Johnny Sokko!

 

VOYAGE INTO SPACE-1970-Alien monster Lord Guillotine leads an invading force from the planet Gargoyle. On the high sea Johnny Sokko (Mitsunobu Kaneko) meets U3 (Akio Ito) an agent of Unicorn pretending to be writer Johnny Mano. Their ship is attacked by a giant sea monster. They make it to an island, totally dry, and pursued by members of The Gargoyle gang. The duo meet Dr. Guardian who is being forced to create a giant robot. He's killed helping the two escape. A bomb he planted blows up the evil headquarters but the giant robot survives and only obeys Johnny. Lord Guillotine sends the Dragulon (the underwater monster) to destroy Tokyo. Giant Robo (Toshiyuki Tsuchiyama) is victorious and Johnny joins Unicorn. Lord Guillotine has two weird henchmen, the silver skinned Dr. Botanus and the pegged legged Executioner. 

There's lots of crazy monsters and battles and funny dialogue but in the end the giant metallic hero sacrifices himself to save the Earth in a sad finale. 

This Japanese production was actually a TV show edited from First episode, 2 middle episodes and the last episode. Director Minoru Yamada went on to the “Kamen Rider” series and many other similar live action TV series.

Thanks for reading!