5/7/08: Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster (1971)First off, yes, we know it’s really
Godzilla vs. Hedorah—or
Gojira tai Hedora, if you want to get technical. We saw this in the theaters as
Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster, though, and that’s how it remains implanted in our mind. Of course, it’s also implanted in our mind as the most ludicrous Godzilla film ever made—and, by then, we’d already seen
Godzilla’s Revenge on television. That one’s really baffling.
For our purposes,
Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster is also another entry that we meant to get around to in the aftermath of Earth Day. To their credit, the folks at Toho Films never meant to make an environmental epic. The story goes that the head of Toho was in the hospital while
Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster was getting made. The guy was pretty unhappy to see what director Yoshimitsu Banno had done with the studio’s biggest name. At least
Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster isn’t some kind of campy disaster. It’s more like a weird mix of serious subject matter and overblown lunacy.
Anyway, on to the plot: Dr. Yano and his family live somewhere on the Japanese coast. The doctor—who likes to bring his little boy Ken along on dangerous missions—sets out to investigate the origin of these weird giant tadpoles that are showing up in the ocean. He goes diving while Ken is left alone to play on jagged rocks along the shoreline. Ken and his dad both discover that there’s a creature flying around that’s made out of sludge. Don’t touch it, though. Ken gets a minor chemical burn on his hand, while his father is neatly scorched by radiation burns along one side of his face.
This creature—who appears in many variations—then becomes more aggressive, ultimately bogarting the smokestacks of the local factories. Ken decides to name the creature “Hedorah.” Some people say that’s Japanese for “pollution,” but it might just translate as “yucky crap.” Ken’s dad works to unravel the mystery of Hedorah so the government can kill it. Ken simply declares that Godzilla will come along to save the day, assuming that Japan’s favorite giant lizard isn’t too bummed out by all the pollution in his home country.
This is a good place to note that a lot of the film’s running time is dedicated to trash rotting in a bay. At one point, we see a crying baby sitting up to his neck in the muck. The movie doesn’t even bother suggesting that Hedorah has anything to do with the poor tyke. See, it turns out that Japan has a huge problem with pollution—as constantly noted by this hipster type named Yukio who’s always hanging around with Dr. Yano.
Our first thought was that Yukio is Ken’s older brother. Then it seems more like Yukio’s just a bad influence. He even brings Ken to some crazy nightclub where people drop acid, imagine all the other hippies with fish heads, and dance to an annoying theme song called “Save The Earth.” Yukio is so busy planning environmental protests that he doesn’t even notice when Dr. Yano decides that Hedorah isn’t a man-made crisis. Turns out that the pesky pollutant is just an alien type who hopped a ride on an asteroid.
Yukio can’t be bothered with those kinds of details. He’s got bigger ideas, like getting “every youngster in the country” and throwing “one blast of a party at Mount Fuji.” Yukio’s big plans work out like most environmental events. As one comrade notes, “I thought a million people were coming. There’s only a hundred.”
“So why complain about it?” proclaims Yukio. “There’s no place else to go, and pretty soon we’ll all be dead. So forget it! Let’s sing and dance while we can! Blow your mind!”
Then everyone starts dancing around bonfires while a band plays lame acid-rock. We’re talking about Japanese acid-rock, so maybe it’s played right to left. Speaking of acid, Hedorah happens to decide that Mount Fuji would be a fine place to show up and start flinging around his caustic mud. In typical fashion, Yukio’s put lil’ Ken in harm’s way by dragging him along to this all-night rave. Fortunately, Godzilla’s also there to put an end to Hedorah.
It’s nice to see Yukio’s followers get wiped out by a monster that their leader couldn’t bother researching. It’s even more fun to realize that
Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster is also nuclear power vs. pollution. After all, Godzilla was created by courtesy of President Harry S. Truman. The lizard’s nuclear breath even saves the day when the Japanese military can’t get a decent power source to unleash their own secret weapon against Hedorah.
And so we’ve got a landscape littered with dead hippies (although Japan’s hippies look more like a Toho version of
The Mod Squad) while clean nuclear power helps to save the world. That’s the happiest ending to a Godzilla film since the American-made King Kong won their big battle back in 1962.
Make it your own: Godzilla vs. Hedorah (okay, okay) was released
on DVD in 2004 as part of Toho’s big 50th Anniversary celebration. It’s a fine print that can be had cheap—and it’s pretty much what we remember seeing in the theater way back when.
The only big difference is that the dubbing on the DVD doesn’t include the English lyrics to “Save The Earth.” You have to settle for hearing the original Japanese lyrics. That’s a shame. We have fond memories of walking around the mall after seeing
Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster and singing the theme with our childhood pal—well, better if we don't mention his name. He grew up to be a Hollywood producer. Nowadays, a guy could get blacklisted for not taking “Save The Earth” seriously.
The DVD also has very nice ad copy on the back of the box. We stole today’s headline from it, although we could’ve gone with “Mammoth of Muck.”
