Ghidorah is an odd outing for the Godzilla series. It’s widely regarded as the turning point for the series in which Toho’s monster icon switched his role from city destroyer to city helper. That’s not entirely correct, though it is definitely on the lighter side of Toho’s monster output of the decade.

What the film does so well in terms of the monster canon is balance both the goofy fun and serious tone so well. Godzilla’s initial appearance here is spectacular, providing decent city destruction and some memorable shots of the beast emerging from the water. His early battle with Rodan carries this over with great back and forth action.

Of course, in a movie featuring a whopping four monsters, all heading into battle at once, something has to give. Mothra’s appearance here hardly carries the weight of the monster’s prior appearance against Godzilla. There has to be some reason Godzilla and Rodan stop their rumbling to combine their forces to combat the outer space invader Ghidorah (who appears quite late in the film given the title credit, and it’s an even longer wait in the Japanese version).

Constant Godzilla movie contributor Shinichi Sekizawa decided on letting the monster’s talk to each other, leading to a classic dubbed line “Do you think I understand monster talk?” This is easily taken as the point where the series would follow a different path, yet King Kong vs. Godzilla would be pure comedy at the sake of monstrous creations two years prior.

The human drama is actually the centerpiece however, and as odd as it can be, it carries quite a bit of weight in terms of meshing with the monster action. Akiko Wakabayashi, a future Bond girl, plays the role of a princess who somehow escapes from an exploding plane only to become a prophet who accurately predicts the coming of the giant monster disaster. This is a storyline only fitting of a Toho kaiju effort in this sense.

On the other side, there’s a kidnapping drama, some detective work, multiple fast action shootouts, and a mountain excursion investigating what eventually becomes Ghidorah’s egg. While purely incidental, the finale between human and monster interjects multiple times, both killing and saving the humans. It gives some purpose to the build up, and a way to clear up the human saga of the story without moving away from the monster melee everyone came to see.

The special effects are in grand Toho style, loaded with excellent miniature work that would be used for stock footage as budgets were cut later in the series. Ghidorah’s initial appearance, flying over a heavily populated business district raining yellow beams of death, is amongst the most impressive destruction you’ll find in the genre, whether western or eastern in origin. The amount of pupeteering required to operate Mothra, Ghidorah’s three heads, and a flying Rodan, and more is truly a feat of dedication to the craft.

Akira Ifukube’s soundtrack adds weight to the battle, regardless of how oddball it can be at times. The unforgettable “Godzilla March” is used in full force, though sadly altered for reasons unknown when the US cut was released. It also manages to make the campy “monster talk” sequence tolerable and logical, when without it, it would simply be a low point.

Alterations to the film were mostly made to quicken pacing when the film arrived in the US a year after its Japanese release. The shifting of scenes is generally beneficial, and gives the movie a better flow. Instead of splitting scenes such as the government conference up, it’s one sequence and allows the later battle between Godzilla and Rodan to stay on screen for an extended period.

If anything, Ghidorah is memorable for the introduction of a Godzilla foe that would follow the Japanese icon through his entire career all the way up to 2004’s Godzilla – Final Wars. It started here, and whether or not you’re a fan of the film, obviously something was right if the creature continued to reappear to rake in box office dollars. While a step down from Godzilla vs. Mothra, this is a wildly fun follow up.

Both versions of the film are contained on one side of this single disc DVD release. The US cut is of a lesser quality, somewhat faded and softer. That said, both versions are in remarkable condition. Damage is limited to multiple pass special effects shots, which it’s to be expected. Compression is well controlled, and the clarity of the Japanese print is deserving of high praise. This is the best presentation of the film to date, and it’s a proper way to bring the film to these shores on DVD for the first time.

Audio is par for the course. While clean and crisp, nothing has been done to bring this up to date as Toho did for the Japanese DVD release. It’s a mono presentation that delivers all the needed sound and nothing else.

Classic Media handles the release of their Godzilla line in the same cardboard packaging. While it feels fragile, it’s a gorgeous presentation in a slim case in-line with the other DVDs they’ve produced.

Extras include a short yet informative feature on the special effects master behind these films, Eiji Tsuburaya. This could have been included on any Godzilla DVD, and there’s nothing to tie it to the actual film on the disc. Still, it’s nicely put together relevant information. A nice photo gallery is also included.

The commentary by David Kalat, author of A Critical History and Filmography of Toho’s Godzilla Series, is definitely unique. To say he’s a true Godzilla fanatic would be understating things. The commentary is all over the place though, discussing other movies, constantly defending the US re-cut, and even heading into the history of other films in the series while ignoring the film he’s supposed to commentating on. It’s informative, just not what you might expect.

Ghidorah would prove a popular enough monster to bring him back for a second battle a year later in Godzilla vs. Monster Zero or Invasion of the Astro Monster. This would take place on an entirely different planet before heading to Earth. It would contain a piece of camp that would haunt the series forever, Godzilla’s dancing victory jig that is impossible to defend even for fans.

Matt Paprocki is the reviews editor for Digital Press, a classic video game website which he called home after his fanzine (Gaming Source) published its final issue. The deep game collection which spans nearly 30 systems and 2,000 games line his walls for reasearch purposes. Really. He has also begun writing freelance for the Toledo Free Press.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 13th, 2007 at 8:53 pm and is filed under Celebrity Gossip, Movie Reviews, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

When I first read an American DVD company was working on bringing the original Godzilla and its sequels to disc in both their original Japanese and American versions, I began to wonder how much the later Godzilla flicks' fondly remembered goofiness would translate back in their original language. We all know that the original 1954 Gojira was a fairly grim nuclear age monster rampage film in both its Japanese and American form – but as the series "progressed" into the sixties and seventies, the Americanized Godzillas turned into Saturday afternoon kid's TV fodder.

Having seen a slew of these ill-synced flicks in my wasted youth, I was curious as to how they'd work without dubbing or the rough handling so many of them received when they first arrived in the U.S. (case in point: first sequel Godzilla Raids Again, which was even re-titled Gigantis the Fire Monster on its first American release because new distributor Warner Bros. didn't want to pay for the Godzilla brand name). With the upcoming release of two new entries in Classic Media's "Toho Master Collection," Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964) and Invasion of Astro-Monster (1965), I had the chance to see just how wacky these rascals are in their original un-Americanized versions.

Let's take a look at Ghidorah today (and save Astro-Monster, which was originally released in the U.S.A. as Monster Zero, for another time). Ghidorah contains the first instance of what would quickly become a familiar Toho plot: wherein Godzilla and two of the studio's other heavy-duty rampagers – Rodan and Mothra – team up to best an invading monster. The alien menace, Ghidorah (full name, "King Ghidorah"), is like an amalgamation of his opponents: a three-headed dragon with two tails, he has wings to blow the roofs off pagodas a lá Rodan or Mothra, but can also indulge in Godzilla-styled stompitude. Where the Big G. breathes radioactive fire whenever he's really being pissy, Ghidorah shoots out electric whatsit beams from his three mouths. No wonder it takes all three of our home-grown creatures to whup his two tails.

The title beastie doesn't really show for two-thirds of the movie, so to pass the time, we're given a plot around a visiting Princess (Akiko Wakabayashi, a Bond Girl in You Only Live Twice) whose body is taken over by a survivor of Ghidorah's invasion of the planet Venus 5,000 years earlier. (Why'd the monster wait so long between invasions? A long hibernation, perhaps?) Said Princess is the survivor of an airborne plane explosion plotted by nefarious spies from her homeland of Segina, so when she unexpectedly appears unharmed on Japanese soil, spouting prophecies and chirpily telling folks, "I'm from Venus," the sunglass-wearing bad guys try to hunt her down. On the side of the angels are a brother cop and sister reporter, the usual obligatory nerdy professor, plus the twin fairy sisters (Eimi and Yûmi Ito, a.k.a. musical duo the Peanuts) from Mothra's home island, who get to do full renditions of the big bug's summoning tune, "Call Happiness," twice in the movie.

As Ghidorah opens, our gal reporter Naoko (Yuriko Hoshi) is interviewing a crew of scientists observing a sudden rash of shooting stars that are dropping onto the planet during an unusually warm winter (we know what season it is because two of the exposition-happy characters tell us this fact); elsewhere, her police detective brother (Yosuke Natsuki) has been given the assignment to bodyguard the visiting Princess Salno, but before he begins said assignment, he receives word that the princess' plane was destroyed mid-flight. When a mysterious prophetess appears at Mt. Aso, the site where the flying monster Rodan was reportedly killed in his first movie appearance, sharp-eyed Detective Shindo recognizes her royal corporeal form.

Our Venusian-controlled princess has shown up at the volcano just in time to warn scoffing tourists of Rodan's imminent resurrection, then later does the same at Yokohama to be equally unheeded by the passengers and crew of a ship that'll get demolished by Godzilla. (As a kid watching the earliest Godzillas on television, I thought the scenes where Gojira rises from the sea, water cascading from all sides of him, were the scariest moments in these pictures.) Godzilla and Rodan meet and commence fighting – a preliminary match before the title antagonist makes his appearance – until one of the mysterious shooting stars "hatches" and out pops King Ghidorah.

The two dueling beasties don't immediately take after the invading alien, however. For that to occur, Mothra has to be summoned from her island to recruit both Godzilla and Rodan to take on the fight. The scene where young Mothra, still in giant caterpillar form, interrupts the duo's fight by spraying cocoon strands on 'em is pretty funny, but the follow-up where the good bug tries to persuade the two to take on Ghidorah and save humanity is a comic high point. As the fairy sisters obligingly translate for us ("Godzilla is saying he has no reason to protect the humans. 'They're always bullying me …'"), the two monsters are initially unresponsive to Mothra's entreaties. "Men are not the only stubborn creatures," one of our hapless human protagonists notes. But, happily, the big three-on-one battle finally takes place. Like any good reluctant movie hero – from Rick Blaine to Snake Plissken – you can count on Godzilla and Rodan to ultimately do the right thing.

The movie's special effects, courtesy of Toho main man Eiji Tsuburaya (also responsible for Godzilla, Rodan, and Mothra's first appearances), are exactly what you'd expect: men in bulky monster suits tromping around a landscape of easily demolished warehouses and electric power lines. (At one point, the berserk beasts accidentally save the Princess from being electrocuted when Rodan drops Godzilla belly first onto a big electric tower.) On their own endearingly clunky terms, the effects largely work – though a couple of times when Mothra chomps down on one of Ghidorah's tails, you can see the strings, while a shot showing two puppets of the monsters off in the distance looks jerkier than it should. Classic Media, on the packaging for Astro-Monster, calls the effects "retro-riffic," which is basically adspeak for "cheesy."

As for the question of whether subtitles add to or detract from the movie's quintessential ridiculousness, I'm happy to report that the original movie's Silliness Quotient still remains enjoyably high. In one of my favorite moments, the movie attempts to explain how Princess Salno escaped that exploding airplane by bringing on a "UFO Expert" to nonsensically babble about the existence of other dimensions alongside ours. The way the scene is shot and lit, it looks like one of Charles Gray's earnestly pontificating moments from Rocky Horror Picture Show. Whether in its native tongue or dubbed into Yankee Blather, a movie moment like this remains eternal.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 4th, 2007 at 5:09 am and is filed under Celebrity Gossip, Movie Reviews, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.