Ebirah: Horror of the Deep (1966)

"It's too bad Mothra has no alarm clock..."

Wow. I've rather liked every film until now, albeit some more than others, and was somewhat apprehensive abot the change of director. I needn't have worried. Jun Fukuda has given us an example of the B movie at its finest.

From the beginning this film is fast-paced and gripping. We have the mystery of a brother lost at sea, A stolen yacht, and the destruction f said yacht by awesome crab-like sea monster Ebirah within the first twenty minutes. And then things get even more excited.

Our motley and hastily-assembled gang of heroes end up washed up on Infant Island. There's good news and bad news. On the positive side, they're not blacking up the "natives", Unfortunately, there's a mysterious unidentified private army who are enslaving the natives to make a yellow liquid what mollifies Ebirah so that ships can venture to and fro. Oh, and for some reason they're making a nuclear bomb. Plus their leader has a badass eyepatch.

All is not lost, though. Our heroes are well-drawn, fun characters who react in fun ways to their adventures. Oh, and on the other end of the island the natives are singing to wake Mothra, who can always be relied upon to spring into action at moments convenient to the plot.

Plus Godzilla is buried and sleeping, and can conveniently be woken up with lightning- cue Godzilla, Mothra and Ebirah fighting each other as the plot dictates, plus the baddies setting off a nuclear time bomb. We end with goodies triumphant and baddies smashed- but the island is nuked, gone forever. Yet, in a perfect final shot, Godzilla survives.

Gripping and compelling, this is what a B movie should be.

Invasion of Astro Monster (1965)

"Glen, I cannot become an earthling..."

It's a week or two since I've seen a Godzilla film, and it's good to get back into the swing- especially with this little delight, a film that leans so much into its profound silliness that low camp always becomes high camp.

We begin with exposition telling us that "Planet X" was discovered in "196X", and that, several years later in a future that looks suspiciously like the '60s, two astronauts- Fuji and Glen-are on a rocket there. Glen is there as the token American leading man (speaking Japanese throughout), but this manned mission beyond Jupiter is mainly a Japanese affair, with mission control in Tokyo.

Even more impressively, Planet X is introduced- to the obligatory theremin fanfare- as it is revealed just beyond Jupiter, apparently immune to the giant planet's massive gravitational pull, but let's just run with it. On board this alien world (of course, the Japanese astronaut sets foot on it first) are a race of suspiciously humanoid and creepy shades-wearing aliens, apparently under threat from King Ghdorah and needing Godzilla and Rodan to help- but this is, of course, just the prelude to a sudden yet inevitable betrayal as, to no one's surprise, they turn out to be baddies who want to take over the Earth using all three monsters. Who'd have thunk it?

The personal drama is dialled back a bit due to sheer quantity of plot, and it's only towards the end that we get those satisfying scenes of monsters smashing Tokyo to bits yet again, but this film is splendidly entertaining right throughout. Eleven years on, and the franchise is in rude health.

Mothra vs Godzilla (1964)

"We feel that we cannot trust humans..."

Another Godzilla film, methinks. And, while we're at it, lets do a sequel to Mothra. And let's make an obviously cheesy B movie notably better than it's expected to be, or needs to be. Even if the cast is starting to look awfully familiar- didn't Japan in the '50s and '60s have a wider group of B movie star actors than this?

Because this film is, indeed, better than it needs to be. Oh, it's more of a sequel to Mothra with Godzilla, despite his screen time, just a prominent guest star, but this simply reflects Mothra's deeper backstory, being goddess of an island in the Pacific whose inhabitants, thankfully, are not blacked up this time.

But there's a proper plot, with story beats in the right places. A giant egg is found; human greed leads to its usual silliness; and then those two miniature ladies from Mothra turn up to provide some much-needed exposition, and for some reason seem to know what a hydrogen bomb is.

But it all works, plot-wise, and masterfully builds both tension and interest. Godzilla arrives and wreaks the usual havoc to an unnamed city that we shall call, well, "Tokyo" which looks, suspiciously, to be entirely made of models. Our heroes- the by-now familiar combo of male journalist with social conscience, klutzy but moral female photographer and obligatory generic scientist- are forced to go to that island from the last Mothra film to beg for help. Fortunately, to a degree, the "natives" are presented with a little more dignity this time. And so Mothra heads to Japan to battle Godzilla and an epic battle ensues after which she, er, dies of old age.

The film concludes as we wait for the egg to hatch in order for a baby Mothra (or two) to give Godzilla the spanking that the short remaining running time demands. It all commands the attention rather strongly, weird though it is to have Iwo Jima mentioned in a film which doesn't star John Wayne. And yes, Ishiro Honda gives s the usual splendid set pieces. A magnificently entertaining film.

Godzilla (1954)

"It's getting even closer, It looks like our doom!"

I'd never seen a Godzilla film in my forty-two years until now. Yes, I know: the shame. But all is remedied; our friend Becca has now ensured, for Christmas, that all but the most recent Godzilla and related films will be blogged over the coming months. That isn't to say I won't be blogging any other movies, of course, but expect Tokyo to suffer a lot in future blogs.

I don’t usually blog films on a school night, which is usually reserved for telly. But tonight I get to procrastinate and put off for another day the need to see the final episode of War of the Worlds.

So, Godzilla. It would spawn the most epic film franchise of all time but, in 1954, was just one film, obviously based on King Kong. It’s more than just that though. For one thing, this is a film of the Atomic Age, both thematically and when it was made- and nowhere was more Atomic Age than Japan, the only country ever to have been nuked in war. So we shouldn’t be surprised to see Godzilla, supposedly an old island mythical beast, having been changed and made invulnerable by radioactivity- which, by the rules of Atomic Age science fiction cinema, is magic and can do anything.

This is clearly a post-war society, though; when Godzilla rampages through Tokyo to utterly destroy it in those wonderful set pieces in the centre of the film, we get a reference to characters having to go to shelters “again”, and we also get a widow telling her children that they will soon join their father, the implication being that he died in the war. This is awkward, because on the one hand Imperial Japan was a deeply inhumane place guided by a truly evil ideology which has touched many of us- my Grandad Gordon fought in Burma and told me only the most child-friendly of the atrocities he saw, and it was obvious there were others. Let’s just say he never bought a Japanese car.

The people in Godzilla remember and refer to the war, though, and that’s interesting. Post-war Japan seems so very disconnected from its ugly predecessor but these people lived through it, and accepted the need to abandon aggressive nationalism and cruelty. Certainly, the society we see here is a civilised one- give or take the odd professor acting as an old fashioned patriarch with his daughter’s fiancé.

All this, and the very ‘50s angst about the abuse of nuclear science (with Serizawa’s oxygen destroyer weapon an obvious metaphor for other weapons of mass destruction- note that, before using it, he burns his notes, and his death is a suicide so the knowledge dies with him; I think the film’s stance on nukes is clear) make this feel like more than the straightforward ‘50s monster movie that it is at heart. That’s an interesting combination; a subtext with a film like this.

Fundamentally, though, never mind all that: it’s Godzilla, and he’s destroying Tokyo in awesome set piece scenes with truly excellent model work. The film is brilliantly structured to hold back suspense- Godzilla doesn’t appear until we’re 21 minutes in and he’s been truly built up as a threat. And there’s just enough character melodrama to get us to like the characters without trying to rival the monster as a source of drama.

Films in this genre don’t get much better than this. There’s a reason why this is a classic. But will the follow-ups be as good...?