| Godzilla vs. Hedorah
is the first 1970s Godzilla entry. By this
time, a lot was different about the landmark
series of films: Eiji
Tsuburaya was deceased and the younger
Teruyoshi Nakano now ran Toho's special effects
unit while director Ishiro
Honda lost steam and was directing for
television. The character of Godzilla itself
had now done a 180 degree about face. No longer
was he a menacing warning of the horrors of
nuclear warfare, he was a friendly and benevolent
protector of the Earth against largely extraterrestrial
forces far more sinister than he. For Godzilla
vs. Hedorah, Toho assigned newly promoted
younger director Yoshimitsu Banno to the series.
The film that resulted is, simply put, more
a psychedelic, environmentalist hippie “head
film” than a kaiju film. To me, it’s
actually a tragically underrated entry in
the series as many people simply find it too
weird to be likeable. That said, not only
is the film in my opinion quite delightfully
screwy, it is the first Godzilla film since
Honda’s original to tackle is a serious
social issue and explore the human casualty
element of the ongoing kaiju carnage. It’s
true, the film is exceedingly bipolar. It
switches gears at any time it pleases, going
from a cute kiddie film with animated sequences
to scenes of grim grotesquery with all the
charm of holocaust footage. My question, though,
is simply this: how is that a bad thing?
In terms of story, a local
fisherman gives Dr. Yano (Akira Yamauchi)
a strange find: a tadpole-like large black
creature he found while trying to fish for
shrimp. Later, a gigantic creature similar
to the tadpole attacks an oil freighter at
sea. Yano goes scuba diving near where the
old man found the tadpole while his son Ken
(Hiroyuki Kawase) waits for him. Yano is attacked
by the creature down there and his face is
burned on one side. Ken dubs the creature
Hedorah and Yano figures out that it’s
actually made of minerals. Soon the creature
grows legs and comes ashore at Suruga but
is quickly engaged by Godzilla, who is driven
back. Hedorah then becomes airborne and flies
over cities in broad daylight killing hordes
of bystanders with its toxic fumes. Dr. Yano,
at Ken’s insistence, convinces the government
to dry Hedorah by making two gigantic electrodes.
Hedorah finally matures into a bipedal form
and crashes a bunch of hippies’ party
on Mount Fuji. Godzilla once again confronts
the creature as the humans’ ready the
electrodes.
Godzilla vs. Hedorah
is actually far closer in feel and style to
such classic pieces of Japanese surrealist
cinema as Seijun Suzuki’s Branded
to Kill, Toshio Matsumoto’s Funeral
Parade of Roses and Shunya Ito’s
Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41
than to anything by Ishiro
Honda. The film literally uses every “far-out”
cinematic technique know to man: multiple
screens, trippy animated sequences, disgusting
real life shots of a horrendously polluted
Japanese harbor, musical numbers, manipulation
of color saturation and fish-eye lenses. It’s
all thrown in a wildly uneven but spectacularly
fun brew. It’s cute and kiddie-oriented
one minute, with a then only six-year old
Hiroyuki Kawase playing a very Gamera film
like young boy who names the monster and makes
all the film’s scientific revelations
long before the adults do. Yet the film is
also shockingly grim: Ken’s father gets
his face burned like Batman’s
Two Face by Hedorah, people are reduced to
slime-covered, bleached skeletons, the shots
of the dead fish, sewage and garbage clogged
bay are enough to make anyone nauseous and
adorable kittens get covered in Hedorah’s
sludge. There’s even a psychedelic disco
scene where Yukio (Toshio Shiba), Ken’s
angry young hippie neighbor, has a “fishy”
LSD trip. It’s for kids, yet many elements
are far too wild for most kids to comprehend
in a way not unlike the “adult references”
slipped into many Looney Tunes cartoons.
While Banno keeps things as
mind-bending as he can, Nakano on the special
effects end does some of his very best work
on the Godzilla series. Hedorah (the enormous
suit worn by future Godzilla Kengo Nakayama/Kenpachiro
Satsuma) actually looks quite convincing slimy
and toxic and the scenes are far more atmospherically
filmed than any of his other Godzilla scenes
later on, which would largely be padded with
stock footage and filmed in barren pastures
away from the expensive model cities. The
unusual level of atmosphere, however, is most
likely Banno’s doing as he filmed the
special effects scenes while Nakano merely
physically executed them. Composer Riichiro
Manabe's much maligned musical score
is actually weirdly appropriate to the circumstances
here. Of course it feels more like belongs
in an avant-garde film than a kaiju eiga but
what many don’t get is that Godzilla
vs. Hedorah is an avant-garde film! It’s
not a normal Godzilla movie by any stretch
of the imagination, but it is hardly meant
to be. It succeeds as something entirely different
and as an immensely entertaining experience
like few others. The script, though seemingly
mostly written by Banno but features some
writing by Takeshi Kimura (as Kaoru Mabuchi
since by now he had long been writing solely
for his paychecks) is flimsy but adequate.
The characters are more archetypes and walking
clichés, though most Godzilla films
aren’t known for their teenage hippies.
This however, doesn’t really detract
from the film itself since it’s a film
to be watched for its eye-candy and not story.
Godzilla vs. Hedorah, however, has
one major flaw that stands in the way of it
being a true cult classic: its ending is drawn
out and feels around 10 minutes too long.
The film climaxes with a ghastly and ridiculous
scene in which Godzilla chases down Hedorah
by using his atomic ray as jet propulsion
and flying! While it’s amusing, it’s
simply too silly and feels like it was tacked
on at the last minute because someone wanted
to produce a longer film. This is a shame
as this poor decision badly wounds an otherwise
delightfully bizarre post-modernist work of
mad genius.
Series producer Tomoyuki
Tanaka, however, didn't quite agree with
the “delightfully bizarre” sentiment.
He angrily accused Banno of “ruining
the Godzilla series” and, seeing as
Banno did little directorial work after that,
most likely saw to it that he was more or
less blacklisted. However, a truly tenacious
filmmaker is stopped by nothing, not even
Japan’s most famous and powerful film
producer putting you on “the don’t
see list”. Banno attempted to pitch
a sequel to Toho in which a second Hedorah
appears in Africa, the setting an homage to
Gualitero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi’s
sprawling exploitation documentary Africa
Addio. Ultimately, it was rejected and
Toho’s next Godzilla film would be a
rather humdrum Jun
Fukuda-directed, stock footage deluged
mess entitled Godzilla
vs. Gigan (1972). Godzilla vs.
Hedorah had the honor of being the last
Godzilla film that the fine exploitation enterprise
American International Pictures ever distributed.
It was released on an infamous but surprisingly
appropriate double bill with Frogs
which must have been one night of ecological
horror to remember for any Baby Boomer or
Gen-X tyke at the drive-in. All the Godzilla
films released from here on in during the
70s would be done so with minimal investment:
the more meticulous dubbing by Peter Fernandez
and Titra Studios was to be dropped in favor
of Toho’s own atrocious Hong Kong recorded
dubs. The US version (entitled Godzilla
vs. the Smog Monster) is an equivalent
and sometimes superior film to its Japanese
counterpart. The film features a wonderful
English rerecording of the film’s theme
(a ditty named Return Us Our Sun in Japanese)
called Save the Earth by Adryan Russ and the
dubbing is some of the very finest ever commissioned
for a Japanese film aside from Robert Houston’s
Lone
Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart at the River Styx
(1972) reedit Shogun Assassin. The
only real mar is that the truly bizarre male
chorus at the end of Japanese version is substituted
for a simple replay of Save the Earth which
is not as surreally effective.
Say what you will about Godzilla
vs. Hedorah, but it is unique and for
its sheer audacity is one of my personal favorites
in the series. Banno would later have a hand
in the equally wild and acerbic but even gloomier
Prophecies
of Nostradamus (1974). Now, decades
later, he is trying to get backers for a new
Godzilla film made in 3-D IMAX: Godzilla
3-D to the Max, which, provided it follows
the original script reasonably well, hopefully
will be every bit as out there as Godzilla
vs. Hedorah.
|
(3.5/5)