In 1956, just as the original Godzilla was reaching American shores, the creative team behind the Big G where hard a work filming the first kaiju movie ever filmed in color. And it's better then expected, even after all these years.
We begin with a deep voiced guy telling us that all over the world atomic bombs are being tested. This will start a great tradition in this movie of using voice overs. sometimes they're damn annoying, sometimes they're just the right thing to do. More on hat latter. Needless to say, the Deep Voice tells us that these tests are having an effect on mother earth (weeelll duh!) and who knows what horrors will be released on the earth. "This is a story of such a horror," he says, the (thankfully) stops speaking. The crowd roars in approval. . .
. . .only to be interrupted with another voice over. This one provided by our main chracter Shigeru, who introduces us to the mining town of Kitamatsu, where, one faithful day, "An unusual horror began," (the predictions of Deep Voice come true!). The trouble starts with real apprehensiveness among the miners which is confirmed when Number 8 mine, the deepest they've drilled so far, collapses, spewing out lots of water and lots of giant insects.
The insects then do what all other weird creatures in these movies do: they attack an urban settlement. Forced back into the mine by the army, a gun battle insures that collapses the shaft, kills two bugs, and traps Shigeru in the caverns.
Shigeru wanders around for a while until he sees and egg the size of a warehouse crack open and a giant bird come out. The chick the proceeds to eat up the giant insects (who don't look so giant now). Needless to say Shigeru is scared stiff. So stiff he suffers amnesia (or shock, or something. . .) and proceeds to wander around until he comes back topside. Found by his friends and loving girlfriend he begins to be nurtured back to health.
But Shigeru's soon becomes the least of humanities problems. All around the Pacific rim lots of UFO sightings start. Today this would be completely dismissed, but in '56 it was, apparently, big news. The UFO Can apparently move at supersonic speed, and swim too. It terrorizes the Pacific rim, sinking ships and destroying jets in midair.
Since this is a giant monster movie we all know that the UFO turns out to be Rodan (actually Radon, why the changed the name is beyond me. After all take two syllables out of pteRAnaDON and you get Radon, but whatever). While he doesn't breath fire (at least not in this version) he does have a 500 foot wing span and a bad habit of flying low over populated areas.
For those of you who flunked kaijuology in collage I'll let the movie explain what that means: "Because of its size and super sonic flying speed it generates a shockwave. . . with all the destructive force. . . of a typhoon." The shear force of the winds kicked up by this thing can cause real problems, particularly to buildings that don't have internal structures.
I'm just kidding about that "internal structure" thing. This movie was made back in the 50s, when Toho still cared about making its city destruction look as real as possible. Most of the buildings here don't just crumble like balsa wood miniatures, some of them (*gasp*) actually remain standing! Just shows you the good craftsmanship over at 50s Japan. It is sorely missed from the present day Godzilla series.
On to the monster. Let's just say that they're is no possible way this thing could fly. The Official Godzilla Compendium lists Rodan's weight at 15,000 tons, making it impossible for this creature to even walk, much less fly (and, incidentally, the movie itself puts Rodan's weight at a more conservative 100 tons. Some body screwed up, ether in the book, or the movie). Not to nickpick or anything.
As to the human side of things, it's pleasantly surprising to see some actual acting going on in the cast. Points go to Kenji Sahara's role as Shigeru for actually putting some effort into a role that could have been easily slept through. In fact, the entire cast does a bang-up job and is almost never outshined by they're giant costars. Almost.
But, darn it, what's up with the voice overs? While at times they are quite appropriate and pretty sad (as during the end of the movie), and the little informative speech by Shigeru at the beginning does save me from going "Oh, well, just another fictional, Japanese town with no name," his speeches are sometimes really long and darn annoying. Had they put in some of the movie's score (which for some reason reminds me of 1931's King Kong) instead of him talking it would have heightened tension a lot more.
All told, while not the best monster movie of it's time, or mine (did you know that Rodan wings reflect light just like plastic?) it is a worth while movie. Give it a whirl, you probably wont regret it .
RATING(OUT OF A POSSIBLE FIVE)
