Five years would pass before Toho returned to Godzilla with the 17th Godzilla movie. The 1989 Godzilla Vs Biolante had some sort of script contest and a dentist won with his story. It was changed before it made it to the big screen but several of his concepts, like the plant creature and the psychic girl, remain in the film. The movie was made for about $5 million and it sold a couple of million tickets which brought in $7 million. It was directed by Kazuki Omori, who also re-wrote the script the dentist turned in. He's directed the two films I watched today and he'd write the following two Godzilla films before he is done with the series. The movie starts back in 1984 in the Godzilla universe created in The Return Of Godzilla. During the clean up of Tokyo scientists collect Godzilla DNA from around the battle areas. Some samples are stolen by a swarthy guy with a crappy beard and a rifle. A 
scientist gets some of G's DNA and his lab, along with his daughter, is blown up. We jump ahead 5 years, to the present, and the cells are being used to create a Godzilla eating bacteria. A bio-company threatens to blow up the volcano and release Godzilla if they don't get some of those Godzilla cells. Things go wrong and soon enough the Big Guy is stomping around once again. The scientist, driven mad by the death of his daughter, has created a slurry of Godzilla, rose and daughter DNA which he uses it to create life. Even my mother would say that's crazy but she wasn't there to warn him. The bio-beast-plant grows 
large and eventually the rose genes take over and the thing, dubbed Biolante, takes root in a bay. Godzilla shows up in Japan and they attack him with the Super X II. It's now remote controlled which is good since it takes a savage beating from Godzilla. There are a good number of minutes of monster mayhem and the complex subplots keep you busy wondering what's going to happen next. It's an entertainingly goofy what with the giant plant monster, there are lots of characters running about to keep you from getting too bored, and things blow up once in a while. Unfortunately it's a movie that isn't available here in the US. There was an Englished dubbed version on VHS tape and laserdisc out in the 1990's but no dvd. Someone gave me a bootleg dvdr from that laserdisc and I watched parts of that. I've got a Video Daikaiju fan subbed bootleg and I watched that all the way through. If you need one you can find one out on the Internet. Maybe someday someone will release a good version here. It reminds me that divisions by country is stupid. It's always something, huh.
I did not find the story to Godzilla Vs King Ghidorah as entertaining as the previous film. It's back to a slightly skewed version of the alien invasion story. A spaceship shows up and it turns out to be human's from the future who plan to destroy Japan with monsters so it doesn't become a future superpower. They go into the past near the end of World War 2 to 
move the dinosaur that would become Godzilla after being exposed to radiation from the nuke tests. That's the Godzillasaurus over on the right. Rather handsome, yes? Some Japanese soldiers are on the island that the dino is on. They are under attack from US soldiers and the dino saves them. They leave and the future humans move the dino and leave baby Ghidorah's behind. They are exposed to the radiation and they turn into the three headed beast that is attacking Japan when the future humans return to the 20th century. Even though the WWII dino was moved out of the range of the nukes it turned into Godzilla when it was exposed to radiation from a sunken Russian sub. It comes out of hiding in the present day of the movie and attacks King Ghidorah who takes an ass whooping. The future people take King Ghidorah into the future and fit it out with 
mechanical attachments. They bring Mecha-Ghidorah back to the present and the big guy beats them. Both monsters get thrown into the ocean by a sympathetic future human. Don't worry Godzilla will return. For the most part the monster battles are pretty good but the story is weak. There isn't much story consistency across the 1990 series, especially when you throw some time travel in there. They just keep piling plot points on and run like hell when the story starts to topple. Still, it's not awful or anything and there are all the fun monster fights. At least you can pick up a copy of it in a double movie pack with the Mothra movie. The effects and sets are pretty darn good for such a low budget movie. They know how to stretch a dollar in the Japan movie business.
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