Over at the BMMB, we recently had a discussion of
“first grails”, that first time you heard about a
movie that you just had to see, but couldn‘t
immediately locate. I would imagine that, for many of
us, that first grail involved a large, scaly Japanese
fellow with nuclear fire breath. The first movie my
parents ever rented for me, back in the days when you
had to rent the VCR along with the tape because they
cost about as much as a car to purchase, was Godzilla
1985. While that movie was probably a little dark
(particularly the sea louse scene, which scared the
living crap out of me) for a five-year-old, my parents
picked it out because I, like every sane male child
(and many female ones as well), loved dinosaurs. What
they didn’t know was that they were starting a
life-long love affair with jets and tanks and guys in
rubber suits wrestling through model cities.
One of my first memories of seeing movies in the
theater was seeing a poster for a matinee screening of
Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (man, our theater used to
be so much cooler than it is now) and making mom take
me to it, even though we were supposed to be on our
way home from shopping. I would imagine that this
scenario, or something similar, sounds awful familiar
to a lot of you. I mean, you’re here because you like
b-movies, and it had to start somewhere, and anyone
for whom it started as a child probably has their
parents and a Godzilla movie to thank.
And so, after those two movies (which remain two of my
favorites to this day), it was a non-stop hunt to
track down every Godzilla flick available. Luckily
for me, I grew up in a major boom era for kaiju on
home video. Previously relegated to Saturday
afternoon TV and the occasional drive-in screening,
many Godzilla movies (albeit the badly cut and
terribly edited American versions) were finding their
way to home video by way of companies like Good Times
Home Video, Hollywood Movie Greats, and Video
Treasures (who were responsible for my copy of today’s
movie). It seemed like every time I’d walk into the
local Musicland there’d be a brand new Godzilla
adventure awaiting me and my allowance.
One Easter, my basket contained not only chocolate
fertility idols, but a newly-pressed copy of Son of
Godzilla, and my young mind was thrilled with exotic
island locations, science gone haywire, a damn fine
Masaru Sato score, giant mantises with a really badass
military march theme tune, one evil-ass spider, the
birth of one of Godzilla fandom’s most hated
characters (who, in his original incarnation, wasn’t
that bad), and of course, Godzilla himself. There
would later be a brief scare moment when it was feared
that Son of Godzilla had been taped over with an
episode of "Denver the Last Dinosaur" (which was on at 6
a.m. Sunday mornings, and no little kid wants to get
up at 6 on Sunday morning), but thank Cthulhu for
write protection, Godzilla was unharmed. So, does
this monster melee hold up after all these years?
Read on, MacDuff, and find out.
Son of Godzilla is supposed to begin with an airplane
spotting Godzilla at sea. The original American cut
just had a shot of Godzilla wandering around an island
in the rain, ending with him walking into the camera.
My cut of Son of Godzilla has neither of these things,
beginning instead with a title card and then throwing
us right into the action on Sol-Gel island. What
happened to that bit about Godzilla wandering on an
island? Well, that wound up on my New World Home
Video version of Godzilla vs. Gigan, but that’s a
story for another time.
The plot is your typical 60’s science gone wrong,
although the weather-control angle is a new one. Dr.
Kusumi and his crew are experimenting with a new
system to turn the unfarmable climates of various
deserts and jungles (?) into fertile grounds able to
produce food for the ever-growing world population.
They have sensibly located their top-secret
experiments to an obscure island, considering a
weather control device in the wrong hands would make a
helluva weapon.
The island can’t be too secret, however, as nosy
reporter Maki Goro drops in via airplane, effectively
stranding himself on Sol-Gel with the scientists to
make sure he gets his story. Goro is placed in charge
of cooking and the scientists go about their business.
When some mysterious radio interference messes up one
of their experiments, the island is bombarded by
intense heat and massive radioactivity, making the
already large insects grow into some serious kaiju. A
troupe of the giant mantises, Kamakiras, smash open a
hill and the large egg inside, and out pops Minya. As
Furukawa, one of Kusumi’s crew, goes nuts from
tropical fever and runs to the beach with a gun,
Godzilla heaves up out of the surf to answer his son’s
distress calls, which were causing all the radio
interference. Godzilla makes short work of the giant
mantises (including one of the coolest shots in the
movie, where a giant flaming mantis claw goes whirling
over the heads of some fleeing scientists), and he and
Minya head off to do whatever it is monsters do.
Goro meets a girl named Saeko, who was orphaned on the
island when her archaeologist father died there after
WWII, and they move all their equipment into her cave
(your guess is as good as mine where they plugged in
the computers). All the crew, excepting Goro, Saeko,
Dr. Kusumi, and Kusumi’s #2 Fujisaki, come down with
some kind of tropical fever, and Saeko and Goro go to
a lagoon filled with curative red water, located
between Godzilla’s lair and the home of a giant
(apparently giant before the radioactive storm) spider
called Kumonga. The crew is cured, but a battle
between Godzilla and the remaining mantis rouses
Kumonga from hibernation, and the big showdown begins.
Dr. Kusumi and his crew fire up the weather machine
one last time to freeze the island and escape the
monsters, while the battle to the death raging above
threatens to bring the cave down around them.
Despite being helmed by the Godzilla b-squad of
director Jun Fukuda, FX man Teisho Arikawa, and
composer Masaru Sato, and having what is easily the
worst Godzilla suit in the history of the series, Son
of Godzilla holds up really well. The island
locations, slammed by critics as a cheap way to get
out of extensive model work, are actually a nice break
from the usual cityscapes, and give the flick an
exotic feel. The acting is top-notch, the movie being
populated by a veritable who’s who of Toho’s actor
stable.
The monster FX, while all the attention seems to have
gone to the bad guys instead of Godzilla and his
spawn, are really damn good when they’re good (and
unfortunately hideous and lumpy when they’re bad).
The giant mantises and Kumonga are realized by huge
puppets, each requiring up to 20 puppeteers to bring
them to life. The mantises are wicked-looking
beasties with spiked armor plating, creepy twitching
mandibles, and huge scythe claws. Kumonga is an
especially creepy looking beastie (and an impressive
marionette, each leg having multiple joints and
requiring 3 puppeteers per leg to work), particularly
the close-up shots of its gnashing mouthparts, which
look uncomfortably like an exceptionally hairy vagina
surrounded by huge fangs. Somehow I don’t think
Hedorah was the first time a crew member’s fear of
vaginas was worked out in the monster design meetings.
Even the science is less questionable than usual (to
those of you who think it’s as goofy as anything else
in the Godzilla universe, I have three words for you:
Black. Hole. Cannon.). The detonation of a -1200
degree device to create an updraft and suck the hot
air away from the island, while it probably wouldn’t
work like they say it would, at least makes some sort
of sense. They even spray silver iodide, a chemical
used in cloud seeding experiments, into the air. The
only thing I can’t really figure out is why a second,
radioactive device is required, but hey, it’s the 60’s
and this is SCIENCE!, so something has to be
radioactive.
And finally, I address the anathema of Godzilla
fandom, Minya. And I say…in this initial incarnation,
he’s not that bad. Granted I can’t stand him in any
subsequent movie he’s in until Godzilla vs. Destroyer,
but in his first outing, once he grows up some and
becomes Marchan the dwarf in a suit instead of that
disturbingly ugly muppet that the mantises claw out of
the hillside, he’s not only tolerable, but even cute
and sympathetic. Instead of just being a lump that
hinders Godzilla’s screen time like in Space Godzilla
or Mechagodzilla II, Minya sticks up for himself
against the other monsters, even taking on Kumonga and
holding his own for some time before Godzilla shows up
to finish the giant spider off.
The sad little whimpering noises he makes as the
snowfall deepens on Sol-Gel island and he can no
longer keep up with Godzilla, coupled with the
wistful, bittersweet music, made me inexplicably sad
even as a youngster. Today, as a father, I sometimes
hear my son Phoenix make similar sounds when he’s
feeling sad, and the final scenes of Son of Godzilla
have even more resonance. While it may be out of
place with the rampaging beast of nuclear destruction
we know Godzilla to be, the scenes of Godzilla’s
anthropomorphic parenting and gruff yet sometimes
tender affection for Minya is a fine addition to his
character and makes him even cooler in my book.
There you have it. The critics who blow Son of
Godzilla off as a crappy kiddie movie can bite my ass.
It’s far from the low point in the series many make it
out to be. In fact, I say it’s an under-appreciated
classic, and recommend every good b-movie household
sit down and watch it as a family every now and again.
The Moral of the Story: Messing with someone’s kid will
probably result in prison time (and hopefully a
mauling). Messing with a bear’s cub might result in a
fine or prison time, and almost definitely a mauling.
Messing with the son of Godzilla…don’t fucking mess
with the son of Godzilla.
FEEDBACK
All materials found within this review are the intellectual properties and opinions of the original writer. The Tomb of Anubis claims no responsibility for the views expressed in this review, but we do lay a copyright claim on it beeyotch, so don't steal from this shit or we'll have to go all Farmer Vincent on your silly asses. © March 5th 2006 and beyond, not to be reproduced in any way without the express written consent of the reviewer and the Tomb of Anubis or pain of a physical and legal nature will follow. Touch not lest ye be touched.
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