Kaiju Friday: Godzilla Vs Hedorah/Godzilla Vs the Smog Monster (1971)

Godzilla Vs Hedorah/Godzilla Vs The Smog Monster (1971)

Plot Summary

 A pollution monster named Hedorah comes from outer space. First it terrorizes sea, then it goes on land where it encounters the big G. After it's after intial fight with Godzilla it retreats, only to reappear again in a flying form, it then starts to kill people. Finally, it takes on it's final form, that's when the Big G comes and the battle that decides the fate of the world begins

With a summary like that you'd think this another in a long line of entertaining and fun Godzilla movies but well....A funny thing happened on the way to making a Godzilla film. First of all the people at Toho must've lost their minds as they gave the directorial chair to an amateur director in Yoshimitsu Banno. Banno was heavily influenced by the Arthouse style of film making which lends this film a very avante garde off kilter style that was so foreign to Toho that Godzilla series producer pulled the rugs out from under Banno's planned sequel by saying Banno had ruined the Godzilla series.

Let's call a spade a spade here and deal with some aspects of the film that make it so different. First of all, the one positive is that the series moved back towards a social message based story. This time the focus was on pollution and how it effects the environment. Hedorah is the physical embodiment of the raw sludge, sewage and garbage that was being dumped into the ocean and the smog that stifles the air we breathe. From that standpoint this was quite good. They really went back to the Godzilla roots by showing a lot of human death as Hedorah spread his sulfuric acid into the atmosphere along with the very slimy green sludge. This made Hedorah a very credible threat against Godzilla as the Big G had his hands full against Hedorah and there was one point where Hedorah had Godzilla on the ground and pouring out green sludge over him. It was very hit and miss that way.

That's the good part but boy were there other things that really made this a challenge to watch. At first I wasn't opposed to the mood that was being built up with the dark, smoggy skies and the almost horror movie aspect of Hedorah's threat to the land/citizens but there was just TOO MUCH of it. At times this movie was so dark it was hard to tell what was going on. The two big fights were also filmed in slow motion without much of a musical score to accompany it. In fact, this movie has very little bombast to it. There's also a lot of cutting to different situations and the editing is just a bit too avant garde arthouse style for me. A great example of this is how we jump from the protagonist (a young boy named Ken) and his family to this disco with crazy a hippie psychedelic  look to it and it's almost as if it belongs in another movie entirely. The other bit of crazy hippie weirdness was how the young people decide to go up Mt. Fuji and start singing and going on like it's Woodstock or something.

Despite all this nonsense, the acting was pretty good across the board. I really liked the chemistry between the scientist father and Ken. Yes, Ken is a little too smart for a kid at times but you see how he's his father's boy and is keen on finding out what/why/how Hedorah came to be and how to stop him. Unfortunately a good premise, a very cool look for Hedorah (one of his three looks (he changes form a few times) kind of reminds me a little of Marvel's Man-Thing) and solid acting are wasted in a counter culture amateurish arthouse film package.

This gets * 1/2 stars mainly because of those good aspects that could've made for an awesome movie.