Godzilla vs. Hedorah

Look, its a bird! Its a plane! Its...Godzilla?

A brief time-line of Godzilla's various incarnations and personalities up intil this film:

Gojira - The horrors of nuclear testing and abuse made flesh. Not necessarily evil, but instead an animal struggling to understand the world it has been rudely born into; all while leaving a massive trail of bodies in its wake.

Godzilla Raids Again: Little rhyme or reason this time around. Replacing the nuclear context is a hot-blooded, animal savagery.

Mothra vs. Godzilla - Simply put, evil and cruelty incarnate.

Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster all the way to Destroy all Monsters - While not really out to protect humanity, the big guy was nontheless hanging up his city-stomping shoes and wrestling with other, ill-meaning monsters.

At this rate, Godzilla was on the very brink of becoming a full on superhero, and this brings us to Godzilla vs. Hedorah.

Ken Yano (Hiroyuki Kawase) really likes Godzilla. I mean, REALLY likes him. He has a collection of toys that would make any collector drool, he dreams of him, hallucinates him, and even presents a poem to this class dedicated to the lizard.

Meanwhile, authorities are perplexed by a series of attacks in the shipping lanes that seen to be perpetrated by a monstrous tadpole. An expedition headed by Ken and his father, Dr. Yano (Akira Yamauchi) to find the beast goes awry, leaving Yano with a horribly burned face. The creature is dubbed Hedorah, and Yano surmises that the beast is comprised of various chemical solutions, among them being sulfuric acid.

Hedorah evolves into a quadrupedal land form and attacks a refinery, getting bloated (and high?) off the smokestack fumes. Godzilla finally shows up, and after much monster posturing, Hedorah attempts to smother him. The battle is short lived, with the battle ending as Hedorah is split into various pieces and cast into the sea. But that ain't the last that'll be seen of the muck beast...

Yanno comes to the conclusion that Hedorah is feeding on our pollution, and is in turn emitting fumes powerful enough to corrode buildings and kill anyone unlucky enough to be close to the creature within seconds. As Hedorah continues to evolve and gain power, and as the death toll reaches astronomical proportions, it becomes clear that only a certain mutated dinosaur will be able to save the day...

The synopsis may sound like standard monster-vs-monster fare, but this movie is hardly close to being what we could consider normal. In fact, its easily the most unusual entry in the entire series. Some have praised it as being a masterpiece of surreal, post-modern cinema. Others have labeled it as being among the very worst of the series. Me, I just think its mighty strange, but the pleasure to be gained from this film is undeniable.

To put it bluntly, the movie's tone is wildly uneven. Massively uneven, in fact. The environmentalist theme, while somewhat effective and being relevant even today, comes off as very heavy-handed. Yanno pretty much says, multiple times, that it is because of our polluting and other abuse of the environment that has lead to the birth of Hedorah, and that humanity has pretty much dug a mass grave for itself. Subtle, it ain't. However, director Yoshimitsu Banno very successfully paints Japan as a nation that seems to be struggling to stay afloat in a sea of filth; the credits play out over a series of shots of muck-encrusted waterways, including a surprisingly unsettling shot that seems to be a sexless mannequin that's been slashed and dismembered. Never explained, but it certainly is attention grabbing. Also, this is easily the ugliest Japan has ever looked in any kaiju flick , with constant establishing shots of belching smokestacks, fog-hazed industrial parks, etc. Again, far from subtle, but like a blow to the head with a hammer, they are effective at making one sit up and pay attention. Even Godzilla, in a dream sequence, seems unable to turn back the tide of pollution, as he blasts away at floating heaps of garbage, (suggesting just how overpowering and unstoppable the threat of pollution can be, perhaps?).

This is the first Godzilla film since the original to show the human casualties, and stuff gets very grim. A screaming baby nearly up to its head in Hedorah's muck. Dozens of people clawing at their throat's as Hedorah flies overhead, followed by grotesque facial lesions. A construction worker who falls screaming from a tower at the sight of the smog monster, and is reduced to bones by the time he hits the pavement. Ken running home to his father as air-raid sirens blare in the background, stumbling upon corpses in various stages of decay. This could have easily been one of the most viscerally horrifying and disturbing entry in the series, if not for the outright bizarre sequences that occur. Ken's hippie uncle is listening to his girlfriend preform in a nightclub (the girlfriend sings the title theme "Save the Earth"; which in Japanese sounds eerily like "God is Dead". Go figure...), and suddenly he starts hallucinating and imagines that everyone has the ehad of an exotic fish.

The weirdness doesn't stop here, as the film also employs a series of crude animations to help explain Hedorah's physiology and effect on the city; though initially childish, there is an increasingly sinister undercurrent as the cartoons progress (such as a sentient factory growing in size as it greedily snaps up organic material with huge pincer arms). There's even a brief science lesson on galaxies as Yanno explains to Ken where he thinks Hedorah may have come from. Hippies play go to the foot of Mount Fuji and play on their electric instruments, with nowhere to plug into(!). Said hippies are watched by a motley group of old people crouched in the long grass, who seem to have wandered off the set of a zombie or backwoods slasher film. Interestingly enough, the constant juxtaposition of the grim and horrific with the high-spirited and childish doesn't really hurt the film, but creates a sense of free-wheeling lunacy that will either have you grinning to ear or snorting in disgust as you snap the disc into pieces.

The characters are among the film's weakest points. While Ken manages to avoid irritable-little-boy syndrome, him and the rest of his family are extremely under-developed, with Yanno showing up only to form more theories on Hedorah. Ken likes Godzilla, his uncle likes weed, and the girlfriend likes wearing weird wigs and body suits while singing about the death of God. All we ever know.

On to the monsters. Godzilla has become even more humanized as he mockingly gestures and taunts Hedorah, even scratching his nose before battle. This is the first time that Godzilla has been portrayed as unambiguously heroic, and personally, I've never really liked my Godzilla as a do-gooder. I like him lean, mean, and giving humanity a thrashing without ever breaking a sweat. Though he is akin to a super-hero, he still thankfully avoids catering to children, unlike a certain giant turtle from a rival studio. Even though he never accepts Ken's advances, he is dealt a severe blow to his ego when he flies after an escaping Hedorah at the end of the film. Yes, that's right. Flies. I...I can't talk anymore about that. It certainly is something that you'll never see ever again in terms of sheer, reality-bending oddness.

Hedorah is the real star of the show, and is a most unusual and formidable opponent. Not only does he possess powerful lasers and projectile, acidic sludge and choking fumes, his blood is an even more concentrated form of acid, powerful enough to strip the flesh off Godzilla's hand until the bone is showing. Combine that with a body that merely sparks when hit with Godzilla's ray, as well as a final form that outright towers over the monster king, he always manages to hold his own in the protracted final brawl. In one effectively disgusting scene, he comes close to smothering Godzilla with bodily slime, until the Big G (somehow, never explained) manages to escape, and the battle carries on. According to some sources, Hedorah's eyes were modeled after vaginas, which makes the moment where Godzilla rams his fist through the flesh right beside one of his eyes all the more peculiar (could the immediate damage done to Godzilla's hand be a cautionary statement warning of the dangers of strange sexual practices?). The Hedorah suit is effectively slimy and gross, with perhaps its most memorable features being its gigantic, bloodshot eyes and freakish, gurgling screech. The final fight with the two titans is well-staged, even though it is a tad unnecessarily dragged out towards the end (gah, the flying part).

The director was later told by the series producer that "he had ruined Godzilla", and was presumably black-listed. A wee bit harsh, I think. This really is a hard movie to recommend, as its surreal, almost nonsensical imagery and plot will either have the viewer loving or hating it. I love it, and also know others who hate it. So really, in the end it all comes down to personal taste. Either way, it isn't a movie you'll end up forgetting soon.