Son of Godzilla (1967) ** out of *****

Director:  Jun Fukuda
Writers:  Shinichi Sekizawa, Kazue Shiba
Cast:  Tadao Takashima, Akira Kubo, Bibari Maeda

A group of Japanese scientists, along with a freelance journalist shadowing for a story & aided by a native woman, attempt to test out a new weather control experiment on a remote island that also happens to be inhabited by flying mantises and a giant spider.  Everything seems to be going according to plan until everyone's favorite giant reptile shows up to protect something hidden within the island itself, an egg, which turns out to be...the Son of Godzilla.  The battle between monsters begins, and the human element attempts to continue forward with their endeavor, with a hope for saving the entire race.
Sound ridiculous?  It is, but not in a way that's very interesting or consistently entertaining or even so bad it's good.  The film has a charm about it, but it wears thin with a redundancy that makes it difficult to enjoy.
Almost every scene drags on and on, actually making an hour and a half running feature seem like a 3 hour endurance test.  There's enjoyment to be had here, especially when Minilla (yes, that's actually Son of Godzilla's name) clumsily stumbles about, rubbing his tummy and blowing smoke rings instead of fire, grunting and moaning to the sounds of stock audio of dogs and donkeys, but it's not enough to counter balance the boredom that results of the slow, lifeless and uninspired human characters and their over extended story that fills far too much of the actual movie.  A film like this should be nothing but pure fun, but that factor is surprisingly minimal.  Not even the fights that ensue between the different monsters is all that engaging, with sloppy choreography that's more embarrassing than hilarious.
All in all "Son of Godzilla" has little to offer, and with a title that insinuates the spawn of said giant lizard would be ever present, sadly he's not, and the picture and audience suffers for it.