Godzilla vs. Hedorah

After a hit or miss late 60s, GvH moves the genre forward with cutaway animation, innovative kaiju design, and night battles. And no Minilla to be found.

Godzilla vs. Gigan

I last saw this in the theater as a child, and while the cockroach aliens are far less creepy now, the 70s films continue to improve. Anguirius gets a hero turn in the Gigan/Ghidorah tag-team match that also teases the Mechagodzilla. Plus the big G gets a few lines of intelligible, manga-balloon speech.

Godzilla vs. Megalon

Goes Gigan one better with a roach rematch and a Godzilla-Ultraman teamup.

Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla

Threepeats are hard! After two improvements on the strong Hedorah film, Fukuda falters just enough to miss on the surefire Mechagodzilla concept. The reveal fight is good, the car is awesome, but 12 years in, the latter Showa tone is starting to wear thin.

The Terror of Mechagodzilla

The latter Showa films underwhelm with a titular kaiju's introduction, but then slay the following film. No so much here, where a guileless Mechagodzilla just goes through the motions.

As is director Honda, who's been on a slide since the stellar Destroy All Monsters 7 years before. A middling exit to Godzilla's salad days.

@horacemajeur in my youth watching All Monsters Attack, I was confounded by the name of the kaiju who attacks Minilla in Ichiro's dreams: Gabara. It seemed to me to be pronounced as Gamera. I thought that was odd and when I mentioned to multiple friends that there were two Gameras they branded me as crazy. Nobody remembered the electrified "Gamera", only the turtle! Then the Internet came along...

@hallmarc Strangely, despite being aware of kaiju from a tender age, I never saw any Gamera until mst3k. I would've liked those even more than Godzilla, I expect.