Kaiju Notes: Son of Godzilla (Jun Fukuda, 1967)

FEATURING:

Godzilla!

Minira!

Kumonga, the giant spider!

A bunch of giant Praying Mantises!
 

1.

Ok, let’s begin with a quick show of hands. Who here has seen the original, 1933 ‘King Kong’? Yes, just as I thought, every self-respecting man, woman and child. Now, who has seen RKO’s hastily slapped together 1934 sequel, ‘Son of Kong’? [Cue awkward silence, tumbleweed.] I rest my case.

For whatever reason however, the top brass at Toho studios seem to have overlooked this lesson from history, and verily it was decreed that director Jun Fukuda’s second modestly budgeted addition to the Godzilla franchise would take the form of ‘Kaijûtô no Kessen: Gojira no Musuko’ [‘Decisive Battle on Monster Island: Godzilla’s Son’], better known to the English-speaking world simply as ‘Son of Godzilla’.

As you can imagine, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to this one as I worked my way through Criterion box set of Showa-era Godzilla films, but… sometimes you’ve just got to grit your teeth and hit ‘play’ on these things, y’know? I mean, it’s a learning experience, if nothing else - and having paid something in the region of ten quid for each movie on this set, you’d better believe I’m going to take my seat in the classroom, pencil and paper at the ready, and get what I can from it.

2.

Well, guess what – to my surprise, it turns out that ‘Son of Godzilla’ isn’t all that bad. In fact, it’s pretty good fun all-round. Though clearly a step down from Fukuda’s extremely enjoyable Ebirah: Terror of the Deep, it retains much of the breezy, event-packed charm of its predecessor, and includes some memorable scenes and top-notch special effects.

As in ‘Ebirah..’, the influence of ‘King Kong’ upon Fukuda’s Godzilla films is clearly evident. Once again here, we have a danger-filled tropical island setting, in which a bunch of excitable guys run around getting into scrapes. We have another native girl in peril (actually, she’s the daughter of a long-lost prior explorer this time around), and a primary monster who is more concerned with protecting a vulnerable dependent (his ‘son’ in this case) from the depredations of lesser monsters than he is with fucking the humans’ shit up.

In fact, the film even seems to draw upon the legend of ‘King Kong’s lost spider pit sequence for inspiration, effectively recreating it in the form of a stand-out scene in which our characters tangle with Kumonga, the island’s resident giant spider.

By far the best things in this movie however are the giant praying mantises which regularly pop up to menace all and sundry. Inadvertently created by the humans’ crazy climate experiments (more on which below), these blighters put me in mind of the infamous pulp horror paperback Eat Them Alive, although needless to say they don’t get up to any such nasty business here. Nonetheless, the effects used to realise these creatures – seemingly utilising huge, string-operated puppets, big enough to go toe-to-toe with the man-sized Godzilla suit – are really superb, and the fight scenes in which The Big G tears ‘em apart have a real clout.

3.

Speaking of which, although ‘Son of Godzilla’ does inevitably get a bit goofy and mawkish later in it’s run-time, there’s something pleasingly animalistic and.. non-anthropomorphic?.. about the scene in which ‘Minira’ [as he has been named by fans, though he is never identified as such on-screen] is initially introduced.

It’s certainly a pretty traumatic introduction to the big, bad world for the young ‘un, as he immediately finds himself menaced by the aforementioned mantises, which have been swarming around his big, speckled egg, until daddy reluctantly stomps along to sort ‘em out.

Instead of greeting his new-born with affection though, Godzilla’s first interaction with the little one is to knock him over with an accidental swing of his mighty tail, before he goes huffing and puffing off over the horizon, leaving his mewling bairn to fend for itself.

Though they do later establish a slightly more traditional, audience-pleasing father/son relationship, we’re still basically left here with the perversely endearing idea of Godzilla being a bit of a shit dad – or a dedicated practitioner of ‘laissez faire’ parenting, at best. Lazing around and snoozing whilst the kid is in trouble and/or wants attention, he doesn’t exactly exert himself too hard when it comes to schooling his charge in the ways of giant monster-dom.

4.

Having said that however, if ‘Son of Godzilla’ is remembered for anything, it’s probably for the later scene in which Daddy Godzilla takes his son down to the river for a bit of male bonding and tries to teach him to utilise his radioactive fire breath – but, the best young Minira can initially manage is some puffy little smoke rings. Oh, how adorable!

Which seems a good point as which to stop and reflect on how far we’ve come from the days when those fiery blasts of radioactive death were decimating entire districts of central Tokyo, threatening to obliterate Japan’s shaky post-war reconstruction in one unholy conflagration, and terrified crowds fled in blind panic, and so on.

5.

The biggest question to arise from all this though of course concerns the mysteries of Godzilla’s reproductive cycle, and more specifically, the pressing issue of who the hell the mother might be!?

Needless to say, the film’s screenwriters never deign to address this, which is probably for the best, all things considered. All we know is that, at the point at which our story begins, the big egg containing Minira is just sitting in the middle of this weird island, and Godzilla seems duty-bound to slog his way back toward it in order to reluctantly exercise his solo paternal duties once the kid hatches.

Thus, we’re left with a scenario weirdly reminiscent of the compromised, all-male lineage of Disney’s McDuck family (though we do at least have a direct father-son relationship here I suppose, in contrast to Disney’s fragmented hierarchy of parent-less uncles, nephews and cousins).

6.

In designing Minira, I suspect that the monster effects team led by Eiji Tsubaraya and Sadamasa Arikawa were probably going for the fool-proof “overload of cute” approach which has achieved such consistent success with Japanese audiences across the decades - but, happily, I’m not sure that they quite succeeded.

Limited movement lends a particularly uncanny aspect to Minira’s moulded, baby-like face, complete with painted on eyeballs, and despite the filmmakers having gone to the trouble of hiring a dwarf actor (professional wrestler ‘Little Man’ Machen) to inhabit his suit, he retains a gawky, adult-proportioned posture which never looks quite right, especially as he stumbles over studio rocks, bawling in an electronically-altered baby voice, reminiscent of Devo’s perpetually disturbing Booji Boy mascot.

He’s a real freak in other words, and naturally this allows us us cynical, grown-up viewers to love him far more than if he were merely some perfect, proto-Pikachu type kawaii monstrosity.

7.

Another significant development which ‘Son of Godzilla’ brings to the franchise is the creation of ‘Monster Island’ – the ecologically unstable tropical archipelago which Godzilla and his pals will be depicted as being confined to in later films, their movements carefully monitored and controlled by the human authorities.

Although the presence of Kumonga the spider suggests that this nameless island was at least slightly monstrous to begin with, its transformation into a full scale kaiju playground seems to have been largely the result of this movie’s human storyline - which for the record is fairly diverting, recalling one of those ‘40s jungle adventure type b-movies in which a bunch of wise-guys hang out in tents in a studio-bound clearing, along with a token dame, an antsy reporter and so forth.

In fact, that’s exactly what happens here, except for the fact that the scientific research team led by Dr Kusumi (Tadao Takashima) have some nice, colourful buildings and advanced laboratory facilities to hang about in as they conduct a series of frankly rather crazy localised terraforming experiments, which seem to involve using some kind of cloud level chemical air-bursts and electro-magnetic pulses to radically alter the island’s climate.

Dr Kusumi speaks grandly of a future in which the problem of over-population can be overcome by fertilising the world’s deserts and so forth, but at this stage at least, his experiments seem reckless and destructive, subjecting the island to intolerable, baking heat (the guys survive indoors with their air-con), and inadvertently causing unforeseen mutations in the local fauna, including the creation of our old friends the giant mantises.

Later on meanwhile, in the film’s oddly touching climax, they decide to blast the place with an icy blizzard, leaving Godzilla and Minira frozen in each other’s arms, no doubt awaiting the next occasion on which Toho will call upon their services to liven up the bank holiday box office.

---

Kaiju Notes: Ebirah, Terror of the Deep (Jun Fukuda, 1966)

FEATURING:

Godzilla!

Ebirah!

Mothra!

Some kind of mangy prehistoric bird thing!

1.

As I’ve previously observed in these posts, the success of a kaiju movie often depends upon the presence of a good human story to counterbalance the monster action, and ‘Ebirah: Terror of the Deep’ [Japanese title: ‘Gojira, Ebirâ, Mosura: Nankai no Daiketto’ (‘Godzilla, Ebirah, Mothra: Big Duel in the South Seas’)] thankfully proves a corker in this regard.

The seventh film to feature Godzilla, and the first not helmed by the monster’s creator Ishiro Honda, ‘Ebirah..’ wisely scales back on the planet-wise crises envisioned (and rather half-heartedly staged) by the last few entries in the series, instead foregrounding the tale of Ryota (Toru Watanabe), a young lad from a remote coastal village whose older brother has gone missing out at sea.

After travelling to the big city to harangue the authorities and media about this sadly routine disappearance of a sailor during bad weather, Ryota decides his only hope is to follow his brother out to sea in order to find out what happened to him, and as such he finds himself drawn to a rock n’ roll dancing endurance contest(!), the top prize of which is a luxury yacht. Although he is too late to take part himself – the contest is into its third day - Ryota hooks up with two exhausted ne’erdowells (Chotaro Togin & Hideo Sunazuka) who have just bailed out after countless hours of relentless frugging.

Noting their new friend’s overwhelming enthusiasm for all things nautical, these guys offer Ryota a lift as they swing by the local marina – a jaunt which soon leads the feckless trio to begin trespassing on one particularly swish looking yacht. As they explore the cabin however, they’re surprised by a gun-toting man (Godzilla series regular Akira Takarada), whom they assume to be the boat’s owner.

Inexplicably, the man invites the young troublemakers to stay the night and get some sleep (what?!)… but when the gang awake, they discover that the irrepressible Ryota has already rigged the sails, hoisted up the anchor, and that they are all now well on their way to the remote South Seas islands around which Ryota’s brother disappeared!

It is at this point that our protagonists discover that Takarada is not in fact the legitimate skipper of their purloined vessel – in fact, he is in fact a master safecracker, on the run with a suitcase full of stolen dough, and his gun isn’t even loaded! But, such minor details cease to matter much once a catastrophic storm blows up, capsizing the stolen yacht. Clinging to the hull of their stricken vessel, our protagonists see a gargantuan claw rise from beneath the tumultuous waves as a searing electric guitar lick intrudes upon the soundtrack. Ebirah! [“Ebi”, incidentally, is the Japanese word for prawn or shrimp, which I’d imagine must have made this monster’s name pretty amusing for the domestic audience.]

When they awake after the storm, sprawled upon a deserted island shore in the traditional movie manner, our accidental castaways soon discover that the island in question is chiefly occupied by a sinister, fascistic military organisation known as – wait for it - ‘The Red Bamboo’, whom I’m sure were not intended to bear any similarity to the forces of any real world nation with a tendency to claim sovereignty over various rocky outcrops off the coast of Japan [looks nervously over digital shoulder].

Ill-advisedly as it transpires, The Red Bamboo have chosen this island as the perfect site upon which to construct a secret nuclear reactor (its interior is big of steel gangways and groovy, primary coloured pipework), and they have furthermore begun kidnapping the peaceful, colourfully-attired natives of the nearby Infant Island – home of Mothra, you’ll recall. This is in order to put them to work manufacturing industrial quantities of the fruit-based yellow substance which has traditionally served the Islanders as a repellent to Ebirah, thus allowing shipping to move freely in the immediate vicinity of the island without being clobbered by the bad-tempered lobster-god who effectively serves as its guardian.

Before long, Ryota and his friends find themselves joining forces with Daiyo (Kumi Mizuno), a spirited and statuesque female islander who has escaped from the clutches of The Red Bamboo. Daiyo’s distinctive ‘south seas’ outfit seems to suggest a significant degree of cultural crossover between Infant Island and Blood Island, in terms of fashion at least, and her arrival prompts much charmingly bungled chivalry and attempts at non-verbal communication on the part of our ‘heroes’, before, in the course of evading her captors, they find themselves descending into a cave beneath the cliffs, where, to their surprise, they find none other than Godzilla himself taking an extended kip! What all this going on around him, it seems a fair bet that the King of the Monsters’ slumber may wind up being disturbed before too long…


I realise that the preceding paragraphs of straight plot synopsis run far longer than is usual for this blog, but I present them to you simply in order to help demonstrate the fact that ‘Ebirah..’ is a whole lot of fun even before it’s featured monsters begin knocking lumps out of each other.

Rather than filling up the runtime with boardrooms full of harried government functionaries discussing the monsters’ latest movements, and static scenes of soldiers and journalists passively observing kaiju throwdowns through binoculars, Fukuda and scriptwriter Shin'ichi Sekizawa here give us a simple, fast-moving character-driven story with enough interesting stuff going on to work on its own terms, whilst keeping the scale of the action small enough for the film’s budget to really do it justice, and the results really vindicate this shift in emphasis.

2.

Mirroring this lively ‘human story’, the kaiju action in ‘Ebirah..’ also seems invested with a renewed sense of excitement. Just as the film saw Fukuda taking over from Honda for the first time as director, it also finds the legendary Eiji Tsubaraya assigning responsibility for the monster effects to his long-standing deputy Sadamasa Arikawa, with what appear to be very encouraging results.

In particular, the increased use of matte shots, false perspective etc really pays dividends here, with individual shots and interactions between different elements within the frame carefully planned out, in what seems like a deliberate attempt to avoid the flat, “monsters lolling about aimlessly in a field and/or alien planetscape like boxers between rounds” type approach seen in the past two films.

The shots of Ebirah’s colossal claw rising from the roiling, nocturnal waves as our hard-luck heroes struggle to keep their yacht afloat in the foreground in particular are extremely impressive; frightening and atmospheric, they convey a sense of scale and immensitude which has been lacking from these movies for quite a while.

Equally effective meanwhile are the shots which see human characters fleeing the stomping feet of Godzilla, and if, when we reach the big monster fights, they’re no less cartoon-ish than those seen in ‘..Astro-Monster’ and ‘King Ghidorah..’, they nonetheless have a sense of rough n’ ready energy and full contact violence about them which really gives them an edge.

Ebirah, when he finally emerges from the water, makes for an appealingly grisly new foe for Godzilla, and if their initial showdown begins as little more than a glorified game of catch, no over-grown playground thugs in the audience will be able to resist the simple pleasures of seeing The Big G heading a weighty looking boulder toward his opponent, who retaliating by performing the universally acknowledged “come on if you think yr hard enough” gesture with his gargantuan claws.

Balancing out all this testosterone though, it’s great too to see Mothra back in action in her full, winged form too, needless to say. Once again, her characterisation as female means she’s relegated to playing the ‘peace maker’ here, calming Godzilla’s rage after his final battle with Ebirah, putting him back in his place like a big sister, and, delightfully, carrying the Infant Islanders and their friends to safety via an ingenious makeshift basket/gondola thing, just before the island goes ka-boom. [See point #3 of my above-linked Ghidorah: The Three Headed Monster post for reiteration of the reasons why I love Mothra.]

3.

Likewise, the portrayal of Godzilla himself in ‘Ebirah..’ is interesting and a lot of fun. Taking a step or two back from the comedic/heroic persona he was moving toward in last few films, he’s a more ambiguous, slightly more menacing presence here. Certainly, he no longer gives much of a damn about humanity, carelessly trashing the Red Bamboo’s nuclear research facility and stomping their soldiers without a second thought.

But, more than anything, he really just spends the entirety of this film acting as if he really wants everyone to just leave him the hell alone, essentially staggering through the picture like the kaiju equivalent of a guy with a severe hangover who finds himself having to deal with a leaking washing machine, rotten milk in the fridge and disgruntled neighbours banging on his door; an impression I find both hilarious and endearing.

I mean, the first thing he sees after he staggers out of his cozy hiding place in the cliff-face after being rudely awakened, Frankenstein style, with a jerry-rigged lightning conductor, is this bloody giant lobster thing that wants to pick a fight with him. Then, as soon as he’s sent that guy packing, he sits down to catch his breath, and before you know it, some fucking mangy-looking prehistoric bird thing suddenly flies out of nowhere and starts pecking him! What the holy hell?! And THEN, when he’s finally pulverised that bugger, here comes The Red Bamboo’s bloody air force, zooming around his head, giving him a hard time. What a shitty day!

It’s telling I think that, in between these assorted bouts, poor old Godzilla simply sits down on the nearest mountainside, looking completely exhausted, and falls asleep. (The fact that his costume, re-used from ‘..Astro-Monster’ the previous year apparently, looks as if it’s seen better days, having suffered water-damage during the initial Ebirah fight, probably only aids this ‘hungover’ vibe.)

Poor Godzilla! All he wants is to sit in a dark, quiet hole somewhere and get a bit of rest. No wonder then that he seems so thoroughly pissed off by the time the film reaches its conclusion, kicking the shit out of the nuclear facility with reckless abandon, and tearing Ebirah’s claws straight off and battering him to death with them in a display of crazed ferocity rarely equalled in a Toho kaiju movie.

Opening with what I imagine to be the kaiju equivalent of a tormented yell of “What?! You want some more, do you?!”, this second and final Godzilla/Ebirah battle is genuinely brutal stuff, leaving us with little expectation that the movie’s title monster is going to be popping up from ‘neath the ocean waves for any jolly monster team-ups anytime soon. Having pushed The Big G way over the line when he was in a rotten mood to start with, he gets properly fucked up for his troubles.

4.

Just as Fukuda has taken on direction, and Arikawa the effects, ‘Ebirah..’ is further freshened up by a mod-ish, light touch score from Akira Kurosawa’s go-to composer Masaru Satô, marking a notable change of pace from the bombastic, baleful (and increasingly inappropriate) Akira Ifukube compositions used in earlier films. Incorporating elements of the Ventures-inspired ‘eleki’ genre which was tearing the charts in mid-60s Japan, Satô’s work here is an uncharacteristically groovy, John Barry-esque delight which perfectly matches the bright, energetic feel of the film, with the searing guitar strings which accompany Ebirah’s emergence from the waves proving particularly memorable.

5.

As you will probably have gathered by now, ‘Ebirah..’ is one of my favourite Godzilla sequels. Definitely in my top five, anyway. Perhaps the fact that the Big Guy doesn’t even wake up until fifty minutes into proceedings helps account for the lack of love it tends to receive from fans, but I’ve always found this to be slightly unfair, given the extent to which he gets stuck in once he is finally on the scene – not to mention the fact that the section of the film preceding his appearance cannot by any stretch of the imagination be described as dull.

For some, Jun Fukuda’s entries in the series are marked by a sense of flippancy which seen to stand in contrast to the aura of solemnity associated with Honda, but this too strikes me as a lazy and unfair point of comparison – insofar as this film is concerned, at least.

As great a director as Honda could be when given the opportunity, he was clearly getting pretty tired of Godzilla franchise by the mid ‘60s, as he became increasingly disillusioned with the family-friendly direction Toho insisted on taking the series in. Fukuda’s more light touch, character focused approach, by contrast, feels like an ideal fit for the studio’s vision, allowing Godzilla to fully crash his way into the realm of ‘60s pop art / youth culture immortality, his weightier and more symbolic origins long forgotten.

In later efforts directed by Fukuda, this change in tone would inevitably begin to impact upon the overall quality of the films, but for ‘Ebirah..’ at least, the production team was still firing on all cylinders, leading to what for my money is the best entry in the series since ‘Godzilla vs Mothra’ in ’62.

Kaiju Notes: Invasion of Astro-Monster (Ishirô Honda, 1965)

FEATURING:

Godzilla!

Rodan!

King Ghidorah!

1.

The sixth film to feature Godzilla, 1965’s ‘Kaijû Daisensô’ [‘War of the Monsters’], known to English speaking viewers as ‘Godzilla vs Monster Zero’ or, as Criterion’s box-set has it, ‘Invasion of Astro-Monster’, feels very much of a piece with its predecessor, 1964’s Ghidorah: The Three-Headed Monster. The two films pretty much play as if they could have been shot back-to-back, although shooting dates listed on IMDB and variations in the credited crew suggest this was not in fact the case.

Nevertheless, they both include the same line-up of monsters (minus Mothra this time around – apparently she was initially in the script, but got nixed for budgetary reasons), both feature enjoyably wacky sci-fi storylines, and both are undermined by a lacklustre, kiddie-friendly approach to the requisite kaiju action.

For its opening hour in fact, ‘Invasion of Astro-Monster’ gives little indication of its status as a kaiju movie. Instead, it plays more like one of Ishirô Honda’s straight SF movies, outlining the no nonsense interactions between humanity and a sneaky alien race who have popped up on the newly discovered Planet X, in a manner reminiscent of the director’s 1957 classic ‘The Mysterians’.

2.

On the plus side, a lot of the Showa-era retro sci-fi stuff showcased in ‘Invasion of Astro-Monster’ is really rather delightful. Though these films are ostensibly set somewhere in the vicinity of the present day, the film begins with Akira Takarada and token caucasian Nick Adams (last seen around these parts as the exceptionally grumpy male lead in AIP’s Die Monster Die!, released the same year), manning a rocket-ship en-route to Planet X, which appears to be hanging way out there somewhere beyond Pluto. (Because hey, why not, right? I mean, the way things are progressing here in whizzo 1965, we’ll be shooting square-jawed guys out to the far end of the solar system in brightly coloured rockets before you know it! [2020 sad face. : ( ])

Soon, our astronauts are happily stomping about on the Planet’s rocky surface, and though, disappointingly, they do not encounter The Man From Planet X, they do observe these groovy sort of periscope / stairway things which pop up from under the ground, disrupting their radio contact with Earth, and hear Japanese language loudspeaker announcements informing them that they’re heading down below to meet the neighbourhood’s resident technologically superior alien race.

These guys, it transpires, have been forced underground because King Ghidorah (whom they call ‘Monster Zero’) has ravaged the surface of their world, Reign of Fire style. The Xiliens (as they actually call themselves) thus propose a deal, wherein they will ‘borrow’ Godzilla and Rodan from Earth to help resolve their three-headed space-dragon problem, and in return they’ll give us…. a cure for cancer! Pretty great deal, huh?

But wait! These guys all wear identical black leather jumpsuits, have no discernible facial expressions and wear wavo-type sunglasses at all times, concealing their eyes. As our two-fisted astronauts soon realise, they are clearly not to be trusted. But, back on Earth, the prospect of trading a couple of bad-tempered dinosaurs for the health and happiness of millions understandably proves just too tempting for the powers-that-be to resist.

Indeed, the Xiliens will even handle transport on the deal - which must have come as a relief to the the U.N. mail room staff - and the images I will probably remember most fondly from ‘Invasion of Astro-Monster’ are those of the Xiliens’ dinky little UFOs tracking down our two resident kaiju in their hideaways (Godzilla has been chilling at the bottom of Lake Myojin in Japan’s Nagano Prefecture, for some reason) and transporting them through outer space suing high powered tractor beams. What fun!

3.

This reminds me, incidentally, of an issue that always bugs me in these ‘60s Godzilla sequels – once humanity is aware of their existence, how do the Japanese government seem to keep LOSING these giant, city-flattening monsters during the interim between movies, only to be surprised when they unexpectedly pop up somewhere new?

I mean, even leaving aside the fact that you’d presume an entirely new branch of science must have developed around the necessity of tracking, studying and containing these protean beasts, you’d think that someone would at least take the time to notice a giant and infamous monster stomping his way across a renowned beauty spot and submerging himself in a lake? Instead though, we seem to begin each movie with a round of “hmm, where could Godzilla possibly have gone?”, “oh my gosh, he’s just popped up over there, in another impressively scenic location!”, “ahh, run away, send in the little tiny tanks!”, etc.

I realise that kaiju hi-jinks must have become normalised to a certain extent in this movie-world, and that earth-bound monsters like Godzilla and Rodan perhaps don’t pose quite such an existential threat as they once did, but c’mon guys - the least you could do is keep an eye on them!

4.

The presence of Nick Adams in the cast of ‘..Astro-Monster’ - presumably flown in by Toho in recognition of the Godzilla films’ phenomenal success on the export market – also served to draw my attention to the strong sense of ‘Westernisation’ (Americanisation?) which predominates in these ‘60s kaiju movies – a trend which is particularly noticeable here, as Adams is pointedly established as “one of the guys”, hanging out and bantering (in dubbed Japanese) with his fellow astronauts. (He even offers his Asian buddies some typically forward American romantic advice, although it is he, rather than they, who ends up getting involved with a female Xilien spy – ah, the irony!)

In the original 1954 ‘Godzilla’, you’ll recall, domestic scenes retained the kind of distinctly Japanese character one would reasonably expect of a mid-century Toho or Daiei film, with characters seated at floor level, sometimes in traditional dress, and interacting with their family members in the warm yet somewhat formalised manner which continues to define many Japanese households to this day.

By the time we get to the likes of ‘..Astro-Monster’, or the same year’s truly demented ‘Frankenstein Conquers The World’ (also starring Adams) however, our central characters are predominantly young, single (or newly married) city-dwellers, who are generally depicted as living independently of their extended families, dwelling in groovily-furnished yet anonymous high rise apartments. They wear suits and twin-sets, swap snappy, casual dialogue with their co-habitants, swig highballs or martinis and sit down (at a raised table) to eat steak and chips for dinner.

For viewers familiar with the more traditional, inward-looking Japanese cinema of this era, this lack of a pronounced national identity can at times feel positively eerie, lending an uncanny, alienated aura to the stories’ cheerily two-dimensional human stories. Quite how audience responded to all this at the time, I’m unsure, but it must have been difficult for them not to have interpreted it to some extent as a statement of the filmmakers’ cultural sympathies.

In a sense, Toho could be seen to be taking the ‘borderless’ philosophy adopted by their far smaller rival Nikkatsu [see my posts here and here for more more discussion of this] to a weird new extreme within their sci-fi/monster movies, and the possible reasons for this are many and varied.

Most obviously, this ‘Westernised’ feel could be read as a nod to these films’ proven success overseas, whilst it also seems to me to reflect the grander, ‘worldwide’ and quasi-futuristic, scale of the movies’ subject matter, which often invokes the idea of international cooperation in space exploration or kaiju-fighting.

Beyond this though, I can’t help but feel that gives voice to some extent to the corresponding desire shared by many Japanese citizens in the post-war era for their country to move toward the adoption of a more homogenised [for which read: American] international capitalist culture. In other words, the very same yearning which can be identified in so many of Nikkatsu’s youth films, although it finds a less conflicted, more openly aspirational expression here.

In fact, I can easily imagine Yukio Mishima and his fellow resurgent nationalists absolutely spitting feathers about Toho’s perceived kow-towing to American cultural imperialism in these films, in the unlikely event that they ever found time to go and watch them in between kendo practice and brooding on the finer points of Bushido.

5.

I think it is probably safe to assume that, by this stage in the Godzilla franchise, Ishirô Honda’s heart simply wasn’t in it anymore. Though ‘Invasion of Astro-Monster’ still delivers a wealth of brightly coloured fun for the kids (and the man-child retro-sci-fi enthusiasts alongside them), hitting all the beats one would reasonably expect of a Honda sci-fi movie, a feeling of tiredness and repetition seems to pervade the whole enterprise.

“This is not what I created Godzilla for”, Honda is reported to have icily stated when he saw the ludicrous / adorable ‘victory dance’ Eiji Tsuburaya and his team devised for The Big G to perform after he dispatches King Ghidorah following some half-hearted inter-planetary pushing and shoving at the film’s conclusion. As such, it is perhaps no surprise that the next entry in the franchise saw the venerable director temporarily stepping aside, allowing Toho to bring in a new broom and a distinct change of emphasis, leading, as I recall, to a considerably more satisfactory movie overall… but we’ll see how well my memory holds up on that score in a couple of weeks.

Kaiju Notes: Ghidorah: The Three Headed Monster (Ishirō Honda, 1964)

FEATURING:

Godzilla!

Rodan!

Mothra (larval form only)!

King Ghidorah!

BORING EXPLANATORY NOTE: I’m aware that ‘Ghidorah: The Three Headed Monster’ is the fifth film to feature Godzilla, whereas this is only the third entry in this supposedly chronological series of posts looking at the big guy’s movie career. Whilst working my way through the big Criterion set though, I accidentally found myself watching the American version of ‘King Kong vs Godzilla’ (1963), which I don’t wish to review until I’ve had a chance to compare it with the hopefully-slightly-less-godawful Japanese version. [Why did Criterion relegate this to a bonus disc, rather than presenting the two versions side-by-side? Not that it excuses my not bothering to check more thoroughly before hitting play on the U.S. version, but still…] Meanwhile, my wife and I also watched an old DVD of ‘Godzilla vs Mothra’ (1964) relatively recently before obtaining the new blu-ray set, so we took the decision to shuffle it to the end of our viewing schedule and instead get stuck into the next few films, which neither of us had seen before, beginning with the same year’s ‘Ghidorah: The Three Headed Monster’! Any questions? No? Good.

1.
After two films which saw Godzilla returning from a near decade long sleep to battle other, pre-existing screen monsters (King Kong, obviously, and Mothra, who had previously enjoyed her own stand-alone movie in 1961), ‘Ghidorah: The Three Headed Monster’ (or San Daikaiju: Chikyu Saidai No Kessen [‘Three Giant Monsters: The Greatest Battle on Earth’], as the Japanese had it) marks a significant change in direction for the series, not only introducing the titular monarch of space monsters, but also becoming the first of Toho’s kaiju films to adopt what we might call the “monster rally” formula, as inherited from Universal’s horror films of the 1940s and their tendency to throw all of the fans’ favourite beasties together into the same film on the flimsiest of pre-texts. It’s fitting therefore that, in many respects, this initial all-star throw-down emerges as just as just as much of a goofy, uneven mess as ‘House of Frankenstein’ had two decades earlier.

2.
One of the basic rules governing kaiju movies, I’ve always thought, is that the most successful ones need good human stories to go alongside their monster stories, and if the human-level stuff in ‘Ghidorah, The Three Headed Monster’ is perhaps not ‘good’ in the conventional sense, it is at least extremely weird, which certainly does the trick.

One of our central characters – Naoko, played by Yuriko Hoshi – is a TV reporter who works the paranormal beat for some kind of “unsolved mysteries” type show, and boy, she’s really got her work cut out for her this week!

Not only has there been an unprecedented rash of UFO sightings (Naoko visits the local believers, hanging out with their telescopes on a Tokyo rooftop), but an aeroplane carrying the revered Princess Saino of the fictional nation of Selgina (Akiko Wakabayashi, who later appeared in ‘You Only Live Twice’) has disappeared without trace in Japanese airspace, Mothra’s tiny avatars The Peanuts (Emi & Yumi Ito) are in town to make a surprise appearance on a kid’s TV show(!), strange subterranean rumblings beneath a distant volcano seem to presaging the re-emergence of some monster or other (it turns out to be everybody’s favourite supersonic turkey-bird, Rodan), AND a mysterious lady prophet (who bears an uncanny resemblance to the missing Selginian princess) has popped up in Tokyo, drawing large crowds as she claims to be channelling an alien intelligence emanating from Venus, warning of great disaster which lays ahead for the human race! What’s a girl to do, eh?

Zeroing in briefly on the Selginians, they’re certainly an interesting bunch. With their ostentatious ceremonial costumes and extreme veneration of their monarchy, I wondered whether the country was supposed to be a fictional stand-in for Thailand, but who knows, they could just as easily be ersatz Brits, I suppose. That would certainly seem in keeping with the fact that, inexlicably, the male Selginians wear Elizabethan ruffs at all times, sometimes in combination with codpieces, pantaloons and the like. What is up with this? Had Toho inherited a dressing up box from a touring Shakespeare company or something?

Well, regardless – there are certainly few sights in mid-century cinema more gloriously, cross-culturally surreal than that of some grizzled yakuza actors done up like Sir Walter Raleigh, complete with incongruous sun-glasses, whilst on board a spaceship. For this alone, ‘Ghidorah: The Three Headed Monster’ will always have a place in my heart.

In fact, the opening, almost entirely monster-free, half of this film is great deal of fun all round. The strange way in which all of the above-mentioned plot threads play into each other is delightful and highly entertaining, occasionally making me wish that they were being explored in the context of some oddball sci-fi comedy, instead of merely padding out the run-time on giant monster movie.

3.
Since I skipped over ‘Godzilla vs Mothra’, let me take this opportunity to express my undying love for Mothra, and the wonderfully weird mythos which surrounds her. She’s so different from all of the other Kaiju monsters, with her female-coded benevolent, maternal instincts, her extraordinary, kaleidoscopic appearance when in full ‘moth’ mode (sadly not seen in this film), and her ability to directly communicate with humanity via her ever-delightful intermediaries in the form of tiny island singing duo The Peanuts.

Together with the colourful rites of the ‘Infant Island’ natives who seem to spend their time continuously praising their guardian kaiju’s larval form, this all brings so much surreal, psychedelic verisimilitude to the films Mothra appears in – a feeling which is only intensified here, as, in a head-spinningly ridiculous turn of events, she intervenes to act as a peacemaker between Godzilla and Rodan, encouraging them to put their differences aside and team up to rid their planet of the invasive Space Monster…. but, more on that below.

4.
Since I’ve already broached the subject to a certain extent above, let’s get into the potentially controversial issue of kaiju gender. I’m unsure whether the films ever explicitly state that Mothra is female, but I’ve always just assumed this, on the basis of ‘her’ associations with breeding and motherhood (something the other monsters pointedly lack), ‘her’ protective/non-aggressive behaviour patterns, and the fact that ‘she’ communicates via the female voices of The Peanuts.

Likewise, I’ve always simply assumed that most of the other kaiju are male, given that they spend their time stomping about like idiots, beating their chests and walloping each other… but of course, thinking about this for even a matter of seconds reveals that these assumptions are based on nothing beyond the most remedial and reprehensible of gender stereotyping.

I’d imagine the fact that Japanese grammar – in its most basic iterations, at least – does not include obligatory gendered pro-nouns probably plays into this ambiguity to a certain extent, potentially allowing the films’ original scripts to entirely avoid the issue - and indeed, the notes accompanying the Criterion Godzilla set find writer Ed Godziszewski playing it safe in this regard, pointedly referring to the monsters using the non-gendered “it” pro-noun.

Whilst technically correct and politically advisable however, this approach feels cold and disingenuous to me, in view of the strong characters and clearly anthropomorphic personality traits with which Eiji Tsuburaya’s creations are imbued, especially in sillier films such as this one.

If I continue to instinctively refer to kaiju using gendered pro-nouns therefore, I hope that readers will be able to forgive me, on the basis that these films were produced in an era when such stereotyping of gender roles was baked into culture and went largely unquestioned. And because I mean, life is basically just feel a lot more fun when Godzilla is a dude, right…?

5.
Meanwhile, King Ghidorah (who is definitely a ‘he’ – I mean, he’s a KING, right?) definitely gets a fantastic build up here for his inaugural appearance – one of film’s strongest dramatic moments (not that that’s saying much) comes when Princess Saino, channelling the survivors of the lost Venusian civilisation, tells us of how Ghidorah single-handedly laid waste to the entirety of Venus, a planet housing a civilisation far in advance of our own.

I mean, Japan’s government may have had some fun and games with Godzilla and the gang in the past, but this SOB must he on a whole other level, surely – I mean, he’s a goddamned PLANET EATER, for goodness sake.

And, happily, his inaugural appearance in the film does not disappoint. Surely one of Tsuburaya’s most impressive and elaborate creations, King Ghidorah initially looks like the kind of thing which might have stalked Ray Harryhausen’s dreams after a few too many brandies, but he becomes even more remarkable once we realise that, like his fellow monsters, he has actually been rendered at man-in-a-suit scale rather than as stop motion, with the suit’s primary occupant – who is frequently required to hang suspended in mid-air above the film’s miniaturised sets - assisted by a small army of off-screen puppeteers, helping co-ordinate the movements of heads, wings and tails. Pretty incredible stuff!

6.
It’s a great shame therefore that the promise of this terrifying new global threat is squandered in the film’s final act, via a lacklustre and absurdly goofy final confrontation which seems liable to have left many fans hoping for a death-defying, destructo-monster showdown feeling distinctly short-changed.

In fact, in contrast to the film’s rather complex and bizarre human storyline, little effort seems to have been put into the parallel monster narrative. Godzilla and Rodan both just sort of pop up out of nowhere, for no particular reason (although I did like the way latter emerges from an apparently genuine, shot-on-location smoking volcano), and begin half-heartedly knocking lumps out of each other, just because… well, it’s what they do, right? Mothra meanwhile is only on the scene because, as mentioned, her avatars The Peanuts have travelled to Tokyo to appear on a TV show, granting the wish of some adorable young tykes whose main dream in life – as they loudly proclaim when asked - is to meet Mothra.

If Godzilla’s pattern of behaviour in previous films put me in mind of a giant cat, here he and Rodan seem more like bored children, squabbling in the playground in the last few minutes before the bell rings. Hanging about on a (conveniently uninhabited) battleground in the shadow of Mt Fuji, they basically spend their time leering and throwing rocks at each other, until Mothra (in larval form) turns up to try to convince them to put their differences aside and join forces to save humanity from the invading space monster.

Not only does this turn of events introduce us to the frankly ludicrous notion that these very different species of prehistoric monster share similar gifts of reasoning and language, we’re also apparently expected to believe that they all understand the same language – and, furthermore, it’s our language (which is to say, Japanese).

I recall watching (I think) the much later ‘Godzilla vs Gigan’ (1972) a few years back, and being absolutely appalled by the fact that the filmmakers were sufficiently disrespectful as to make Godzilla actually speak. Perhaps I should have withheld my scorn however, because here we are, nearly a decade earlier, in a movie ostensibly directed by the great Ishiro Honda himself, and the Big G and his pals are already chatting away like nobody’s business.

“Myuh, myuh myuh, we don’t want to help the humans, they’re always being mean to us, they’re a bunch of jerks,” seems to be Godzilla and Rodan’s basic position, and Mothra is like, “fine then, see if I care”. So King Ghidorah flies in, and Mothra, stuck in larval form, starts trying to fight him, getting pretty badly beaten in the process. At which point, Godzilla and Rodan are like, “hey, that big kid from another school is beating up our fellow earth-monster, let’s get him!!” And so, they change their tune and proceed to help dispatch the unspeakably mighty, literally planet-destroying Space Monster by means of knocking him about for a few minutes and kicking him up the arse, prompting him to fly away in shame, multiple tails between his legs.

Hurray, the world is saved, and everybody rejoices, as the human powers-that-be seem content to let previously city-crushing behemoths G and R loll about unmolested in a big field, because they’re heroes now, I suppose.

Ye gods – what is this rubbish? Only the fifth entry in the Godzilla canon, immediately following the extremely good ‘Godzilla vs Mothra’, and our kaiju have already been downgraded from dread-dripping stand-ins for the existential threat of nuclear war and natural disaster to the level of bickering, Saturday morning kid’s TV puppets. What comes next, I dread to think.

7.
Having said all that though, I couldn’t help but love the fact that Godzilla’s first spoken word is that all-purpose, impossible-to-really-transliterate Japanese exclamation / curse pronounced somewhat like “kyiiisurre”. Frequently heard in yakuza movies, this is often translated as “fuck” or “goddamnit”, but Criterion’s subtitles here simply went with “BASTARDS!”. For all the nonsense outlined above, someone clearly still understood the big dude’s personality pretty well.

Kaiju Notes: Godzilla Raids Again (Motoyoshi Oda, 1955)

FEATURING:

Godzilla!

Anguirus!

1.
Ok, so first off – that English language title. It’s always really annoyed me. Ostensibly I suppose, it must have been intended to be read as a lazy pun on the “…rides again” suffix sometimes attached to sequels, but really this just makes it doubly nonsensical.

Firstly, given that he is a giant dinosaur with very short legs, the laws of physics decree that Godzilla is extremely unlikely to ever ‘ride’ anything, and secondly because, well -- raids? Since when has Godzilla ever raided anything? What did they think he was gonna do, hop out of the ocean and steal all the candy bars or something? When The Big G hits dry land, he is playing for keeps! This is an essential part of his character, I feel – strategy and short term goals (prerequisites of a ‘raid’) play no part whatsoever in determining his actions. When he’s on the scene, he’s just going to get stuck in and keep on rocking until something forcibly stops him (or, until he just gets tired and slinks off somewhere to have a nap, which is allowable on the basis that he basically just behaves like a 200-foot-tall cat; terrifying and adorable in equal measure).

So yeah, fuck this stupid title, and the clueless Anglophone marketing department it ‘rode’ in on. (Not that the original Japanese Gojira no Gyakushū [roughly, ‘Godzilla’s Revenge’] is much better, it must be said, but it’s at least slightly less annoying.)


2.
Though a decidedly minor effort on its own terms – the very definition of a law-of-diminishing-returns short order sequel, rushed into production after ‘Godzilla’ proved a hit, with Toho programme director Motoyoshi Oda subbing for Ishirō Honda, who was already committed to other projects - ‘..Raids Again’ is nonetheless historically significant on the basis that it establishes the template which would be followed by all of Toho’s subsequent Showa-era Godzilla movies.

In other words – Godzilla pops up like a bad penny in some random place (a remote, snow-capped island in this case) and takes on a new opponent (big spiny, armoured fella Anguirus). The resulting action is inter-cut with a somewhat charming but basically forgettable human story, and beyond that the film simply concentrates on delivering vast quantities of stuff that young boys want to see - model tanks and artillery pieces truckin’ around the place, stock footage battle-ships manoeuvring about, tiny fighter planes endlessly shooting their missiles at mountainsides, and outlandish monsters waving their arms about looking monstrous. It may all get rather monotonous for us grown-ups, but even today, show me the ten year old who wouldn’t be totally down with this relentless programme of toy town militarism.


3.
Further evidence that ‘…Raids Again’ is not exactly courting a discerning, adult audience can be found in the film’s obligatory “big governmental briefing” scene, which sadly feels like a rather tired parody of the surreal and politically charged sequence from Honda’s ‘Godzilla’.

Herein, the two daring commercial pilots who inadvertently witnessed the first big dust-up between Godzilla and Anguirus are asked by the resident ‘expert’ to pick the latter monster out of an illustrated children’s book – 1945’s The Dinosaur Book by Edwin H. Colbert, apparently.

“Yeah, that’s the guy, I’d recognise him anywhere” they basically declare, pointing to an Ankylosaurus, prompting the chief scientist to inform the assembled dignitaries that this beast is thought to have been around 150-200 feet tall (?!), and that it’s brain was located partially in its thorax, and partially in its abdomen (?!?!). He furthermore proceeds to step pretty firmly into the realm of ‘stuff we will almost certainly never know about dinosaurs’ when he declares that the Ankylosaurus was known for its extremely aggressive and territorial behaviour.

Now, I’m no palaeontologist, but… I can only assume the good folk back at the university made sure they kept this guy well out of the way when it was time to put the skeletons together. (1)

Though my sincere hope that the Godzilla sequels might play out somewhat less idiotically in their original Japanese iterations was severely shaken by all this however, it was nonetheless nice to see sober, sad-eyed Takashi Shimura turning up again as Dr Yamane from Honda’s ‘Godzilla’ (one of very few personnel to cross over to the sequel on either side of the camera).

Though the gratuitous use of repeated footage as padding is inexcusable, I enjoyed the way Dr Yamane projected a movie of Godzilla’s destruction of Tokyo from first film (notably more impressive than anything in this one), before despairingly telling Osaka’s high-and-mighty, “yes, so that’s pretty much what’s going to happen it your city. We currently have no way to stop it, and no plans for defeating Godzilla. Any questions?”


4.
I wish I could report that Eiji Tsuburaya’s effects footage here – including Big G’s first proper Kaiju battle! – are impressive enough to save the day, but sadly the monster footage too feels compromised and sub-par, compared to that seen in the first film. The Godzilla suit used in this one may have reportedly been a lot more comfortable and easier for filming, but it doesn’t look as good on screen, and, inexplicably, some of the monster battle scenes appear to have been under-cranked for some inexplicable reason, speeding up the monsters’ movements and thus ruining the natural / animalistic movements which were the chief advantage of the “man in suit” approach.

Quite why they did this, I have no idea, but if nothing else, it at least seems an apt visual metaphor for the rushed, rather slap-dash nature of this production.


5.
Despite these set-backs however, there is a certain amount of good stuff to be enjoyed in ‘..Raids Again’. A slight touch of first ‘Godzilla’s apocalyptic gravitas can be detected during the monsters’ destruction of Osaka, and the ominous black-out which eclipses the city’s famed neon signage in particular is beautifully conveyed with some well executed matte shots across the city’s harbour.

The sheer brutality with which The Big G takes down Anguirus – the franchise’s first big K.O. moment! - is also pretty cool, as is a spectacular shot during their initial battle, in which the two monsters plunge into the water from a towering cliff-face (an arresting image which would be reprised, far less successfully, at the conclusion of 1963’s ‘King Kong vs Godzilla’), and the climactic airborne attack upon Godzilla’s glacial island hang-out is excitingly and dynamically filmed, at least initially, before the tedium of all those endless tiny planes shooting off their payloads sets in.

Breezy, likeable and fairly good fun for the most part, ‘..Raids Again’ is eminently watchable, and even somewhat admirable as a finely honed bit of efficient movie-making craft, but it is of course doomed to be forever eclipsed by the gargantuan shadow of its predecessor.

---

(1) In fairness – and I stress again that *I’m no palaeontologist* - I suspect that the extraordinary claim in this film’s dialogue re: the location of the Ankylosaurus’ brain could merely be a misunderstanding and/or mistranslation of the theory that some dinosaur species may have had enlarged nodules at various points within their nervous system, which helped their tiny brains to co-ordinate bodily movement and so forth...?

Kaiju Notes: Godzilla (Ishirō Honda, 1954)

Like many genre movie obsessives I suspect, this month has seen me grovelling in supplication before the monolith that is Criterion’s Godzilla: The Showa Era Films box set, which landed on my doormat with an appropriately earth-shaking thump a few days after Halloween.

“Box set” is actually a bit of a misnomer in this case, as Criterion have housed these fifteen movies in packaging which more closely resembles an over-sized hardback book. I’m not usually one to geek out over the packaging of physical movie releases (well, not in public, anyway), but Yuko Shimizu’s newly commissioned artwork on the front, back and inside covers of this thing looks absolutely stunning at full size, and most of the interior content (both text and illustration) is equally impressive.

Although I’ve not had much of a chance to dig into the discs themselves yet (this could take years, frankly – I’ve only just finished off Criterion’s equally formidable Zatoichi box, a full five years after I first received it), I nonetheless feel confident in recommending this release as an object which will enrich your life and enliven your home in all manner of wonderful ways.

Obviously more important than any of that however is the access this set provides to the films themselves. With the exception of the original 1954 ‘Godzilla’, these Showa-era kaiju movies have long suffered from a chronic lack of availability, particularly here in the UK. When I first started trying to track them down around a decade ago, I found myself resorting to a mixture of pan-and-scan VHS releases, imported DVD box sets of similarly poor quality and low-res mp4 downloads - all, without exception, featuring the American release versions of the films with English language dubbing.

Admittedly, these English dubs often proved quite endearing, if not outright hilarious (I’ll never forget the deliriously absurd voiceovers applied to ‘Ebirah, Terror From The Deep’ and ‘Terror of Mechagodzilla’ in particular). In fact, my only criticism of the Criterion set thus far is the fact that many of these dubs have not been carried over as alternative audio options, which makes me slightly sad. BUT, never mind - the point I wish to make here is that opportunity to experience these films as their makers intended, with the original Japanese audio tracks and (in the case of the thirteen post-1960 films) the proper scope ratio, promises to be an absolute revelation for most viewers in the Western hemisphere, and is surely cause for celebration.

I’m not planning to write full reviews of these films as I watch them – I mean, I’m sure you don’t need me to provide a full run-down on the artistic merits of ‘Destroy all Monsters’, for goodness sake – but I will do my best to write up a few notes on things which occur to me during each viewing, whether high-falutin’ insights on the way the series developed over the years, or just picking out scenes or moments which seem particularly strange or noteworthy, and we’ll just see where we end up, I suppose.

So, we begin, of course, with the big daddy of them all, and, viewed purely in serious, cinematic terms, the best kaiju film ever made by a considerable margin - Ishirō Honda’s original 1954 ‘Godzilla’.

FEATURING: 
Just the lad himself.

1.
Ever since the original cut of Honda’s ‘Godzilla’ was restored and re-released in the early ‘00s, finding itself justifiably reappraised as a stone-cold classic of post-war Japanese cinema in the process, viewers who grew up with a very different idea of what Godzilla movies were all about have found themselves emerging, suitably shaken, from arthouse and festival screenings, scratching their heads and wondering how and why Toho’s signature monster franchise went on to become so silly, so quickly, over the course of subsequent instalments, despite the fact that the auteur responsible for this initial masterpiece frequently returned to the director’s chair.

Well, I for one tend to believe that the dramatic tonal shift which followed this first film’s success in fact makes perfect sense when one takes into account the strange emotional disjuncture at the heart of ‘Godzilla’.

What I mean to say is, for around 80% of this film’s running time, we’re watching a sombre, mature and deeply sad meditation on scientific morality in the 20th century and the very real terrors and threats to individual human agency which can result from man-made societal catastrophe.

For the remaining 20% of the film however – the portion basically encompassing all of the footage in which The Big G is on-screen - we basically forget about all that, and instead just find ourselves simply thinking, FUCK YEAH, GODZILLA!

I’m not sure to what extent a big rubber suit can legitimately be deemed ‘charismatic’, but from the very moment he first pokes his bonce above that hilltop on Odo Island and unleashes his inimitable elephantine roar, Eiji Tsuburaya’s creation here is just so immediately likeable, it’s difficult not to be overjoyed by his appearance, and correspondingly enthused by his lumbering, apocalyptic antics. As a result, the conflicting emotions we feel as Godzilla first stomps his way to shore on the mainland and cuts a bloody swathe through Tokyo’s metropolitan area are strange indeed.

In keeping with the film’s more serious agenda, what we are shown here for the most part is something we would rarely see again in a kaiju movie - real human misery on a vast scale. People’s homes, livelihoods and families going up in smoke as they frantically try to pack their remaining possessions onto hand-carts and shopping trolleys; a circumstance which must have been horribly familiar to many in the film’s original domestic audience, less than a decade after the Pacific War left much of the nation in ruins.

As the shadow of the Godzilla’s colossal paw looms above the Ginza streets, one famously harrowing shot shows us a single mother – a war widow, presumably - attempting to comfort her daughter as they crouch helplessly in an alleyway; “it’s alright, we’ll be joining daddy soon,” the mother tearfully exclaims. Devastating. It would take a heart of stone not to be moved by this simple, appalling vignette.

BUT, as soon as we cut back to the next model city / special effects shot and get another look at the big galoot causing all this mayhem, we’re immediately back on a more comfortable footing. FUCK YEAH, LOOK AT HIM GO; Godzilla doesn’t give a fuck about your stupid power lines! Look at him, swatting missiles out of the air like Mosquitos! COME ON! This is amazing! Godzilla rules!

How are we to deal with this tonal disjuncture, to reconcile these conflicting impulses? As soon as the initial box office receipts started to come in, Toho dealt with it by entirely ditching the brooding, serious aspect of Honda’s film and instead doubling-down on the kiddie-placating Monster Fun in subsequent kaiju films, significantly watering down their portrayal of the damage wrought upon Japan’s citizenry by Godzilla and his fellow cyclopean sluggers.

And, it’s easy to see why the studio went with the path of least resistance and took this decision, just as it’s easy to see why The Big G romped his way through fourteen more essentially light-hearted sci-fi adventures over the next twenty years. He has such an innate capacity to make an audience (especially, I dare-say, an audience of excitable ten year olds) just so damned happy, it would be a crime for him to have not been given the opportunity to do so, just for the sake of, you know, art and human dignity.

(By some accounts, Honda himself was initially unhappy with this shift in emphasis, but at the end of the day, he was a company man, and as a life-long SF enthusiast, I suppose he must have simply decided that being ordered by his employers to keep on making movies full of space-ships, doomsday weapons, model cities and giant alien monsters wasn’t exactly the worst thing that could have happened to him, all things considered.)


2.
Until my most recent viewing, I had never really appreciated the extent to which ‘Godzilla’, in its first half in particular, basically plays as a horror movie. In stark contrast to everything which was to follow in the Godzilla franchise, Masao Tamai’s photography here is extremely dark and brooding, utilising heavy chiaroscuro effects and unconventional, chaotic framing to establish a palpable sense of foreboding only emphasized by the relentless crashing of waves against the rocks of Odo Island, and the baleful majesty of Akira Ifukube’s legendary score. (Metal fan in particular will likely appreciate the extent to which Ifukube just plain lays down some killer riffs here.)

Scenes such as the one in which an as-yet-unseen Godzilla undertakes a nocturnal attack against a character’s isolated cliff-top home feel as if they could have come straight from the play-book of innovative kaidan horrors such as Kaneto Shindô’s similarly war-haunted ‘Onibaba’ (1964) or Hiroshi Matsuno’s contemporary-set oddity The Living Skeleton (1968), whilst in some sense Honda even pre-empts the island-bound terrors of Hideo Nakata’s ‘Ring’ films, nearly half a century later.

(Odo Island, where Godzilla is first encountered, is widely considered to be a fictional stand-in for Oshima, the sparsely populated volcanic island around 30km out to sea from Tokyo bay where the family of the dread Sadako make their home in the ‘Ring’ mythos.)

With its dark coloration, striking red lettering and montage of fearful figures, the film’s Japanese poster (see above) certainly resembles a contemporary kaidan poster, and the temptation to see ‘Godzilla’ as a horror film is further encouraged by the fact that the tragic Dr Serizawa (Akihiko Hirata) appears for some reason to reside in a Western-styled gothic crypt, where he keeps his extremely impressive array of Frankensteinian machinery in a subterranean burial chamber – the signifiers of a Hollywood horror movie perhaps acting here as a canny metaphor for the reckless, predominantly American, scientific advancements which have guided the tormented doctor (himself a traumatised war veteran) toward the construction of his oxygen-destroying “doomsday device”.

Thinking further, these horror-ish vibes are actually very much in keeping with several of the more low-key, and perhaps more personal, sci-fi films which Honda subsequently directed in-between his kaiju commitments (1958’s ‘The H-Man’ and 1963’s nightmarish ‘Matango: The Mushroom People’ immediately spring to mind). From another angle meanwhile, they also allow ‘Godzilla’ to fit neatly into an interesting international sub-set of ostensibly ‘scientific’ ‘50s alien / monster movies characterised by their brooding, overtly gothic visual aesthetic – Edgar Ulmer’s The Man From Planet X, Gerardo de Leon’s Terror is a Man and Riccardo Freda & Mario Bava’s ‘Caltiki: The Immortal Monster’, to name but a few.


3.
Given that Japan bore the brunt of the worst extremes of mass destruction that the 20th century had to offer, whilst its densely populated shores continue to abide beneath a more-or-less-constant threat of natural disaster, I’ve always been struck by the extent to which the nation’s culture has portrayed the collapse of its urban infrastructure with an almost unnerving level of enthusiasm.

In fact, there is a whole pantheon of popular Japanese art which has gleefully fetishized this forthcoming, full scale decimation to a nigh-on crazed degree, creating an entire new aesthetic of twisted girders, disintegrating concrete, bridges and overpasses swinging through space like loose tree branches, fire and debris raining down on all sides, and so forth.

Although Katsuhiro Ôtomo’s ‘Akira’ probably represents the pinnacle of this kind of “disaster-porn”, the original ‘Godzilla’ is surely also a major landmark in its development, and the terrifying beauty which Honda and his collaborators bring to Godzilla’s central rampage sequence remains absolutely startling. Looming, expressionistic shadows, vertiginous low angle camerawork and wild swatches of inky blackness all lend a genuine horror to proceedings that would never, ever be replicated by the comparatively quaint, full colour kaiju rampages which would follow through the ‘60s. Throughout its running-time in fact, ‘Godzilla’ succeeds in evoking an almost physical sensation of leaden, stomach-churning dread in its viewers, ensuring that, all these decades later, its status as the ‘Citizen Kane’ of monster movies remains unsurpassed.