RODAN: We Dug Too Deep

Rodan (1956; American Release, 1957) – Directed by Ishiro Honda – Starring Kenji Sahara, Yumi Shirakawa, and Akihiko Hirata.

Some interesting facts about RODAN:

1. It was Toho’s first Kaiju movie in color.

2. It was a big hit in the United States.

3. I watched the American version.

Okay, not the most interesting facts in the world but all three of them are important to understand both the movie and this review. (If I just wanted to impress you with something awesome I would have told you that George Takei does voice-over work for the American release.) I watched the American version of the film because that’s what Netflix has streaming and I didn’t want to wait for the DVD, and there are subtle differences between the two. (At least, that’s what Wikipedia tells me.) I don’t like watching the dubbed version of foreign movies. I’d much rather watch the original language version and read the bottom of the screen, but I was interested in seeing how the American release of a film worked without the added effort to hire Perry Mason to film new scenes.

It’s actually that first point up above, however, that I think plays the biggest role in how one enjoys the movie. In my review of GOJIRA / GODZILLA the other day, I mentioned that I was surprised at how dark and serious the movie was. Having brushed against, rather than fully engaged with Kaiju films over the years, my thoughts on the genre were largely concerned with men in rubber suits stomping over tiny city sets. That exists in GOJIRA, but the whole tone of the film was much more thoughtful than I was expecting. Perhaps that raised my hopes too high for RODAN, which is also directed by Ishiro Honda (or perhaps it’s the subtle differences in the American cut) and also features a dinosaur-esque monster coming up from beneath the surface to terrorize a city. Taken superficially, the most apparent difference between GODZILLA and RODAN is that the latter film (despite being released only two years later), is the addition of color.

You might think that such a positive technological advance as moving from black and white to color would only help a movie, but it actually hurts this early Kaiju movie.

First, nothing amplifies unrealistic effects like color. From watching a billion Doctor Who episodes, I can speak from experience when I say that rubber suited monsters are just more believable (or less unbelievable) in black and white. With a severely limited palette, you can obscure the weaknesses better, but when you amp up the color, suddenly it’s just that much harder to believe that we’ve got a 150-foot monster stomping on an actual car, and not Larry in a rubber suit stepping on a toy.

The black and white color scheme of GOJIRA helps to give the film a darker, moodier, almost noir-ish feel to the city scenes. I think it works well with the film’s sense of collective guilt and insecurity. In RODAN, however, all that color makes it hard to hide the weaknesses and works against a somber mood. We’re in color, baby, let’s see some sh*t blow up!

And blow up it does. RODAN starts off with a keen interest in story, but by the end, this is a loud, balls-out piece of explosion porn, and I think that has something to do with how the introduction of color altered either the story itself, or at least its presentation.

Like GOJIRA, Honda builds this film off the idea that humans are pushing too far and are risking being rebuked by the planet its carelessly destroying. RODAN takes place in a mining town and the miners are starting to dig too deep into the earth. If you’re like me, of course, the second you hear of people digging too deep you’re expecting a Balrog to come up out of the darkness, but the monsters in RODAN are more natural. First, we get giant insects attacking the miners first, and village soon after.

There’s some nice story work here in the opening of the film, as Shigeru (Kenji Sahara) believes one of the first two missing miners is innocent while everyone else believes him guilty of killing the other missing miner when he shows up dead. Shigeru isn’t believed because he’s in love with Goro’s sister, Kiyo (Yumi Shirakawa). Kiyo is super over-emotional but it’s understandable given that everyone thinks her brother is a murderer and then giant insects start appearing at your doorway.

Soon, however, Shigeru and Kiyo are largely lost as the film turns into an explosion fest. Shigeru is injured in an earthquake and comes back with amnesia, but when he remembers what he saw beneath the earth (two large eggs that birth the Rodans), this becomes a military movie. A team goes to check the Rodans out and then it’s just bang bang bang boom boom boom bang bang bang. Guns aren’t effective in stopping the giant dinosaur birds, so the military ends up trying to trap the Rodans underground by blowing up a volcano. They fail to bury them but the Rodans are poisoned and weakened from all the bombs and gas and when one of them dies in the volcano’s lava, the other one sticks around, unwilling to live without its mate.

It’s a rather powerful ending, speaking to the moving connection the two Rodans have for one another, but that angle needed to be developed more fully for the ending to have a truly thunderous impact. As it is, it’s only Shigeru and Kiyo who really seems to understand what the deaths of the Rodans mean on a personal level. Everyone else is like, “Huh, we did it. What’s for lunch?”

While not the all-time classic that GOJIRA is, RODAN is still a fine film with a fantastic ending.

And lots and lots of missiles.

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Mark Bousquet is the author of several novels and collections, including Gunfighter Gothic, Stuffed Animals for Hire, Dreamer’s Syndrome, Harpsichord and the Wormhole Witches, and Adventures of the Five. He has also published a review collection entitled Marvel Comics on Film, which covers every cinematic and TV movie based on a superhero from the House of Ideas. A complete listing of all his work can be found at his Amazon author page.

GOJIRA / GODZILLA: May We Live Without Destruction

Gojira / Godzilla (1954) – The 1st Godzilla Film – Directed by Ishiro Honda – Starring Akira Takarada, Momoko Kochi, Akihiko Hirata, and Takashi Shimura.

If you are of a certain age and grew up in the Boston TV market, you are well aware of WLVI-TV 56′s Creature Double Feature, a back-to-back Saturday afternoon block of monster movies. Given that they ran Saturday afternoons, I was more likely to turn the antenna to pick up the Red Sox or Bruins game down the dial on Channel 38, but I still watched it enough to know who Godzilla and Mothra and Rodan were, and I always loved catching the commercials.

There was a part of me, though, that was never able to get past the Rubber Suited Monster aspect, or the less-than-stellar effects, or even the black and white. Now that I’m older, none of those things are deal breakers, and I’ve decided it’s time to educate myself and watch a bunch of Kaiju movies until I get bored with them.

There’s only one place to start this set of reviews, of course, and that’s with the first film to feature the most famous of all Kaiju monsters: GOJIRA as it was originally called, GODZILLA as it came to be known.

GOJIRA / GODZILLA is one of those movies that if you haven’t seen it, you really have no idea how good it is. Knowing the basic story of Godzilla or being partly familiar with Kaiju movies does not prepare you for how powerful this movie is when you experience it for the first time. To start with, this isn’t not a monster movie. Oh sure, there’s a monster in it and he tramples through a city and fights the military and all that, but this isn’t just some dumb B-movie that gives you a scant plot in order to get to all the stomping and screeching. GODZILLA is a serious movie, awash in national and personal guilt and serving as a warning against the dangers of nuclear testing.

Brilliantly, the movie opens at the nexus of legend and science, expertly blending in historical fears with contemporary nightmares. A fishing boat is attacked by a flash of light, and villagers on a local island start recalling stories of the legendary “Godzilla,” a sea monster in which young girls were sacrificed to in days gone by. In short order we get our first look at the 150′ tall, reptilian biped looming over the top of a hill, and all the angry villagers who went running after him with their pitchforks before they saw him, no turn and run the other way.

One witness is Archeologist Kyohei Yamane (Takashi Shimura) and as he testifies to the government about what they’re up against, he tells them that Godzilla is only here because of nuclear testing. There is great debate in the room (which oddly falls on gendered lines) about whether the government should let this information out to the public. Eventually it’s decided to let the public in on things, as if not telling the citizens would have made it better when he showed up to destroy Tokyo. There is plenty of action sequences with Godzilla romping the city and getting shot at by a huge variety of Japanese army weaponry, but it’s all touched with a sense of sadness and futility.

Godzilla’s destruction of Tokyo is not filmed with either real menace or repelled with real fervor. There’s plenty of fire breathing and buildings getting knocked down, but the images that stand out are the victims of the violence, the people who had no say in Godzilla’s creation and no part in repelling his assault. They’re just people, living their lives … lives that get interrupted when a giant reptile and the army decide to fight each other in their city. Even when Godzilla is finally repelled (or when he decides he’s had enough knocking Tokyo around and leaves), the camera focuses on the sadness of Yamane more than the cheering corwds – we hear them but we see him as the man who argued that Godzilla should be studied instead of destroyed sees that dream fall by the wayside in the shadow of all the creature’s destruction.

It’s powerful filmaking from Ishiro Honda, amplified by a truly legendary score from Akira Ikufube.

As the army and government struggle to find a way to stop Godzilla, Yamane’s daughter Emiko (Momoko Kochi) reveals to her new flame Hideto Ogata (Akira Takarada) that her old flame, Daisuke Serizawa (Akihiko Hirata), has developed a device called the Oxygen Destroyer, which, well, destroys all oxygen underwater, forcing anything living to die of asphyxiation. Serizawa does not want to use the device because he fears it falling into the hands of people who will use it as a weapon. GOJIRA makes a powerful statement about the escalation of arms, as the only weapon that can be assured to defeat the new Greatest Weapon in the Next Greatest Weapon. The quest for power leads to bombs, which gives us Godzilla, a creature that can absorb radiation. The army’s attacks on the creature are only partially successful, so they need a new weapon, which Serizawa has, but he knows if he does use the Oxygen Destroyer, everyone will want it until the Next Greatest Weapon comes along.

It’s a crippling position for Serizawa to be in – Godzilla can only be defeated if he uses the Oxygen Destroyer, but then the Oxygen Destroyer becomes, in essence, the New Godzilla, which will cause other scientists to attempt to build something even more powerful. If Serizawa could simply trust people to not use his terrible weapon, he would use it, but he knows that the governments of the world are not going to let such a weapon be used once. Serizawa is ultimately convinced to use the Oxygen Destroyer when he hears a children’s chorus singing a lament on the radio, desiring that we live without destruction.

The final action sequence is jaw-dropping brilliant, but not because of the action. Rather, it’s emotion that carries the day. Honda films Serizawa and Ogata’s deep sea dive to release the Oxygen Destroyer near Godzilla with no joy, no speed. This is a somber attack on another living creature. Instead of coming across like Luke’s canyon run on the Death Star, Honda’s camera, Ikufube’s haunting score, and the dreamlike quality of the underwater shots make this a tragic march to a funeral. There is no joy in killing the “monster.” Even Godzilla watches them with a sense of tragic inevitability. The two men deliver the Oxygen Destroyer and Serizawa stays at the bottom of the ocean to kill himself in the process. Doing this ensures that no one will ever learn of his secrets to creating the Oxygen Destroyer.

Godzilla’s death is as somber as you will ever find for the death scene of a movie’s antagonist. There is a brief round of cheering after Godzilla dies, but all of the principals are saddened and troubled by the double death of Serizawa and Godzilla, and I’m leave feeling drained at the end of the movie instead of feeling joy or relief at the death of the monster.

GOJIRA / GODZILLA is an amazing movie.

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Mark Bousquet is the author of several novels and collections, including Gunfighter Gothic, Stuffed Animals for Hire, Dreamer’s Syndrome, Harpsichord and the Wormhole Witches, and Adventures of the Five. He has also published a review collection entitled Marvel Comics on Film, which covers every cinematic and TV movie based on a superhero from the House of Ideas. A complete listing of all his work can be found at his Amazon author page.