One of the most commercially successful directors in Japanese film history, Ishiro Honda has long been the subject of both extreme ridicule and glowing praise. For some he was merely a name attached to low-rent junk for children; for others an unfairly maligned visionary worthy of careful consideration. While acknowledging Honda’s historical importance in his 2008 book A Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors: From the Silent Era to the Present Day, Alexander Jacoby nonetheless dismissed him as a rather “pedestrian” filmmaker whose themes were more superficial than searing and who remains known simply for overseeing films made famous by Eiji Tsuburaya’s special effects. On the other hand, Japanese historian Inuhiko Yomota’s thoughtful essay “The Menace from the South Seas: Honda Ishiro’s Godzilla” champions the maker of Godzilla (1954), Matango (1963), and Atragon (1963) as “equally deserving of serious discussion” as his close friend Akira Kurosawa.
Myself, I’m not an ardent member of either camp. As I’ve written elsewhere, Honda, to my mind, made some very fine movies, many of which valiantly addressed social issues and thus warrant the serious discussion called for by Yomota; and I am certainly thankful for Steve Ryfle and Ed Godziszewski’s Ishiro Honda: A Life in Film, from Godzilla to Kurosawa for contributing to this line of thought. (Their intensely researched biography also served as the primary source of information for this article.) At the same time, the drastically uneven quality of Honda’s work has always distanced me from the camp declaring him one of Japan’s great directors. And I continue to find issue with his handling of certain types of sequences (namely action)—plus the hit-and-miss ratio in which he dramatized subjects—and while he declared himself someone uninterested in style nonetheless feel some of his films would’ve benefited from a director able to wield good-looking shots into a kinetic whole.
That said, there are wonderful movies within the career under discussion (a few of which don’t feature monsters or aliens). Given the right script and sequences within his range, Honda could turn out films—at least individual sequences—of tremendous power. And any career with the lasting pop cultural impact of his is worth talking about.
ISE-SHIMA (1949)
Ishiro Honda’s directorial career began with Ise-Shima (1949), a nineteen-minute bunka eiga (“culture film”) documenting the history and people of eastern Mie Prefecture. The film was produced by Toho Educational Film Division, which in the immediate postwar years specialized in short subjects typically focusing on life and tourism in Japan, sometimes exhibited internationally but most often shown in Japanese schools. As a visual document, Ise-Shima is efficient—skillfully photographed and cleverly assembled in post-production by Honda. In one particularly immersive sequence, the director collects footage of different groups of people walking through different parts of Mie—across a field, over a bridge, upon a hillcrest, through a coastal street (the latter framed through a street merchant’s door)—and splices them together with succinct rhythm, jumping from one part of the prefecture to the next, using the subjects’ common action to cinematically link the shots.
Most impressive, however, is an absorbing six-minute scene following a group of ama (“sea women,” female pearl divers) in their hunt for abalone and shellfish. Underwater photography had not been successfully achieved in 1940s Japan, so the first-time director consulted a technician friend to build a metal-and-glass container for his camera. Thanks to this protective construct, Honda’s crew could submerge with the divers and achieve marine footage so breathtaking that a European distributor picked up Ise-Shima for screenings in the Occident. “The fact that Ise-Shima got sold opened up my way to theatrical features,” Honda recalled. And the film itself is so absorbing that one is left sad realizing Honda’s second documentary—1949’s Story of a Co-op—has seemingly been lost to the ravages of time.
THE BLUE PEARL (1951)
In one brief moment from Ise-Shima, Honda visually contrasted the rustic lives of Mie Prefecture’s working-class people against the hustle and bustle of modernized, cosmopolitan Japan. For his first dramatic feature, The Blue Pearl (1951), the director expanded upon this subject, bringing back the Mie setting, the focus on ama divers, and his groundbreaking undersea photography. Yukiko Shimazaki stars as Noe, an ama residing in an island village entrenched with feudal traditions and leeriness toward outsiders (read: western-influenced Japanese). Noe’s family wishes her to marry a local, but she falls in love with the new schoolteacher (a visitor from Tokyo played by Ryo Ikebe) and winds up competing for his affections with a fellow ama (Yuriko Hamada) who herself became westernized after a few years in Tokyo.
The Blue Pearl is a modest film hampered somewhat by rough execution. The romance around which the story revolves comes up short thanks to a mechanical performance from Ryo Ikebe—outshone here by Takashi Shimura (demonstrating his signature talent of making great acting look easy) and by Shimazaki, passionate and soulful as the ama caught in the clash between tradition and modernity. She, appropriately, receives the best character in the film, embodying a whole person with fully refined longings and a fascination with the Japan that exists beyond her island home. In one of the picture’s best moments, Noe nervously pours a bucket of water on Ikebe, not knowing he’s oblivious that the action, in her culture, signifies a confession of love. (An amusing footnote: Shimazaki would play the spiritual opposite of this character in another film from 1951: enacting a flirtatious, westernized girl in Mikio Naruse’s Repast.)
Honda’s direction likewise is scattershot, boasting a few wonderful moments in contrast to a few equally clumsy ones. (A romantic scene set in a lighthouse during a thunderstorm ranks with the best material in his oeuvre; and a sequence of Shimazaki visiting Ikebe as he paints the coast is choppily staged and edited.) In the hands of a more experienced director, The Blue Pearl might’ve been a minor classic; as is, it’s charming enough, carried along by its protagonist and the underwater photography which, like that in Ise-Shima, is thoroughly immersive.
THE SKIN OF THE SOUTH (1952)
Although his efforts go uncredited, Eiji Tsuburaya shot an impressive landslide sequence for the climax of this melodrama about researchers trying to save a mountain village from disaster. And this historical footnote—the first teaming of Honda and Tsuburaya—is more interesting than the passionless love quadrangle that unfortunately consumes much of the film’s actual run time. All four protagonists are too milquetoast to be very interesting, one of them receiving so little screen time that she never develops into anything resembling a character.
Honda’s direction is more confident than in The Blue Pearl, this time permitting adequate breathing space to individual sequences and maintaining a natural flow between shots. But aside from Tsuburaya’s footage and some interesting scenes of geologists conducting survey work, the picture has little in the way of compelling moments. A merely tolerable programmer that needed more of Yasushi Akutagawa’s riveting score (and more of Takashi Shimura, who steals his one brief scene early on and is sorely missed thereafter).
THE MAN WHO CAME TO PORT (1952)
[NO REVIEW AVAILABLE]
ADOLESCENCE PART II (1953)
[NO REVIEW AVAILABLE]
EAGLE OF THE PACIFIC (1953)
In his book The Emperor and the Wolf: The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune, film historian Stuart Galbraith IV speculates the reason Mifune was able to appear in this pacifistic war movie—shot at the same time as Seven Samurai (1954)—was because Kurosawa had been hospitalized in April 1953, thereby putting the latter film’s already extended production on hiatus. Whatever the reason, the actor is squandered on an unmemorable part, showing off a mere fraction of his usual screen presence and charisma. And yet, he prevails as one of the film’s more interesting qualities, in particular outshining Denjiro Okochi and his somnambulistic performance as Admiral Isoroko Yamamoto.
Eagle of the Pacific points the way to what’d become a recurring issue with many of Honda’s science fiction movies: excessive scenes of people sitting around tables talking, photographed in the most pedestrian manner imaginable. In The Skin of the South, Honda and cinematographer Kiyoe Kawamura managed an engaging town meeting scene with spirited performances and the camera rotating in the center of a room, turning constantly from one speaker to the next. By contrast, the conversation scenes in Eagle of the Pacific (photographed by Kazuo Yamada) are mind-numbingly flat in their staging, and most of the actors—even Takashi Shimura—appear more bored than anything else. The docudrama approach Honda assumes finds meager pockets of interest only in cutaways to civilians reacting to Japan’s mounting international tension—which in the second half disappear in favor of flashy yet impersonal battle sequences (a composite of new and recycled effects from Tsuburaya as well as jarringly grainy stock footage of actual battles).
FAREWELL RABAUL (1954)
After the financial success of Eagle of the Pacific (Toho’s first postwar film to gross 100 million yen, according to some sources), the front office requested another war picture from Honda; and despite reservations from his wife—who questioned whether two consecutive pictures about combat would be wise for her veteran husband—the director went ahead with Farewell Rabaul, a wholly fictional melodrama about Japanese pilots stationed in Papua-New Guinea toward the end of World War II. While not capturing the same attendance as its predecessor, it ended up being a marked improvement over Eagle of the Pacific: featuring stronger direction, remarkable black-and-white cinematography by Kazuo Yamada (the use of shadows on faces is particularly impressive), and confident performances all around.
Ryo Ikebe shines as a fighter pilot who begins the story cold-heartedly preaching victory or death in the attempt but later comes to recognize the senselessness of war. Following an interrogation with a captured American pilot (Bob Booth), who points out the ineffectiveness of good planes in the hands of unqualified pilots—as well as how quickly Japan’s disregard for human life is pushing the island nation toward defeat—Ikebe discovers his humanity and dejectedly watches as his friends are wiped out in enemy attacks. That most tokusatsu fans know Ikebe for his lifeless performances in science fiction is unfortunate; here, as elsewhere in his non-genre career, he proves a wonderfully capable actor.
Farewell Rabaul is not a great film, as it loses steam in a final act placing too much emphasis on a tepid relationship between Ikebe and a nurse played by Mariko Okada. (The more interesting male-female dynamic concerns another pilot—Akihiko Hirata, in his first role for Honda—and an exotic native girl fervently enacted by Akemi Negishi.) Hiroaki Hagiwara’s score is also, at times, comically distracting. Still, the picture—supported by Tsuburaya’s aerial combat scenes—shows Ishiro Honda coming into his own as a craftsman; and later that same year, his interests in war and the human condition would reach their pinnacle, in what ended up being the director’s most iconic movie.
GODZILLA (1954)
Writing about the original Godzilla is a daunting task: what can be said about this film that hasn’t been said numerous times already? So I ask the readers’ tolerance of what might seem to be an inappropriately short review.
Looking back on my many viewings of Honda’s masterpiece, I remain haunted by its powerful images, disturbed by its gut-wrenching scenes of human suffering, moved by its statement against the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and fascinated by the manner in which Honda and co-screenwriter Takeo Murata rework creature feature formulas for symbolic effect (e.g., the scientist who wants to keep the monster alive in spite of the danger it presents—albeit not for “knowledge” as tends to be motive in American films but rather because Takashi Shimura’s Dr. Yamane hopes that uncovering Godzilla’s ability to survive radiation exposure would benefit mankind).
I could write for pages about the 1954 classic but would only regurgitate what’s been said ad infinitum. So I’ll simply close with this: Godzilla is more than worthy of its reputation as one of the greatest monster movies ever made—because it is so much more than a monster movie.
LOVE MAKEUP (1955)
[NO REVIEW AVAILABLE]
MOTHER AND SON (1955)
[NO REVIEW AVAILABLE]
HALF HUMAN (1955)
Long suppressed from home release due to its unflattering depiction of hideously deformed burakumin villagers, Ishiro Honda’s second monster movie is a clumsily written effort held aloft by fine craftsmanship and a few stellar individual qualities—one of them appropriately being the eponymous creature. Indeed, the picture’s best moments are those that depend on visuals rather than dialogue and zero in on what turns out to be an inherently gentle monster. In introducing the creature, Honda starts off placing his camera inside a tent. As our heroine (Momoko Kochi) sleeps, a humanoid shadow grows across the interior fabric, projected by something enormous outside. Honda then cuts to a wide shot with the shadow lumbering past, the camera pressing in on Momoko Kochi as she sleeps, emphasizing her vulnerability; all in the same shot, we finally draw in on a small gap in the tent—just as the curious monster peers in.
There are other such moments: the yeti rescuing our protagonist (Akira Takarada) from a slow death hanging off the edge of a cliff; the monster and its son receiving an offering from the local burakumin; a stellar suspense scene wherein the creatures, captured by an animal broker (Yoshio Kosugi), break free of their cage during transport. After the younger yeti’s killed by a gunshot, the adult monster tosses its child’s murderer into a chasm. Honda concludes this riveting sequence with another long take that gradually and seamlessly changes the tone from tense to somber: beginning with a close-up of the beast panting in aggravation and then following it as it lumbers to its child’s body and sadly carries it into the forest. No dialogue or voiceover is necessary; all emotions are conveyed through the suit actor’s expressive performance and by Honda’s sensitive filmmaking.
In the film’s detriment is a ponderous cave-set climax and a slew of one-dimensional characters (the generic hero; the generic damsel-in-distress; the generic scientist mouthing exposition). The only person worth caring about is Chika, a young buraku fascinated by civilization (seemingly another instance of Honda’s interest in the clash between old-fashioned lifestyles and modernity). Chika is played by Kurosawa regular Akemi Negishi, whose vibrant performance evokes a conflicted person caught between her people’s way of life and curiosity for the Japan outside her mountain village. Through this character, the monsters, and Honda’s craftsmanship, one can see a much stronger movie fighting to emerge from the merely decent one that is on display.
PEOPLE OF TOKYO, GOODBYE (1956)
[NO REVIEW AVAILABLE]
NIGHT SCHOOL (1956)
[NO REVIEW AVAILABLE]
YOUNG TREE (1956)
[NO REVIEW AVAILABLE]
RODAN (1956)
Honda counted this moody and at times very disturbing film among his favorites and cited it as the picture that “put me on my path.” What begins as something of a Japanese take on Them! (1953) segues—with some very clever buildup and a mystery solved through an amnesia subplot—into riveting, action-heavy spectacle wherein the world’s threatened by voracious but ultimately sympathetic monsters.
The first half of Rodan is particularly effective, Honda mixing gruesome scenes of horror with compelling character drama. After several men are slashed to death in a colliery, the local community suspects a missing miner and coldly turn against the man’s sister (Yumi Shirakawa). Honda smartly directs the scenes of Shirakawa being shunned by her neighbors: her respectful bows go unreciprocated, the young woman flees in shame past crowds of judging women as her brother once again fails to appear in a roll call. Shirakawa also forms a natural rapport with leading man Kenji Sahara, who becomes her one ally in a sea of hatred—so warm are they together that it’s all the more disheartening this duo failed to recreate their chemistry in later Honda films.
Takeo Murata and Takeshi Kimura’s screenplay keep early scenes moving with one mysterious event tailing what came before it (the characters have just barely identified the mysterious killer as a prehistoric insect when an earthquake splits open the earth). And while our young protagonists admittedly become spectators once the Rodans surface, Eiji Tsuburaya’s monster-versus-military set pieces more than make up for what’s missing on the human side. One particularly great shot consists of the first Rodan toppling a building after landing in Fukuoka, the rubble knocking over a vat of water, the liquid contents gushing as everything careens toward the ground. “You can just feel the creators’ passion in the details,” Honda once said. “In special effects films like this, it is all about destruction, how beautifully it all crumbles.”
And yet, for all the terror they cause, the Rodans are ultimately victims in their own right, guilty only of trying to survive in a world unlike the one nature intended them for; and their fiery death in a volcanic eruption is among the most somber scenes in any Honda film. Elegantly directed and supported by an unsettling Akira Ifukube score, Rodan has rightly earned its status as a genre classic.
GOOD LUCK TO THESE TWO (1957)
Good Luck to These Two was the non-genre film of Honda’s I became most interested in after the release of Steve Ryfle and Ed Godziszewski’s biography in 2017. In addition to seeing Hiroshi Koizumi and Yumi Shirakawa (two of my favorites in the director’s “stock company”) explore drama greater than typically allotted in their science fiction efforts, the story seemed quasi-autobiographical—bearing similarities to tribulations Honda experienced in his own life. This remained my impression after seeing the movie: again and again I thought back to how Honda and his wife Kimi endured poverty and the disapproval of his wife’s parents in order to start a life together—and how that was mirrored by the experiences of the young protagonists in this film.
I posted more detailed thoughts in an article a few years back, but to summarize, Good Luck to These Two showcases Honda playing to his strengths: guiding his actors through an appealingly uncomplicated story about ordinary life, with no dependency on the visual panache or kinetic action in which he generally struggled. Hiroshi Koizumi and Yumi Shirakawa are equal to their parts, selling the illusion of a couple whose happiness together is threatened by societal and economic pressure; Takashi Shimura, Shizue Natsukawa, Keiko Tsushima, and Toshiro Mifune add humanity to the supporting ranks; and the final shot of this movie—with its two protagonists, having undergone a bumpy patch in their marriage, standing in a dark room, quietly agreeing to work on building a better future together—remains one of the most touching endings I’ve seen in a long while.
A TEAPICKER’S SONG OF GOODBYE (1957)
[NO REVIEW AVAILABLE]
A RAINBOW PLAYS IN MY HEART: PART 1 (1957)
[NO REVIEW AVAILABLE]
A RAINBOW PLAYS IN MY HEART: PART 2 (1957)
[NO REVIEW AVAILABLE]
THE WOMAN I CALLED MY SISTER (1957)
[NO REVIEW AVAILABLE]
THE MYSTERIANS (1957)
Arguably one of the two or three most historically important Japanese science fictions films, The Mysterians established narrative patterns and tropes that remain staples of the genre to this day. Extraterrestrials who arrive on earth professing peaceful intentions but secretly harbor plans for world domination; characters who initially side with the enemy but later help thwart the invasion at the cost of their own lives; giant monsters controlled by the aliens—these concepts have since become iconic traits of the genre, their origins tracing back to this humanistic spectacle.
The Mysterians is a watermark Honda film also for its presentation of different countries that come together to face a common threat. Honda had hinted at hopes for such cooperation in Godzilla: international parties arrive in Japan as the latter announces plans for an electrical tower defense against the monster, but what—if any—involvement they had in said strategy was never explicitly shown. In The Mysterians, however, all the world’s nations—including the Cold War superpowers—immediately and peacefully unite to help save Japan and themselves. Japan leads the resistance, providing guidance and warning off unwise ideas (such as using nuclear weapons on the aliens who, as we learn, destroyed their own civilization with the same technology), and are first to profess that mankind must not repeat the mistakes of the civilization that just tried to sequester them. As Honda himself once expressed: “I would like to wipe away the [Cold War-era] notion of East versus West and convey a simple, universal aspiration for peace, the coming together of all humankind as one to create a peaceful society.”
The historical importance of The Mysterians outweighs its dramatic effectiveness, as the picture’s held back by characters whose motives are at times hard to figure out (at one point, the young hero and an accomplice discover a secret passage to the aliens’ base but never share their discovery with the authorities) and lack the personality to make up for it. Not showing conflict between the international powers also hampers the novelty of showing them work together; as demonstrated in later (better) genre pictures, people that struggle to forget the past and overcome differences before they cooperate—actively dramatizing the theme—makes for superior storytelling. Instead, the strength of the film derives from its effects sequences, wherein Honda and Tsuburaya effectively mix footage of the humans responding to and interacting with combat and destruction. (Epitomized by a chilling moment of Yumi Shirakawa—caught in a moment of vulnerability—watching the robotic monster Moguera through the window of a public bathhouse.)
At the end of the day, The Mysterians is an efficient if somewhat middle-of-the-road film. But its historical importance cannot be ignored, and many of the themes and ideas touched on here are ones Honda and other filmmakers would explore with terrific results down the road.
SONG FOR A BRIDE (1958)
[NO REVIEW AVAILABLE]
H-MAN (1958)
A curious entry in Ishiro Honda’s oeuvre, 1958’s H-Man mixes a crime melodrama with science fiction and horror—an undeniably ambitious effort diminished somewhat by a script unsure how to properly develop its genres. Indeed, the picture is at its best when focusing on cops, criminals, and their hassling of a pretty nightclub singer (Yumi Shirakawa). Honda shows a natural talent for the yakuza movie genre, presenting extravagant nightclub scenes and tense interrogations (Hajime Koizumi’s camerawork and the blocking of actors is particularly impressive). Also fun in retrospect are interesting “time capsule” moments: e.g., Yumi Shirakawa explains she can purchase a Japanese TV set because her monthly earnings average 50,000-60,000 yen. (Per Jason Makoto Chun’s book A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots?: A Social History of Japanese Television, 1953-1973, the average cost of a set in Japan had dropped to roughly that amount the year this movie was made.)
The eponymous creatures provide a few effective horror sequences—including what should’ve been the movie’s climax, wherein the H-Men invade a nightclub during a police bust, crawling up walls, through windows, and underneath the doors of a telephone booth in pursuit of their victims—but aren’t terribly interesting as villains; and the science fiction side of the film yields additional weaknesses that include a boring hero scientist (Kenji Sahara), tedious scenes of technobabble, and a lifeless third act with the monsters being wiped out in an inferno while Sahara effortlessly rescues the damsel-in-distress. (That Sahara and Shirakawa fail to recreate their chemistry from Rodan is another significant problem.) There are impressive images in H-Man (the picture benefits greatly from the work of lighting specialist Choshiro Nishikawa), but the cops and criminals are ultimately more fun than the science fiction story they must contend with.
VARAN (1958)
As I’ve written elsewhere, Varan represents something of a watershed moment in Honda’s science fiction career, as this marked his first collaboration with the exuberant screenwriter Shinichi Sekizawa and appropriately introduced/brought together plot devices that’d embody many of their efforts moving forward. In Varan, we see: rural, monster-worshiping natives; a plucky female reporter; a climax wherein the military cycles through multiple strategies before finally—with the help of civilians—hitting upon something which can defeat the monster. (A never-filmed scene in Sekizawa’s script—of kids pretending to be Varan—likewise indicates the screenwriter’s interested in youngsters’ fascination with monsters, which would manifest in subsequent movies such as 1962’s King Kong vs. Godzilla, 1964’s Ghidorah the Three-headed Monster, and most notably 1969’s All Monsters Attack.) Varan thus serves as a vital stepping stone in the history of tokusatsu—albeit one pointing the way to better things to come.
The film under discussion began as a joint American-Japanese TV project and was recalibrated for theaters mid-production: glaringly apparent in the fourth-rate script that never adequately answers—among other things—why the eponymous reptile suddenly rises to besiege civilization, and is populated by bewildering characters. (My favorite moment is when the heroine chooses to exploit the mysterious events that killed her brother because, “This is a big scoop!”) Honda does the subpar material no favors with insipid, at times amateurish direction (Kozo Nomura driving a truck of explosives up to the monster before casually jogging to safety), and even Tsuburaya’s effects scenes come off as impersonal. The picture’s noisy, action-heavy second half feels mercilessly drawn-out, chugging along to its not-dramatic conclusion. Varan’s one stellar quality consists of a mesmerizing Akira Ifukube score (among the composer’s best), though no amount of orchestral bravado could redeem so dreadful a production as this.
AN ECHO CALLS YOU (1959)
[NO REVIEW AVAILABLE]
INAO: STORY OF AN IRON ARM (1959)
[NO REVIEW AVAILABLE]
SENIORS, JUNIORS, CO-WORKERS (1959)
[NO REVIEW AVAILABLE]
BATTLE IN OUTER SPACE (1959)
With this 1959 extravaganza, Honda returned to subjects and tropes previously touched on in The Mysterians: extra terrestrials threatening the earth with domination; a human character who does the aliens’ bidding but ultimately sacrifices himself so his friends may live; and the thoughtful notion of a world in which all of mankind peacefully coexists. The latter is particularly emphasized in Battle in Outer Space, with international conference scenes, long-winded speeches about mutual survival, and shots of multiple countries’ flags waving in unison. Honda attempts to imbue his utopia scenario with more flesh and blood this time: a Japanese scientist greets the son of a Caucasian colleague upon arriving for a conference; a team sent to destroy the aliens’ lunar base consists of scientists from multiple nations; there are even fleeting attempts to humanize nameless characters—such a foreign pilot silently bidding farewell to a female operator (presumably his love interest) before entering battle.
Unfortunately, all of this amounts to little more than good intentions. For Battle in Outer Space repeats the same crucial mistake from The Mysterians in merely presenting global unity rather than effectively dramatizing it: the picture begins with the world powers having already formed peace and, throughout the story, they cooperate all too efficiently, not a moment’s conflict among themselves. (A world in which everyone already gets along versus a story of conflicted people learning to cooperate isn’t nearly as interesting.) Despite more scenes of character interaction, the human element somehow comes across as even more lacking than in the 1957 film, a problem made worse by somnambulistic actors passionlessly enduring their situations (even Yoshio Tsuchiya—normally the bright spot in lackluster pictures—is curiously bland this time around). All of this would potentially be forgivable were there an interesting villain to go up against; alas, the aliens lack personality just as much, mostly represented by a voice rather than presence.
Plodding and lacking gravitas, Battle in Outer Space is little more than a footnote in cold war-era cinema, merely worth acknowledging as part of Honda’s recurring attempt to portray unified worlds. Its only pockets of cinematic interest stem from the often lavish and inventively filmed special effects. Eiji Tsuburaya clearly had fun playing with miniatures, lunar sets, and mobile perspective shots wherein the camera weaves between columns of rocks. But as with most movies overly dependent on special effects, even these sequences become dull after a while, as evident in the picture’s tedious final battle.
THIS ARTICLE IS CURRENTLY UNDER CONSTRUCTION. NEW REVIEWS WILL BE ADDED IN THE FUTURE.
Bibliography
Chun, Jayson Makoto. A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots?: A Social History of Japanese Television, 1953-1973. New York: Routledge, 2007
Galbraith, Stuart, IV. The Emperor and the Wolf: The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune. New York: Faber & Faber, 2002
Jacoby, Alexander. A Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors: From the Silent Era to the Present Day. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 2008
Ryfle, Steve and Ed Godziszewski. Ishiro Honda: A Life in Film, from Godzilla to Kurosawa. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2017
Yomota Inuhiko. “The Menace from the South Seas: Honda Ishiro’s Godzilla” in Phillips, Alistair and Julian Stringer (eds). Japanese Cinema: Texts and Contexts. New York: Routledge, 2007
