Review: Godzilla vs. Hedorah (Smog Monster) 1971
Godzilla vs. Hedorah AKA ゴジラ対ヘドラ AKA Gojira tai Hedora AKA Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster is an original, unique, innovative, different movie which you either love or hate. New director Yoshimitsu Banno was fired after this movie because it feels like an acid trip, but the truth is the movie is a very stylish allegory about the perils of pollution.
Plot
A new monster is destroying ships. A scientist and his little smart boy Ken (along with his mom) discover that Hedorah, an alien life form, lands on Earth via meteorite and begins feeding on pollution, while expelling sulfuric acid and gas. The Smog Monster almost beat the hero Godzilla due to his poison body, various forms, amphibious powers, and toxic nature.
Godzilla and the military team up (!) and used electrical generators to dry out Hedorah.
Because director Banno totally created a new type of Godzilla movie, I will disregard my regular The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly format:
The Different
- The message. Chronologically, the 11th Toho Godzilla film, the deeper messages have been lacking since…well, the first movie. Here, the 1971 pollution message is throughout the entire movie: mankind’s disregard for the environment mutated the Hedorah alien tadpole by poisoning it with radioactive waste and garbage.
- Hedorah: He has different stages and forms, a first in Godzilla films. As a kid, I was scared of “The Smog Monster” because sometime he looks like a giant piece of crap, the big brown muppet that has a person in it from the Muppet Show, and like The Blob: when Godzilla punches him his hand goes through him. Plus he breaks off in different parts and when combined he gets bigger, and he farts poison which turns people into skeletons. Godzilla was losing until he teamed up with the army.
- The fight scenes. You know how I complain that the fight scenes are too short, and that Godzilla is just making a cameo? These fight scenes and skirmishes are the longest I’ve ever scene. Granted, the pacing is bad when Godzilla acts goofy, and they tend to be a bit drawn out, but Hedorah is the star of this movie in terms of screen time, not the humans.
- The style. 1) As soon as the movie started, the music was weird (a sinking trumpet), and I noticed some wide camera shots. The boy, Ken, is playing with Godzilla and Ghidorah toys down a sliding pond (a symbol of the franchise losing its steam?). It felt like a post-modern Godzilla film due to the camera angles. Some scenes were very melodramatic- Ken is crying “Papa” several times after we see The Smog Monster attack his dad underwater. The boy is wiping his tears but won’t leave the seashore, shouting “Papa!” 2) As the movie went on, I realized that there was a hippy, beatnik, psychedelic culture in Japan in 1971, from the…uh…dance night clubs and girls dancing to the lava lamp oil on the walls to the Japanese version of Woodstock to the groovy musicians. I’ve never been a big fan of early 70’s movies like that (I always saw them as dated teenage movies, with the people speaking a weird language, with free sex and drugs), so I guess that’s why most Godzilla fans HATE this movie. But to me, it was a breath of fresh air in a dying franchise. 3) Animated cartoons. These cartoons were pretty weird- they were like post-modern dark public service announcements against pollution, featuring the Smog Monster and mankind destroying nature. 4) Symbolism and camera techniques. Godzilla is spinning the Smog Monster around (fast film speed), and it fades into the next scene features a bunch of men spinning a Mahjohg board around (the camera started with the spinning board). Parts of the monster’s body (crap) breaks through the window and kills them all. 5) A guy gets drunk (or stoned) at a night club and he sees everyone else as having FISH-HEADS while they dance.
- The MEDIA. Whereas previous Godzilla films always portray the MEDIA as newspapers (the idealistic journalist and mean editor-in-chief), this MEDIA was in the background. That’s right, we finally didn’t have to care how about some complicated subplot about how the news was reported; it just was. And the director showed the MEDIA to be a bunch of TALKING HEADS and MOUTHS. It was pretty dark and gritty a la the movie Network, and wasn’t cheesy. This was a new Japan. No longer was there just one news channel with one voice reading instructions for the obedient and compliant Japanese to follow. Now, the MEDIA was an animal of its own, and the psychedelic style enhanced it. For the first time, death tolls were given. That added to the “realism”.
- The fight scenes mostly happened at night, so it was gloomy. The water was heavily polluted with garbage.
- There are horror elements: many times it felt like the original Blob. We also see death- people burned by acid and smoke and charred into skeletons.
This clip has the weird and creative animation scenes:
The Strange
- The music. Without the original composer, we have Riichiro Manabe, who just used the variation of an LSD-inspired theme song throughout the entire movie. His only different song is a warped and twisted military march that is used when Godzilla flies.
- I’m pretty sure the director was on acid. Weed alone cannot induce this creation. I think the director wanted the viewers to take acid too, and to see all the deeper meanings of his weird scenes.
- Dated. The film is targeted to a particular taste (I assume teens and people in their early 20’s in 1971), and if you don’t dig a contemporary early-70s style, then you will be unable to understand or appreciate anything about this film.
The Horror, The Horror
- Most fans and non-fans point to the scene at the end where Godzilla is flying by using his atomic breath. It happens to be one the most cheesiest scenes of all time, definately in the Top Five of Godzilla’s Top 50 Worst Moments.
- The crap. The Smog Monster is made of crap. He throws it. Godzilla throws it. It’s stinky. It’s slime. It’s disgusting.
- The Smog Monster transforming into a flying saucer in the day-time is very, very lame.
Clips of some cheese (or in this case crap- literally):
Conclusion: A truly creative unique work of art, tongue-and-cheek but heavy handed and dark all at the same time. In some ways, it’s brilliant and in others it is groan-inducing. Impossible to take seriously, it is very underrated. It tried to take Godzilla away from the kid’s only audience, but it wound up pissing Toho’s producer off (he was in the hospital and didn’t edit it). It’s weird…it’s strange…it’s dark and light…I liked it for the originality and message. I dug the allegory, daring directing, and style. I think this is a hidden gem underneath all of the psychedelic crap and bad costumes.
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awesome
Damien- the director Yoshimitsu Banno is coming out of exile and will be directing Godzilla in 3-D at IMAX this year…the monster is in homage to Hedora. The final battle is in Las Vegas.
I watched the youtube video.
why the hell was that included in the post?
i dont get it.
okay.
the second clip, if it was from the movie made more sense.
but I prefer the mst3k version, with robot puppets mocking the whole thing.
I guess my question is, whats with the fascination with godzilla in the first place?
what does godzilla mean to you?
what does it symbolize?
when you think of godzilla, what does it make you think of?
I would answer your questions, but the animation IS from the movie-that’s how unique this movie was.
oh.
but why the animation?
the smog monster is made of crap?
a monster that throws crap?
when godizllia flies using the breath and the slide trombone music comes in, i gotta admit thats pretty funny.
I might want to see this one for comedic value.
I think you would probably appreciate the movie due to the weird factor…
Yes, the Smog Monster Hedora is composed of garbage, sludge, mud, dirt, farts, radiation, and sewage. He throws it..he farts..and you die.
As for the reason why Banno inserted the animation…I have none.
In terms of what the animation symbolizes- that’s easy:
In the first scene, Hedora is drinking oil tankers. Oil tankers are known for spilling and ruining the oceans and seas, and killing the fish and environment. By drinking the oil rigs, the monster becomes even stronger. The smoke from the factories is so dark that it even covers the full moon. I also got a drug vibe from the first shot..it’s like the monster is using the oil ships like giant bongs, and the smoke is polluting the atmosphere.
In the second scene, the factory is the personification of big, bad corporations. In the name of profit, they are destroying every last plant and tree, while poisoning the air. Their hands are robotic cranes, symbolizing humanity’s reliance on machines and dehumanization. Notice the eyes are cocked, and not even human.
Hedora sweeps down and consumes it. Then he disperses all the poison from his radioactive alien bowels and destroys humanity in a black cloud.
Next scene- perhaps the most cryptic because I can’t read the Japanese characters well.It seems as if the monster has officially polluted the skies with mankind’s impurities, so the women must walk around with air filter masks. If you remember a couple of years ago, we posted about how we may all wear those masks, and how popular they are now. Well, this is 1971 and Banno predicted that.The women pass each other, and then face each other. Yet they have no face. That is because of the acid rain that Hedora rains down upon them- their flesh is now gone. Their beauty replaced by horror.
The faces join, and then the scene switches to their face becoming a map in a news report on TV. Their face becomes the infected area of Hedora’s poison.
Now we switch to the live action symbolic newsroom. This is a rip on the MEDIA, and how we are bombarded with it.
I’ll leave it up to you to analyze each monitor, since I am running out of time now. But this is a very powerful scene as it symbolizes the panic of being destroyed by your own creation, and the horrors that pollution is causing every man, woman, and child. Ironically, it becomes noise pollution at the end. The chatter of the panicked Japanese is so much that there is a sensory overload at the end.
From the director:
“Hedorah’s eyes were modeled on female genitalia. I drew the kind of crude picture you find on the walls of a public toilet and handed it to the modeling staff. I said, ‘This is what I want Hedorah’s eyes to look like.’ Well, come on, vaginas are scary!”
thats some quote.
I dont find vaginas scary at all.