Godzilla vs. Hedorah

This psychedelic Goji entry features a very formidable opponent in Hedorah and some very memorable trippy imagery. It has an environmental message and is truly unlike any Goji film.

Hedorah has a certain special aura about it, very memorable moments and a great soundtrack that makes this one of the Showa era's finest.

8 Smog Clouds out of 10!

Okay, so.... Godzilla vs Hedorah! It's been said that this is a Godzilla movie you either love or hate, so it's either a 10 or a 0. For me personally, this movie is a 5; right smack dab in the middle! It's not a shining gem or a smouldering turd, it's just kinda "eh" *gesture where you shake your hand with all the fingers flat out*

So, the premise; rampant water and air pollution has spawned Hedorah, a sentient monster made of pollution that is like a mix of the Blob and a garbage dump! Hedorah is able to melt people to bones! The only hope for humanity, as always, is GODZILLAAAAA~!!!!

Hedorah is a notable monster as he is the last monster of the Showa era that is acting on his own will, he isn't obeying anyone or under mind control, unlike Ghidorah, Gigan, Megalon, Mechagodzilla, and Titanosaurus of the succeeding Showa films.

This movie is different; there's bizarre animation, trippy montages, and drug innuendos a-plenty!!! Now, the animation shown isn't anime, it's just some bizarre animation straight out of Uncanny Valley. Hedorah is shown sucking on a smokestack from a factory and exhaling the smoke before showing his bloodshot eyes, a blatant reference to taking a bong hit.

As someone who has taken a few bong hits before, I found this to be a clever little thing. The drug innuendos can be excused because this movie was made in 1971; weed culture was still in it's very huge first run!

There are two or three POV shots from Hedorah's perspective.

Also, no review of Godzilla vs Hedorah would be complete without mentioning the bizarre scene where Godzilla FLIES. This was a total WTF moment.

All in all, if you watch this movie with a sober mind like I did, you'll either hate it or it'll just be "eh". If you watch it after smoking some weed or ingesting an edible, it'll be the best damn Godzilla movie you've ever seen!

Godzilla vs Hedora (AKA The Smog Monster) is less slick than many of the later productions. It is also somewhat less serious, and features a Godzilla who is more mythic than consistent with his earlier and later portrayals. The Godzilla in this film is a force of nature in more than just a figurative sense. She is also highly intelligent and a defender of the earth and, to some extent, its people.

Even from the title, its easy enough to figure out what this film is about. Tadpoles mutate because of the mutagenic properties of pollution in Tokyo Bay (interestingly, this somewhat silly idea is far less absurd than most of the latter pseudoscience used in Godzilla scripts - almost as bad as Star Trek Voyager sometimes was). The mutant tadpoles fuse at the cellular level and grow into a giant tadpole which then mutates three or four times, spewing out its own toxic pollutants, first as terrestrial and eventually as air pollution. The visuals are good, but the special effects are admittedly below even Toho's usual standards.

Created in the early 1970s, this film is metaphorical and symbolic, although it is still, at heart, a Godzilla film. Hedora is an unsubtle metaphor for the ecological state of the world, and is, in that sense, a monster of our own making. Godzilla is an embodiment of nature, and is to be viewed as a positive force for all life on earth. These symbols are particularly apparent in the use of cartoons as transitional devices from one plot point to another.

Godzilla Vs Hedora walks a very thin line between giant-monster violence and a kid-oriented film. As somebody who has since his early teens, been interested in the environment and as somebody who always liked Japanese Monster films, I developed a sentimental attachment to this film very early on. In fact, this is my all-time favorite Godzilla film, and more than any other film, it is the reason why I consider myself a fan of the big green lizard. This is the film which establishes Godzilla as an environmentalist and a friend to young people - his two best roles.

"Godzilla vs. Hedorah" is probably my favorite Godzilla from the 1970s (the others being the one with Gigan in them, he RULES TOO!). There sure is alot going on in this crazy movie.

There are:

ACID TRIPS! Strange anime sequences! Really upbeat soundtrack and theme song (KAAAAAAAAISEN!)! Kids in hot pants! Ecology made fun! Haiku! Nightclubs! Hippies galore! Godzilla flying! Hedorah, the strange looking beast of Smog!

This film has everything a B-movie enthuaist wants!

Even though a lot of people hated Hedorah, but I don't. He is one of the most interesting looking and powerful foes in Godzilla's old days. He pretty much hacks up on Godzilla a lot, changes shape at will, plus, it FARTS out acid!

Anyways, watch "Godzilla vs. Hedorah"! You'll have a B-movie blast!

When Dr. Yano (Akira Yamanouchi) investigates a strange tadpole like creature found near the coast, he and his son are soon attacked by a larger version of it that comes to be known as Hedorah. Hedorah is an alien monster who has fed off the various pollutants of the air and sea and is growing at an exponential rate with Godzilla soon appearing to fight against the creature.

Godzilla vs. Hedorah (aka Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster) is a 1971 kaiju film and the eleventh installment in the Godzilla franchise. Inspired by growing concerns of Japan's issues with pollution at the time, the film marked the feature debut of Yoshimitsu Banno who opted to make the film with an environmental bent. Working with Treuyoshi Nakano on the special effects, the two attempted to make a film as ambitious as the reduced budget and tight filming schedule would allow as Godzilla movies continually saw themselves moving to lower tiers among Toho's production schedule. While Banno sought to make a children's film with environmental messaging, Nakano sought to make something with the impact of the 1954 Godzilla with the two often compromising where needed. Critical reception at the time was very mixed with some offering praise to the film for adding some weight back to the series after All Monsters Attack/Godzilla's Revenge, while others responded negatively with some claiming it one of the worst films in the series and even series producer Tomoyuki Tanaka would accuse Banno of having killed the series. At its core Godzilla vs. Hedorah is very experimental in its approach to the Godzilla formula and like any experiment there's some success and there's some failure.

Despite the movie prominently featuring a child character, in this case Ken Yano played by Hiroyuki Kawase, the movie mostly avoids the pitfalls that befall this character type such as those seen in the Gamera movies. The characters aren't given the greatest amount of depth but for what their place in the story is, they do it well enough. Conceptually speaking Hedorah has a good design being a shapeshifting mound of sludge who feeds on pollution and excretes poison and the movie offers some pretty horrific imagery (at least by the standards of this kind of movie) that even if you don't like this movie you at least have to give it credit for "going there". This is however where the problems arise because it feels like the movie's going in two directions trying to be a serious cautionary tale about the effects of environmental pollution but also trying to cater to that lighthearted sense of "fun" from entries like Destroy All Monsters. The Kaiju battles feel a lot slower this time around and often play towards emphasizing the collateral damage of Hedorah's sludge than the impact or choreography of the monsters, and the Kaiju battles often go on way longer than you want them to with numerous false stops only for the battle to keep going. The movie also takes a very "arm's length" approach to pollution with the primary focus being on the evil of the pollution itself rather than discussing the sources or human indifference that lead to it being there in the first place so it feels like it's only addressing half the issue.

Godzilla vs. Hedorah is the kind of movie I wish I liked more than I actually did. Despite working with the ever decreasing budgets that dogged this era of the franchise you can tell there was some desire for ambition and experimentation with the film even if it doesn't quite pay off. Definitely worth a viewing if only for curiosity's sake in some bold moves for this entry, but no guarantee they'll work for you.