Daigoro Vs. Goliath (1972) – Review

In a world of Godzillas, Gameras and Mothras, it’s often nice to spare the odd thought for the Varans, Gorgos and Mighty Peking Men; old school giant monsters who failed to score franchises or even a follow up movie while their more iconic contemporaries managed to rack up decades of destructive appearances. Such an example of a one-and-done Kaiju is the forgotten Daigoro Vs. Goliath; a family movie that introduced us to Daigoro, a giant, galumping, bipedal, overeating hippopotamus with concertina arms and legs who manages to get one over his titanic contemporaries by actually having his own private porta-loo.
That’s right, Godzilla may have his radioactive heat ray, Gamera may have the ability to fly and King Kong may have a way with the ladies, but none of them can boast about having their own, personalised toilet paid for by the government.

Many years ago, a crazed monster raged across Japan as crazed Japanese monsters are prone to do, but its rampage was brought to an abrupt halt when the military plugged it in the back of the head with a well-aimed missile. However, before the Japanese government had time to figure out what to do with 100,000 tonnes of dead Kaiju laying slumped in the middle of one of their cities, they discovered that the reason the monster went postal is because she was trying to protect her helpless baby after both were woken from there slumber at the bottom of the ocean.
Taking pity on the squawling, infant blob, the government task soldier Saito look after the baby and years later the Kaiju has grown into a hippo-faced creature named Daigoro who would rather stuff his gigantic belly than knock over a building or two. However, Daigoro’s herculean appetite is proving to be a substantial drain on government resources and the money are trying to work out ways to stop the doe-eyed titan from literally eating them into bankruptcy.
After hearing of plans to restrict Daigoro’s growth, certain members of the public such as blustering oaf Kizawa and inventor Mr. Suzuki are horrified and desperately start trying to raise funds to feed the goofy thing, but their combined, blundering efforts are thwarted by public apathy.
However, the plans to stunt Daigoro’s size backfire horribly when a space-dwelling monster by the name of Goliath emerges from a crashed asteroid to indulge in a spot of destruction and the gentle hippo is too weak and small to stop him.
Joining together as a community to not only get Daigoro bulked up, but to give him tips on how to fight, the people realise that their Ruby champion is going to need all the support he can get if he’s going to vanguish his lightning spewing foe.

Daigoro Vs. Goliath is a movie that very much follows in the goofy, crater-like footsteps of the 70s era Kaiju films where things noticably got a little weird and while such blatantly ridiculous Godzilla flicks like Godzilla Vs. Megalon seem to have a lot in common, it’s the painfully kiddie-sentric Gamera franchise that it shares the most DNA with.
Not only do we have a leading Kaiju that’s picked a questionable animal to base its form off of (come on guys, a turtle make a certain amount of sense – but a hippo?), but a lot of scenes are set to the sounds of baying, adoring children or the odd marching song that constantly and loudly underlines the point that Daigoro should do his best. It’s bright, it’s colourful and it’s deliberately childish as hell, but while some Gamera movie are usually a merciless test of the patience of anyone over the age of six, Daigoro has a little more going on that the floppy monster suits would have you believe.
Among the usual, rubbery monster scraps, there’s a genuinely amusing amount of social commentary abound as director Toshihiro Iijima brings up some honestly intriguing scenarios that prove to be fairly unique to the genre. For a start, the whole wrinkle involving the government struggling to maintain funds after taking responsibility for Daigoro after orphaning the crap out of him is not only startlingly original, but it provides the best scenes in the movie as the loving Saito cares for a monster fifteen times his size. Daigoro’s certainly the most humanized of Kaiju as he has his own toilet to do his gargantuan business in and seems to generally understand everything the humans bleat at him and in many ways, his arc casts him as something of a mooching adolescent who has to learn to mature if he’s ever going to prove his worth and halt the marauding of his space nemesis.

Whenever Daigoro of Goliath aren’t on screen, the movie also strives to make the human characters distinct, even if a lot of the things they get up to are often beside the point. The character of Kizawa, for example, seems to trying to invoke the spirit of classic sitcom The Honeymooners as the self-important antics of Kizawa, his dopey mate and his suspicious wife closely mirror the dynamic of Jackie Gleason, Art Carney and Audrey Medows. Elsewhere, the character of Suzuki is the sort of kindly, child-friendly inventor you’d get from a live-action Disney movie has his desperately tries to get such creations as an Aerobike, “Magic” Shoes or a rain making machine to metaphorically make it rain in order to pay for Daigoro’s humongous grocery bills.
However, the biggest draw of any Kaiju movie is, unsurprisingly, the Kaiju and while Daigoro Vs Goliath is fairly rudimentary in this respect, it’s still goofy, silly fun. Not only does my the visibly floppy Daigoro look suspiciously like Gloria from the Madagascar movies have had a succession of debilitating strokes, but the costume, with its Homer Simpson belly and hunched-over neck looks virtually impossible to move around in. Elsewhere, the villainous Goliath is a fairly standard antagonist despite featuring a horn that shoots lightning and a pair of giant mitts that wouldn’t look out of place on Wreck It Ralph. Still, their fights are appropriately silly with wire-assisted flying drop kicks but it’s truly refreshing to see humans getting personally involved in such matters without the aid of tanks and jets – even if the outcome is obviously humorous in a Abbott & Costello, look out behind you, kind of way.

Non-Kaiju fans over the age of consent need not apply, but for giant monster completists Daigoro Vs Goliath, offers a weirdly subversive, hippo-cratic oath of throwaway fun.

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