10/30/08: Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster (1966)Not much in the way of horror here, but let’s celebrate Halloween with a monster movie for the kiddies. In fact,
Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster is the closest that the franchise ever got to a Sid & Marty Krofft production. There’s a good lesson for the young’uns, too. Since it’s 1966, we’re between Godzilla as the scourge of Tokyo (as seen in
King Kong vs. Godzilla) and the city’s defender (
Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster). Godzilla’s kind of an inadvertent good guy here—as made especially clear when the big lizard starts killing off some Commies.
The movie has a particularly dizzy opening. Ryota is a young idiot whose brother Yata has been missing at sea for over two months. A psychic assures Ryota that Yata is still alive. Ryota needs to go out to the ocean to investigate this matter, so he rushes over to a dance marathon where the grand prize is a sailboat. Ryota figures he can just join in, even thought the marathon is now in its third day. He arrives just as Ichino and Nita are dropping out of competition. The exhausted youths decide to give Ryota a ride out to the local docks so he can see all kinds of boats.
They stroll onto a nice boat, where Yoshimura jumps out from hiding. He yells at the trio for trespassing. Then he decides they can stay over and get some sleep—only to wake up the next morning to discover that Ryota’s taken the boat out to sea. (This is also a big surprise to Ichino and Nita.) Yoshimura can’t really complain, though. It’s not his boat. He was hiding out on it after stealing 4 million yen that he’s put away in a briefcase.
It isn’t long before the boat runs into the same giant claw that we saw during an opening sequence. The foursome jump into the water, and wash up on an island. They eventually see a boat arriving, but wisely hold up before making themselves known. We soon see that the boat is full of Commies called The Red Bamboo. They’re dropping off some slave labor—and if you know your Japanese monsters, you can already guess from this scene that we’ll be getting a cameo from a certain creature whose name isn’t on the theater marquee.
The foursome hide from the Commies, and pick up an escaped slave gal in the process. Ryota learns that his brother is on the same island that the Red Bamboo is using for their free labor. He’ll eventually get his foot tangled in a weather balloon that’ll conveniently carry him to that island, and drop him right next to his sibling. (This’ll happen at the same time that Nita is caught and sent off to join the slave laborers.) Just as we suspected, Yata—and now Ryota—is on Infant Island, home of Mothra. Yata is watching as the island inhabitants are praying and dancing in hopes of rousing a dormant Mothra to awake and save their abducted villagers.
Yoshimura, Ichino, and the escaped slave gal have been hiding out in some caves—where they discover that they’re perched above a dormant Godzilla. It must be the dormant season. This would be a good time to note that
Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster was originally meant to star King Kong. Instead, the big ape would have to wait until 1967’s
King Kong Escapes to play James Bond and take on evil Commies. Godzilla does a fine job in the role, though, and this will be the first film where we can really enjoy watching the monster commit mayhem against puny humans.
Our heroes don’t figure out what’s going on with The Red Bamboo until they almost accidentally break into a nuclear reactor. The evil Reds are making nukes. Earlier, Yoshimura had declared, “We’ll fight them with our brains instead of guns.”
“You sound more like a stupid politician,” Ichino replied. Now he’s got an idea better than guns. He suggests that it’s time to wake up Godzilla. It’s certainly difficult to think of a better way to screw up the entire works. They’re able to jolt Godzilla awake with a lightning rod, and the monster proceeds to destroy both evil humans and the local giant lobster.
This gets us to the end of the film, as our heroes are flown away to safety (by Mothra, who finally wakes up) while Godzilla escapes the nuclear explosion that sinks the island. Our DVD has dubbed and subtitled versions. Here’s how the subtitled version ends:
YOSHIMURA: Well, the island’s gone forever.
ICHINO: But it’s not the end of nuclear warheads. The future is in the hands of the people who use them now.
YOSHIMURA: Now
you sound like a politician!
That’s okay for the Japanese audience. We understand they were still kind of sensitive about the notion of nukes. Still, we prefer the dubbed dialogue made for us Yanks:
YOSHIMURA: Well, the island’s gone forever.
ICHINO: But I wonder if that’s the end. The Red Bamboo may come back again.
YOSHIMURA: Now
you sound like a politician!
He sounds like a politician who has our vote—although we prefer Godzilla’s style.
Make it your own: Like all the classic Godzilla films,
Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster is available as a great-looking
DVD—and includes those subtitles, just in case you want to make sure we don’t imagine that kind of thing.
