#7 in my ranking of the Showa Era Godzilla films.
This is probably the most interesting of the Godzilla films. It’s the first film by Yoshimitsu Banno, who also wrote the script, and he swung for the fences stylistically and thematically. He wanted a return to the more serious-minded approach to the monster film like in Ishiro Honda’s first film while using it as a vehicle to talk about pollution rather than atomic energy. He also brings this weird 60s energy to so much of what happens on screen as to be simply…fascinating. I don’t think the overall package works entirely. It’s alternately too didactic and forgetful of its theme. Its opening is something of a confusing mess. The extended action scene that ends the film honestly doesn’t stitch together from one minute to the next. However, I found it hard to take my eyes off the screen as it moved along.
Pollution is destroying the planet, guys, and a creature is destroying and sinking tankers off the Japanese coast. While out looking for oysters near his seaside home, Ken (Hiroyuki Kawase) sees the creature jump out of the water and go for his father, Dr. Yano (Akira Yamanouchi), a zoologist beneath the water collecting samples. The creature scars Dr. Yano’s face, burning half of it (a recuring motif), and Ken gives it the moniker Hedorah (derived from hedoro, the Japanese word for sludge). Ken’s uncle (it’s not clear at all until later, making this opening just kind of weirdly assembled), Yukio (Toshio Shiba) is something of a Japanese hippie with a singer girlfriend, Miki (Keiko Mari), who sings a song about how all industrialization is bad and the Earth is dying, there are no seas or forests anymore. I mean…the hysteria on display is so on point and over-wrought that it just makes me roll my eyes, especially since it’s being sung in a swanky nightclub that surely used many of the materials she’s calling as being in the water in its construction.
This whole first act is just weirdly put together. The connection between Yuko and Dr. Yano isn’t brought up until they’re just in a car together. The attack on Dr. Yano isn’t actually shown. There’s a credit sequence that feels more like a Bond opening number than anything from Godzilla. Miki is wearing a weird, nature-themed onesie as she sings. The film picks up when Hedorah becomes more land-based, evolving to something amphibian-like, crawling onto a dock, and sucking up the pollutants from smokestacks. Banno directed the special effects along with Teruyoshi Nakano, and most of the special effects sequences happen at night, which is a benefit. It allows for a certain obfuscation in the visuals that make the miniatures look a bit more believable while the camera speed tends to keep to slow motion which helps sell scale.
The other major thing about the monster mash stuff is that Hedorah is very different. Not only is he made of minerals and feeds off of pollution, not only can he change shape from a walking hulk to a flying version, but he excretes sludge which burns Godzilla when they fight (taking out one of his eyes), and actually gets stronger when Godzilla uses his atomic breath. He’s a unique opponent that Godzilla can’t just punch into the ground until he flies away to be preserved for another film in the future. No, Godzilla’s fight with Hedorah is hard, and it’s the most compelling stuff in the film.
On the other end, though, is a return to the effort at categorization through Dr. Yano doing little experiments in his home lab while he convalesces from his injuries. Honestly, it feels like a way to eat up 10-15 minutes of screentime in a film where the human element is, at best, half-thought out. Heck, the point of view shifts to Mount Fuji because Yukio decides to have some sort of apocalyptic celebration because he knows that Hedorah is going to head there. It’s not even that necessary since there’s another point of view from the military, setting up a bit of tech brainstormed by Dr. Yano (note: he’s a zoologist, not a mechanical engineer) that sets up two giant electrodes that should dehydrate anything in between.
The finale is this extended bit that is Godzilla fighting Hedorah on the plains before Mount Fuji, and it’s both kind of great to watch and nonsensical at the same time. There’s a bit where Hedorah overpowers Godzilla, throws him into a hole, and starts pouring sludge over him. There’s a cut to some business about the humans, and it goes back to Godzilla just out and without sludge. It kind of feels like either a big chunk was cut out or Banno was working too quickly to get major sections of the sequence done with little regard for the connective tissue. However, that being said, this stuff is just great to watch.
There’s a stylistic incoherence about the film, veering from zany 60s psychedelic editing (most obvious when introducing Yukio and Miki) to this very sedate way of presenting the monster action. It’s mostly wide angles, the sound design drops off to hollow echoes, and there’s this great emphasis on selling scale. It’s honestly some of the best looking stuff in the franchise, and it was using a fraction of the budget the earlier films got. That’s a great testament to Banno and Nakano and their work.
What’s not a testament is Nakano’s insistence on the whole flying Godzilla thing. Never mind that the film is supposed to be geared towards children, the moment doesn’t fit with everything that came before it. The didactic nature of the messaging fits more, to be honest. And, the fight honestly goes on for too long. The monster ends up down, Godzilla pulls his eyes from his body, and then the monster gets up again (leading to the flying).
Gotta fill that runtime up with something.
Still, the stripped down approach to the monster stuff, the uniqueness of Hedorah, and the surprising brutality of how it all comes to a close is a lot to recommend. However, there’s still the didactic messaging, the categorization section, and the overall confusing opening. I don’t think it quite comes together. This isn’t Invasion of Astro-Monster, but I do think it does a decent job for most of its runtime. It’s kind of too bad that it was, apparently, poorly received, especially by the producer, Tomoyuki Tanaka, because I think I would have liked to see more Banno in charge of the franchise. Oh well.
Rating: 2.5/4
David Vining, Author 
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