#4 in my ranking of the Showa Era Godzilla films.
So much of what I get out of these monster movies from Japan in the 60s is how they take on the aspects of different genres to try and keep things interesting. This, the first Godzilla film not directed by Ishiro Honda since he was too busy to make Godzilla Raids Again, decides to take on the mantle of a James Bond film, but only the villain aspect of it. Like many of these films, it ends up being a showcase for Eiji Tsuburaya’s special effects work. Well, the work he supervised but was actually done by Sadamasa Arikawa. Shinichi Sekizawa’s script directed by Jun Fukuda is a frantic, unfocused series of excuses to get three monsters punching each other. It’s at least interesting as it plays out, and the monster action is real good.
Ryota (Toru Watanabe) is desperate to find his brother Yata (Toru Ibuki) who has been lost at sea. A psychic has said that he’s still alive, so Ryota makes it a mission to find a boat. He goes to a dancing competition where the top prize is a luxury yacht, shows up too late for it, hooks up with two guys who failed at the dance, goes to a marina where they find a yacht, board it, find it already populated by Yoshimura (Akira Takarada) with a gun, a briefcase he won’t open, and aversion to news about a bank robbery played on the radio. Ryota takes the yacht out determined to find Yata. How freaking over-complicated is this opening? It’s kind of crazy in how many directions it goes in so short a time, but it’s a testament to energetic editing techniques that it never gets bogged down in any of them in particular. I mean, it’s thin and random and so ridiculous as to reach the point of comedy, but it moves quickly, at least.
So, they reach an island after a storm and a giant claw from the sea shipwrecks them, and they discover that it’s been invaded by the Red Bamboo, a criminal organization making hard water for nuclear weapons, kidnapping the denizens of the nearby Infant Island, the home of Mothra, and forcing them to create a yellow liquid that will protect their ships from Ebirah, the crab-like monster whose territory is the water around the island. One of the newest shipment of slaves is Daiyo (Kumi Mizuno), who, for some reason, carries a knife through the whole thing even though she was captured as a slave? Whatever. Anyway, it becomes this back and forth action as the shipwrecked survivors try to figure out a way off the island, figure out what the Red Bamboo is doing, free the prisoners, and wait for the residents of Infant Island to wake up Mothra who’s just taking a nice, long nap while her people are being kidnapped. As a quick sidenote, Mothra’s last appearance in Ghidorah was as a larva, and here she’s full moth just napping. It feels like it would have been better to have her in a cocoon with Infant Island waiting for her to wake up for the first time. I’d guess it was a budget/production solution since Mothra is mostly just stationary through the film.
Anyway, they also find Godzilla sleeping under a mountain. How did he get there? It’s a mighty coincidence that he’s there, huh? At least they actively wake him up instead of him just randomly waking up. Minimize those coincidences. It helps the storytelling.
The finale ends up being the mess of different elements thrown together in a big, sprawling action spectacle. It begins innocently enough with Godzilla waking up, chasing after Daiyo (evidence of the original script being about King Kong because this is the first time that Godzilla has expressed any interest in any human ever), and escalating as the Red Bamboo bring in reinforcements, leading to a fight with Ebirah and Mothra ultimately saving the day. Aside from the special effects, the most interesting thing about all of this is the further push to make Godzilla sympathetic. He never tries to hurt any of the good guys, protects them from a giant monster, and they plea for him to escape the island which is about to explode (talk about a Manic Monday).
So, that takes us to the special effects. The only difference I can tell from working with Honda to working with Fukuda is that there’s a certain silliness creeping more into Godzilla than before (not to say that there was a complete absence of silliness with Honda, just that it was minimal). Godzilla sitting on his tail and taking a nap is kind of silly, you know? However, Sadamasa Arikawa just keeps honing the craft with every film, building on the work of Tsuburaya, his supervisor. The highlight is the stuff at night. I’m a fan of all of his special effects work, but it’s rarely convincing. There are really convincing shots here of Ebirah’s claw coming out of the water, and it happening in water makes it even more impressive because water is really hard to do with miniatures.
So, it’s manic and all over the place and thin with the character stuff. The excuses of bringing the monsters together is just as thin. However, the special effects are very good, and the whole embrace of a Bond villain aesthetic regarding the Red Bamboo layer is fun. Really, that this film is only 90 minutes long and kind of embraces the silliness just enough is a good thing. It’s not enough to completely save it, but it is enough to provide some decently light entertainment along the way.
Originally published here
English (US) · 