**** ½ A Tragic Kaiju Love Story…. With Explosions!

It’s quite hard to believe that this movie was made in back in 1956. It’s in color, the monsters don’t look that much like a guy in a rubber suit or a goofy hand puppet, and there is a ton of explosions! Sure there is toy tanks and the like, but compared to the movies they made right before it, and considering it will take over twelve years for Toho to equal this, then this movie here has special effects that are actually GOOD!

The movie starts off with military stock footage of a couple atomic explosions. Supposedly there is a connection with H-bombs and monsters. The story starts in a little coal-mining town somewhere in Japan. But this serene atmosphere is shattered as soon as Shaft #8 floods and a zillion giant insects pop out to hack people to shreds! After a few battles with the bugs, the attacks suddenly stop, and the new thing in the news is strange UFO’s flying around at super sonic speeds and destroying air traffic. After the main character wakes out of amnesia, he tells what he say in the cave, and that solves the mystery. As it turns out, a couple of giant eggs hatched forth two gigantic pteranodons that ate the bugs and flew off to wreck havoc wherever they go! They apparently are mates and have been dubbed "Rodans", and I personally have dubbed it slightly differently where one of the monsters is Rodan and the other is Radon. Well the military decides to attack them, and Radon flies off, gets attacked some more by the planes, destroys a bridge, lands in a city, gets attacked by tanks, and is saved by Rodan (isn’t that sweet of him)! The two decide to hibernate back in a volcano, and the military decides to blast them while they’re resting! The force of the many explosions causes the volcano to erupt! In one of the most tragic scenes in Daiekaiju history, Radon succumbs to the forces and dies, causing a saddened Rodan to throw himself into the fire in apparent suicide (although he actually will just get buried and later pop up in "Ghidrah: the Three-Headed Monster").

Now as I said the special effects are great for the time. They are so good that movies a decade later would cannibalize this one for stock footage (the biggest offender of course is "Godzilla vs. Monster Zero"). The rather cool action-packed scene where Radon does a mid-air battle with a bunch of planes has never been equaled by any Kaiju film before or since (probably because most other plane battles just have the planes get blasted instantly in a sea of blue, and that’s it)! However even though the special effects are terrific for the time, there are a few lapses. The toy tanks look and move around really good for toy tanks, but they still are toy tanks! Those silly little meganurons look absolutely pathetic! They look like those goofy Chinese dragons with a bunch of people under a big costume! Still, the special effects are a high point in this movie, but that’s not all! This is basically a Kaiju movie equivalent of a big-budget blockbuster, which means that the other effects are good to. The sets and other scenes look really good; it looks just like a water-filled coal mine should! The scenery is very well made or very well chosen throughout, which actually gives the feel that you are actually there! Along with the inanimate object effects, there is also a ton of extras running around. This isn’t some movie a group of people made in their backyard; this is an actual movie!

Even though the movie is mainly all about the effects, the plot was great to! As I said it’s a tragic love story about Kaiju, but the human love story aint bad either. For the most part the human characters run around and act out a pretty good story line. The American variation of this movie is actually not too different from the Japanese version (for once). The editing is slightly different but not bad and there isn’t any new character added! The only problem is the narration by the main character. Usually this is a good thing because it explains things, but when they are walking through a creepy coal mind and instead the guy is yaking on and on and on, it gets annoying! It also made the ending not as dramatic, another disappointment. Now the part with all those meganurons is actually quite scary for a Kaiju movie, giving a nod to such films as "Them!". Perhaps the fact that they throw dead corpses around everywhere might make it a little odd, but it’s not to bad of a "giant-bugs-attacking-people" theme. In all actuality the entire movie could have been based on those bugs alone, but I probably would have never watched it, because the real attracted is the Rodans themselves! As a whole this is a great movie: great plot, great special effects (for the time), and a bunch of other things that make this a classic among movies! If only Toho used the Rodan idea more later on…

Terrific special effects for the time!

Great Plot!

A good tragic kaiju love story.

Lots of fireworks!

A big budget Japanese monster movie!

Really good effects using toy tanks!

Will… you… SHUT… UP!

Those meganurons are rather lame.

Disappointingly, there is no direct sequel to this.

Now just how did an H-bomb wake up prehistoric monsters when no H-bomb tests where near?

Um… guys… that stuff your wading in… IT’S NOT WATER!!!

Credits