Godzilla vs Hedorah (1971)

"Come on, blow your mind!"

It's a new decade, a new creative team and, for the first time an entirely new cast- and it's a triumph, a film which has something to see and manages to be groovy while doing it.

The film doesn't so much have subtext as text, as Hedorah is the most blatant (and well-realised) metaphor for pollution imaginable. But that's no criticism; as the last half-century has shown, you can't be too blatant with the urgent message that we should please try and not bugger up our planet as a place to live on.

This film tells that story, based around the engaging supporting cast of a professor and his family with a groovy young couple whom we see at an awesome gig with visuals that remind me of early Hawkwind, never a bad thing. Not just that, but we get awesome animated segments, along with an opening sequence that comes across like a James Bond song. More of this please. It's about time these films acknowledged the counterculture.

There is, perhaps, a moment that's a little close to the bone in 2020, as Hedorah's air pollution forces the people of Tokyo and Osaka to wear masks in public. And perhaps the MacGuffin that helps Godzilla (unambiguously a goodie- and Monster Island seems forgotten) is a little obvious. But this is a promising new start and a fine film.