From the time the Greeks invented drama to Piranha3-D, from Shakespeare to Stephanie Meyer, every story has either conformed to or subverted the conventions of its genre. The movies I’ve covered here over the last few weeks are no different. Giant monsters are slaves to their genre as much as femme fatales, superheros, or psychokillers are to theirs.
In King Kong, we saw a monster brought from its own strange, foreign world to the world we all live in (or at the very least the world audiences of 1933 lived in), going on a rampage caused by fear and confusion, and, in the end, meeting its doom in the face of a force more formidable than itself. King Kong died because he wasn’t the king in New York.
This is, more or less, the same story we’ve seen over and over in the past few weeks. Some monsters have taken more extreme measures to defeat, and with Mighty Joe Young, we saw the conventions subverted to the point where the creature was the hero instead of the monster, but the story has always been the same.
The perfect example is today’s movie: 20 Million Miles to Earth. Off the coast of Sicily, a group of fishermen witness a rocket fall from the sky and crash into the ocean. They’re only able to save one of the astronauts inside, but it turns out something else got out before it sinks to the bottom of Mediterranean. A young boy finds a container marked U.S.A.F. and decides to sell its contents to a traveling veterinarian on the outskirts of town.
What’s in the container is our monster, Ymir, which hatches from it’s egg over night. It’s only a foot tall when it first hatches, but by the next morning it’s grown to 4 times its original size. The morning after that it’s the size of a human. It escapes its cage into the woods.
We’ve seen Ray Harryhausen’s special effects work a few times now, in Mighty Joe Young and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, and it’s clear that his style was perfectly suited to movies about giant monsters rampaging through the city. It was never more clear, however, than in 20 Million Miles to Earth, which may be his most impressive, intricate work.
There’s a moment about halfway through 20 Million Miles to Earth when Ymir fights a farmer. Not only is the monster created using Harryhausen’s stop-motion technique, but so is the farmer. Creating a horrible monster from outer space may not be easy, but compared to making an articulated, detailed human being, something so familiar we see it every time we look in the mirror, it must be a piece of cake.
When Ymir is eventually caught and brought to the zoo in Rome for examination, it’s obvious what’s going to happen. We know it will escape; we know it will go on a rampage through Rome; and we know that somehow, by an act of human will, the monster will eventually be defeated. And of course, all these things happen. The entertainment comes from just how these things happen.
Ymir destroys famous landmarks and ruins before finally escaping to the Coliseum. In the end, it climbs to the top of the Coliseum, and, just like King Kong, is shot down before it falls to its death.
There’s nothing particularly unexpected about 20 Million Miles to Earth. The only thing that really separates it from The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is the fact that it takes place in Rome instead of New York, and the only reason for that is that Harryhausen couldn’t afford to take a vacation there. 20 Million Miles to Earth is a perfectly conventional movie, but with such great special effects, such good cinematography and such great action scenes, there’s nothing wrong with that.
It’s a cliché to say that communism had an influence on American b-movies of the 1950s, but it’s a very true cliché. Every flying saucer, every ray gun, every man in a silver jumpsuit exudes the Red Menace. Genre movies reflect the fears and anxieties of their time, and it’s safe to say that most invaders from space were the children of Sputnik and McCarthy.
Kurt Neumann’s Kronos is as b as movies come. The cheesy effects, the average-to-bad acting and dialogue, the blatant theft from other popular movies, they’re all here. But, like Detour or Invasion of the Body Snatchers, it combines these things to create an interesting relic of a time when your boss, your friends, your own family might be the eyes and ears of the Red Menace.
The plot is full of coincidental leaps that would give Superman vertigo. An alien lifeform possesses Dr. Elliot, the lab supervisor at an observatory where Dr. Les Gaskell just happened to discover a new asteroid. We, of course, know that it’s not an asteroid at all; it’s the very flying saucer that carried our lab-supervisor-possessing friend. And it’s headed straight for Earth!
When a nuclear strike on the asteroid has no effect (except making Dr. Elliot collapse in pain and go catatonic), the real fear begins to set in. Where will the asteroid strike? Which city will be destroyed by this alien missile? Physics and geometry must have been pretty primitive in those days, since instead of figuring out the asteroid’s trajectory, humanity waits breathlessly to see where it will fall. It passes over New York with a flash. It passes over the Midwest with a flash. It passes over Los Angeles with a flash.
Finally it splashes down in the Pacific off the coast of Mexico. America has averted a crisis of apocalyptic proportions. OR HAS IT? When Les thinks about what’s just happened, the asteroid being unaffected by the most powerful weapons they’ve got, only its trajectory being changed, not blown back into space but instead heading downward, he realizes that what he discovered was no ordinary asteroid, but something created, perhaps, by an alien intelligence.
Les and his team, including his girlfriend, head down to Mexico to investigate. And by “investigate,” I mean “stand on the coast looking at the water and then rip off the famous beach scene from From Here to Eternity.” Of course, as Les and his lover lay on the beach making googly eyes at each other, the flying saucer rises from the deep and rests on the horizon. Science is 10% inspiration and 90% beach blanket bingo.
The next morning, when Les and his team wake up, the flying saucer is gone and has been replaced by our antagonist: a 100-foot-tall stack of boxes:
The giant stack of boxes is an alien robot sent here from another planet to look for the energy the lifeforms there devour hungrily. Dr. Elliot, awakened from his coma, tells his psychiatrist this, having learned it from the alien that lives within him. The alien civilization has eaten all the energy on its own planet, so now it searches the galaxy for other sources of power to consume. The giant robot (called Kronos by Les) is a scout sent to find as much energy as possible. If it is successful, more will be sent and Earth will be sucked dry.
As with all b-movies, this leaves a few questions unasked and unanswered. If the aliens can absorb the power of a hydrogen bomb, why can’t they absorb the power of a star? If they have the power to travel across the universe, why can’t they use it to survive? These aliens don’t seem to be the sharpest knives in the drawer.
Like any good b-movie, its greatest detriments are also among its greatest strengths. Half the fun of Kronos is just how ridiculously cheesy it is. When Kronos starts to walk, the movie reaches Kraft-Mac-and-Cheese levels of cheesiness. The effect is obviously done using hand-drawn animation (the very finest of the Schoolhouse Rock school of animation), and the sounds it makes is about as threatening as a dog with a chew toy in its mouth. Humanity is obviously screwed.
Despite the silliness of Kronos itself, Kronos does a lot of things right. Instead of human beings in silver jumpsuits like you see in This Island Earth or Star Trek, the alien beings in Kronos are more realistically completely different from anything on Earth. They are actually alien instead of merely aliens. The alien we see looks something like electric mercury: a glowing, fluid, kinetic river or metallic ooze.
And of course, the communist allegory makes for pretty interesting viewing in retrospect. Before Kronos makes its appearance, Les stands on the beach, disappointed that he’s found nothing, and says,“I can’t get over the awful feeling that this is the calm, and the storm is going to break out at any minute.”
COLD WAR ALERT COLD WAR ALERT COLD WAR ALERT
There are also a few notes of environmentalism and conservation here. Referring to the alien home world, Dr. Elliot warns “What has happened there could easily happen here, if we continue to use resources at our present rate.” Not exactly Bill McKibben, but for 1957, this statement seems to be ahead of its time.
Dr. Elliot is the most interesting character Kronos gives us. He’s an unwilling traitor, someone who let his guard down for just a brief moment and may have doomed the world, a walking “Loose Lips Sink Ships” poster. He battles with the alien within him, but loses in the end. He uses his position to locate nuclear plants near Kronos’s location while advising military leaders to use the hydrogen bomb against it, which will make it even more powerful.
In the end, of course, Les comes up with an ingenious plan in a slew of mostly nonsensically strung-together scientific buzzwords. Like so many virginal acting school graduates with dreams on the verge of being crushed, Kronos is lured by the bright lights of Los Angeles. Granted, very few of these soon-to-be In-N-Out cashiers and exotic dancers are trying to find a stockpile of nuclear weapons on the outskirts of the city, but we can’t all be Angelina Jolie, can we?
As Kronos stalks squeakily toward L.A., a jet flies over head and parachutes a capsule down over its head, which explodes a few hundred feet above its antenna. According to Kronos, the secret to defeating an invincible robot is “fireworks.” I finally understand the true meaning of the 4th of July.
Like any Cold War allegory, the end feels jingoistic compared to the rest of the movie. While the monster was once indestructible, their newfound vigilance will be enough to defeat any enemy. As they watch the robot monster explode, Les’s girlfriend turns to him and asks, “Les, do you think they’ll send anymore down here?”
“If they do, we’ll be ready for them,” he replies.
Two years after Godzilla destroyed Tokyo and a few months after he came to American shores, Ishiro Honda directed another great kaiju (Japanese giant monster) film, 1956’s Rodan. Designed to one-up Gojira, Rodan is a bigger film than its inspiration in many ways. The sets are more expansive. There are more monsters, and, of course, one of them can fly. It’s shot in glorious technicolor instead of stark black and white. But attempting to top a film like Gojira is rarely anything but a fool’s errand. It may be bigger, but it certainly isn’t better.
The things that were designed to make it a bigger, more impressive movie keep Rodan from being as good as Gojira. The gigantic miniature sets (yes, I just said “gigantic miniature”) look less charming and more like something out of a Lionel box. The other monsters distract from the destructiveness of Rodan itself, and when a second Rodan shows up in the last 15 minutes, it’s just plain confusing. The bright colors look beautiful, but highlight the obvious fakeness of any kaiju movie, from orange paint lava to the wires that let Rodan fly.
Rodan most noticeably lacks the two things that really made Gojira a great movie. For one thing, the drama in Gojira came not from the giant monster destroying Japan, but from the characters’ reactions to it. Godzilla not only tore cities apart, but families and friendships, too. We don’t see that as much in Rodan. In fact, there’s not much in terms of character development at all. There’s no clear hero, just whichever characters that happen to encounter or fight Rodan.
It’s also much less clear in its message than Gojira. Godzilla represents the consequences of our collective actions. Rodan represents, well, I’m not sure exactly. Maybe it’s nature striking back at humanity for what we’re doing to it. Maybe it’s the bomb. Maybe it’s just a big scary monster. That’s not to say that every movie needs a clear, apparent message, but where Gojira so effectively revealed the terrible power of the bomb without falling into preachiness, Rodan looks for its message like a drunk fumbling for a lightswitch in the dark. Its hands grab at global warming, nuclear power and other such evils, but never find exactly what they’re looking for.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that at all. Not every western can be The Searchers or The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Rodan may not be quite as smart as Gojira, but it’s a fun, intelligent sci-fi movie that stands the test of time. That’s a rare thing. It’s the Casino to Gojira’s Goodfellas, still a good movie but pale in comparison to one of the best examples of its genre.
In the introduction to this blog, I wrote about the fact that giant monsters embody the spectacle of film. Through the silver screen we see things we never even knew we could imagine. From Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat to Inception, movies have always been able to scare us, shock us, bring us joy, sadness and anger, and leave us out of breath. Rodan is just that kind of spectacle.
What Rodan lacks in clarity, development and cohesiveness, it makes up for in pure spectacle. At its best, it reminded me of an air show. We watch as a plane flies higher and higher, faster and faster, chasing down something bigger and faster. When Rodan turns and flies back at the jet, it evokes that same sense of danger we get from watching two planes hurtling toward each other at top speed, only this time there’s no pulling away, no acrobatic stunts, just a collision, a loss of communications, and a bloody helmet sitting on a desk in the next shot.
It’s hard to imagine what how watching something like this must have made someone feel in 1956. Today we’re so used to being able to see the impossible at the click of a mouse that seeing a few wires here and there can really tear apart our suspension of disbelief. Superman made wires look foolish in 1979, and today even that looks a little hokey. In 1956, though, I imagine seeing a monster fly through the air, even attached to wires, must have been amazing.
This leads me to the question that I always seem to have when I watch old sci-fi movies: what’s the difference between being a snapshot of a certain era and being dated? The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but while Rodan still looks great, even if obviously fake, The Giant Spider Invasion looks incredibly bad and obviously fake. How does 1933’s King Kong look so good while 1976’s King King looks so bad?
I’m not completely sure if there’s a real answer to this question, but I think the simplest answer is that directors directors like Honda and animators like Ray Harryhausen actually cared about their work, which translates into diligently designed and created monsters, well-used special effects, and cogent storylines. The people behind movies like Rodan understand what it takes to make a movie that’s not only successful but also respects its audience. Who cares if the monster looks kind of fake? I’m having a good time; nothing else matters.
When a disaster occurs, it rarely happens in any one way. Reporters saw the aftermath of Katrina differently than people trapped in the attic of their houses. New York City firefighters saw 9/11 differently than those who watched it happen on TV a thousand miles away. Everything happens a thousand different ways. The only time people’s reactions seem to be unanimous is when they’re crawling out from under the same rubble.
When Gojira was brought to America as Godzilla, King of the Monsters, it easily could have been slapped on the screen with overdubbed dialogue and some creative edits to make it more readily consumable for the public. We saw that with Godzilla Raids Again, and we’ll certainly see it again. Godzilla, King of the Monsters, though, thankfully is the Americanization Gojira deserved. Yes, there’s overdubbed dialogue; yes, edits were made. But in the end, those are merely distractions from what Godzilla, King of the Monsters does right.
Instead of the taking the easy way out (or the high road, which would have been presenting Gojira unchanged with subtitles as it should have been seen and still should be seen), the American studio shows Gojira from a different perspective. We see the exact same story told from the point of view of Steve Martin, an American reporter who was on his way to Cairo when Godzilla’s first attacks at sea occurred. He’s a friend of Dr. Serizawa and an acquaintance of of Dr. Yamane. Instead of heading on to Cairo as planned, Martin stays to cover the Godzilla story for his paper.
While it might not sound like the best idea and the it’s strained here and there, by and large the concept works remarkably well. Martin is a stranger in a strange land, someone who needs to be guided through the country just like American audiences did (and many still do). He doesn’t understand Japanese (“I’m afraid my Japanese is a little rusty”), and besides the principle characters, not much of the dialogue is dubbed. Instead, Martin’s guide interprets for him, which gives it a more authentic feel than many of the subsequent kaiju films.
A few plot points are changed, but that can easily be ignored in a reinterpretation that is for the most part very faithful. Godzilla’s attack on Tokyo is changed a little, but the tone and power remain intact. Godzilla is just as destructive as he was in Gojira, and Tokyo stands just as insignificant a chance. We still see the mother and her child preparing for death; we still see the reporters falling to their deaths; we still see the irradiated aftermath the next day.
The scenes of family drama and moral questioning which separated Gojira from so many other movies we’ve seen and will see are still there. It’s never explained how Martin knows about these scenes, but one can imagine he interviewed Emiko and Ogata later. This is the story of Godzilla told by a witness. One can imagine like Cornelius Ryan did for D-Day or John Hersey did for Hiroshima, Martin tells us this story so that we can see something we didn’t see for ourselves. Instead of an Americanization of a Japanese film, Godzilla, King of the Monsters is an American retelling of a Japanese event.
For 48 years, Godzilla, King of the Monsters was all that available of Gojira in America. It’s a shame, because it certainly isn’t good enough to replace the original. It’s a great companion, but doesn’t come close to holding a candle to the power and sadness of the original. But while the reality is that it was made the way it was to make a few bucks off a successful foreign film by adding an American star, in retrospect, now that we can see the original and compare the two, it has become more than a simple adaptation.
Making a sequel to a movie like Gojira can’t be easy. Sure, it was sci-fi movie, and sci-fi and sequels go together like Netflix and wasted lives. But Gojira was the rare science fiction movie that told a story so completely and with such gravity that making a sequel to it would be like making a sequel to Schindler’s List or Citizen Kane. What more is there to say?
However, they obviously made many, many movies starring the big green monster, usually fighting some other equally destructive kaiju. The first of these sequels, Godzilla Raids Again was pumped out in less than 6 months to capitalize of the success of the first film. It’s the first to feature another monster for Godzilla to fight: the gigantic ankylosaurs Anguirus.
For this review, I watched the American version of Godzilla Raids Again, released in 1959. This is the first time we’ve seen the famous dubbed dialogue so often associated with Godzilla movies, and boy do they ever use it. Our narrator and hero, Shoichi Tsukioka, talks over almost every minute of the film. For some reason, someone decided that no matter how obvious the action, no matter how minute the detail , everything needed to be spelled out by the narration. And not only does the narration drone over every scene, it sounds like some 1950s comedian’s racist “me so solly” routine.
Complaining about science in a movie about giant mutated dinosaurs destroying Osaka may be stupid, but when a movie seems as based on a complete lack of understanding of science and outdated, disproven facts as this one is, I can’t help but grate my teeth a little. Dr. Yamane returns at the beginning of the film to discuss the discovery of Godzilla fighting Anguirus on an island off the coast of Japan near Osaka. He first describes the ankylosaurus as having brains in multiple parts of its body, something once believed about the stegosaurus…in 1912.
He then shows a film strip on the age of dinosaurs, which is perhaps one of the worst things ever committed to celluloid. Like something out of a middle school panorama, dinosaur puppets are shown doing things like swimming in lava pits. We see two brontosauruses fighting. We’re even told they breathed fire. While Gojira may not have been based on anything resembling real science, Godzilla Raids Again seems to hate science actively.
I’ll spare you an explanation of the plot, which is more or less the same as Gojira but with more monsters and less gravity, but I’ll share with you one of the more hilariously bad examples of how the film was slapped together. When the Japanese begins to search for Godzilla (for some reason called Gigantus), a graphic obviously left over from a piece of World War II propaganda is shown:
Everything Gojira did right, Godzilla Raids Again did horribly, horribly wrong. When a moment of real pain and sadness is earned, it’s immediately followed by laughter and merriment. What makes it seem so inappropriate is that it is the complete opposite of what the first movie is. Gojira is a film about consequences; Godzilla Raids Again is a movie without them.
