship and one in front of it. The second element, which makes Godzilla movies so incredibly annoying and boring, is when a monster is shot repeatedly by lasers or bullets, and they do no damage at all. Entire scenes were devoted to a monster standing still and roaring in anger as humans fired laser after laser at him, never harming him in the least.

I could say so much more about this movie. There's Godzilla's roar, which is obviously metal being ground or scraped against something. There's the phenomenon I like to call "invincible cuteness": a cute character who supplies supposed comic relief is only frustrated by something that is harmful or fatal to another character, usually one who is much bigger than the cute character (in this case, the fatal things are land mines). There's the stupid childlike music, my favorite being the purposeful, determined music played by some sort of marimbas whenever someone is going undercover and trying to get up close to Godzilla. But I'll leave all that stuff to all you bad movie lovers out there: this is a classic. It would be infinitely better if watched in a group, though.

Rating: 3 turkeys.

Scene to watch for: Godzilla paces back and forth and roars.

Best line: How can I decide?

Things that make you go "Huh?": Why Space Godzilla has icicles on his back.