Godzilla against pollution ... Looking at the pollution, Yoshimitsu Banno came up with the idea of a Godzilla movie where an atomic lizard would fight a creature of dirt and waste. Perhaps the idea was also borrowed from the cult horror film “Drop” in 1958, where a cosmic creature resembling jelly devoured people and grew in size like biomass. Hence the cosmic origin attributed to Hedore.
Producer Tomoyuki Tanaka was hospitalized and unable to direct the project. When he finally saw the movie, he was just mad. He considered the painting the worst possible, and the image of Godzilla simply destroyed. Banno himself was fired from the post of directors and especially close to the cinema was no longer allowed, allowing him to be the producer of a couple of films.
The producer’s indignation is understandable, but did he not allow Godzilla’s Attack, an even more childish and ridiculous film of the franchise? However, there are a lot of stupidities here, although such a powerful message about the environment can cover many flaws. Just the film with bright merits minuses downright catastrophic.
The direction of Banno really does not shine with anything outstanding. The cast of the picture is very weak, everyone refuses to play in the frame, and human characters are prescribed not what is flat and superficial, but frankly bad and inconspicuous, as if people were included in the plot after the entire story.
It is clearly expressed how the director was directly interested in the Kaiju part of history. That's only the battles of monsters are also removed from the hands of bad, and besides, the picture suffers from a very curved editing - then repeating the same scenes, then mirroring the frame, confusing the damaged parts of the bodies in places - a lot of blunders.
The picture is bursting from contradictions: versatility and seriousness against stupidity and naivety, environmental problems and kindergarten behavior, a monster and a bunch of corpses in sulfur fumes during the humanization of Godzilla to one of the worst scenes in the history of the existence of the lizard on movie screens, and the film is bad not only jet flight. And the director does not hesitate to drown in mud slime even live cats and babies.
At the center of the story is a scientist-researcher trying to understand what kind of strange creature appeared in the sea and attacks oil tankers and oil rigs. In addition to him, his family is regularly present in the frame: his wife, a small son, obsessed with Godzilla (the most annoying character) and a hippie brother, who with his new girlfriend arranges a festival near the mountain.
The film is permeated with this acid spirit, opening in general like the musical numbers of “Bondiana” in the frame sing, play guitars, hippo and irritate with a riot of colors. The music of Richiro Manabe is so disgusting that it even allows you to forget all the jazz horror of Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster. The title theme of Godzilla is a nightmare, and the song from the credits is repeated several times.
The costume of the Atomic Lizard here, kind of, has changed little with “Destroy all monsters” and “Godzilla Attacks”, in profile it looks even decent. Well, the director does not hesitate to spoil it. Beating each other monsters regularly cause any damage, blind each other, and the paws of Godzilla now and then pierce the body of Hedora or stick out of it.
Hedora is actually mud biomass, absorbing oil, gasoline, smoke and all sorts of waste. In the atmosphere emits a lot of sulfur and sulfuric acid, so that the attacks of the monster are accompanied by flour, burns and even the decomposition of human bodies to the state of skeletons. Perhaps the most brutal and brutal Shova-era film, in principle. But it is also so naive and childish...
Godzilla somehow came up with a clinically idiotic “signature gesture” when he first wipes his mouth, and then waves his paw like a cat. The boy-fan half of the film generally sees the Monster King in his dreams, somehow feels his approach, well, and in general, spoils the movie in every possible way with his presence, replay and inappropriate here “children”.
Why combine a serious and tough movie with outspoken habits for a children’s audience, and Godzilla again turn into a protector of the Earth on the guard of the environment – frankly unclear. People do not react to Godzilla at all, they say they passed by, and well done. Goji himself does not react to the most powerful electrical discharges, as if he is now their conductor.
But the most thrash delirium begins when the atomic lizard tries to overtake an escaping opponent from the battlefield. Godzilla decides that he is not a mistake, and turns himself into an atomic engine - arranging a pompous flight of clinical idiocy on his beam-breath. Twice! The question of what the authors of such a low-grade idea smoked on the release of Godzilla fans to this day.
How can you frankly poison a film with a bunch of ridiculous scenes, and then stuff it with completely non-stupid messages to humanity and a variety of meaning, making the movie in its essence – deep, but visually simply kindergarten, but unsuitable for its young audience because of the endless violence happening on the screen. Contradiction film, misunderstanding film.
From a giant tadpole drinking oil, Khedora turns into a semblance of an amphibian, sucking smoke from pipes, then takes the form of a jet aircraft similar to a flying saucer and a prehistoric trilobite, sucks cars into itself in the form of a single mud drop, and at the end turns into a bipedal and tailed monster in the manner of Godzilla, and is armed with a red beam. Godzilla's atomic ray is made averagely, and in flight generally turns into steam breath, as in old films.
With no one Godzilla had as many problems as with Hedora, and in fact the film is just about the triumph of science over the monster, people overcome the monster. But this still does not add special sharpness to the raised environmental topic, the director lacks the skills and film language to reveal his idea more competently and convey it much more interestingly.
Moreover, the image of Hedora completely spoiled his alien origin. No, in order for the monster to be seriously the result of a waste dump and nuclear tests, it was necessary to attribute that he flew on a meteorite. The Japanese, it seems, only give a reason anywhere to involve these aliens in the plots.
The film cannot be taken away from its diversity - monsters are shown regularly, there are a lot of skirmishes between them, battles are relatively spectacular, but they are staged for the most part in a hulking and not inventive way. Special effects were done by Teruyoshi Nakano, who replaced the deceased in the seventies Eiji Tsuburaya as a Kaiju creator of the 70s.
While the film itself is frankly weak, it has some spectacular trump cards up its sleeve to impress. Well, few Godzilla films have returned to their original meaning about the harmful effects of man on the world around them. One can understand both those who liked the film and the righteous anger of the producer, who deprived the director of a chance for a career in the film business. Here, bright virtues and bold decisions are fighting in a bloody battle not for life, but to the death with indigestible minuses, shortcomings and outright hacking. Very dual cinema: stupid, but cruel, meaningful and delusional at the same time. Hippies, what to take from them...
5 out of 10
Original