Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is
Speaker 1: Rob Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Godzilla time
Speaker 1: on the podcast. But maybe a Godzilla you're a little
Speaker 1: bit less familiar with one that was new to me
Speaker 1: as of this week. Today we are doing the Godzilla
Speaker 1: picture that was too hot for Toho, the Godzilla film
Speaker 1: that is too radical, it's too dangerous, it must be stopped.
Speaker 1: It's Godzilla versus headera. Yes, Godzilla versus Headera. One I
Speaker 1: had never seen before. And I think you know, I've
Speaker 1: seen a fair number of Godzilla films over time, and
Speaker 1: I think I tend to have I tend to have
Speaker 1: watched the ones that were either on TBS back in
Speaker 1: the day they would show them in like the Afternoon
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, or ones that were featured
Speaker 1: on Mystery Science Theater three thousand later on. But there, there,
Speaker 1: of course have been at tons of Godzilla films over
Speaker 1: the years, and this is one that simply fell through
Speaker 1: the cracks for me. I did not I did not
Speaker 1: know it existed until this week when you said, Hey,
Speaker 1: why don't we do a Kaiju movie. Why don't we
Speaker 1: do either this one or that one? And I looked
Speaker 1: and I saw, well, it looks like Godzilla versus Hetera
Speaker 1: is available on HBO Max as part of the Turner
Speaker 1: Classic Films selection. There. Well, let's do that one. It's
Speaker 1: the easiest one for me to to see. And I'm
Speaker 1: so glad I did the other option we were looking at.
Speaker 1: It's funny because the two movies have a kind of
Speaker 1: similar premise. The other one we were looking at was
Speaker 1: The Space Amiba, which does not have Godzilla in it.
Speaker 1: It's a kaiju movie about an alien microbe that lands
Speaker 1: on an island in the South Pacific and there it
Speaker 1: transforms uh some examples of local wildlife into giant monsters.
Speaker 1: I think it makes a big squid and a big
Speaker 1: crab and one other thing I don't recall. Um. But
Speaker 1: in this movie we also have an alien microbe I think,
Speaker 1: coming from a gaseous nebula or a speculated by one
Speaker 1: character later on, from a planet covered in sludge sludge
Speaker 1: like planet, dark sludgy planet, dark sludgy planet that has
Speaker 1: come to Earth. And whereas many aliens would say take
Speaker 1: me to your leader, this one says take me to
Speaker 1: your smoke stacks. I need to get high. Take me
Speaker 1: to your pollution. Yes, And then the one character even says,
Speaker 1: wasn't this good? It can eat up all our pollution,
Speaker 1: Like no, it's just too destructive, that's right. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: this is a pollution monster that huffs airborne particulates straight
Speaker 1: out of smoke stacks. He is a brimstone beast from
Speaker 1: space that exudes sulfurous gas and acid and poison and
Speaker 1: uh and and his bad news all around. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: one thing about this film is this, first of all,
Speaker 1: this film is very much a Kaiju versus film. So
Speaker 1: he is going to largely hit the same plot points
Speaker 1: you're familiar with. Some new creature presents a threat to
Speaker 1: humanity and established veteran in this case, Godzilla shows up
Speaker 1: to battle it. Human characters watch on his battle proceeds. Um,
Speaker 1: you know that you're you're guy. Monster is gonna be
Speaker 1: on the ropes for a little bit, but it's gonna
Speaker 1: have a big comeback and eventually win the day. So
Speaker 1: God Deliversus Hetera is going to give you all of
Speaker 1: those points. But there's so much additional weirdness here. There's
Speaker 1: so much visual flare in this film, I feel like
Speaker 1: it really stands apart from pretty much all the other
Speaker 1: Kaiju films that I've seen. I'm actually I seriously entertained
Speaker 1: putting it above Shin Godzilla is my favorite Godzilla movie.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about the same thing. This is a
Speaker 1: new favorite for me, definitely my top three now um
Speaker 1: and much like you, I also have Shinn Godzilla near
Speaker 1: the top of the heap. But mainly it's the reason
Speaker 1: I was so enthralled by this movie was its novelty.
Speaker 1: Having seen many Kaiju movies, it has a lot of
Speaker 1: the familiar elements, and in fact, I would say the
Speaker 1: familiar elements are actually the weakest part of this movie
Speaker 1: as far as the big monster meet Slam goes. I mean,
Speaker 1: there is a you know, extended thirty minute beat down
Speaker 1: at the end of the movie that is Okay, it's
Speaker 1: not one of the best, but it's also not one
Speaker 1: of the worst. But it is the other elements of
Speaker 1: this movie that really make it an absolute standout, without
Speaker 1: a doubt, the most bizarre Godzilla movie I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: Uh in that this movie believes it is art, yes, absolutely, no, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: no question about this. It thinks it's art and it's
Speaker 1: making a statement and maybe it's going to change the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's probably the best example of an avant garde
Speaker 1: Godzilla film, and that's one of the reasons that why
Speaker 1: it's so watchable. It's also one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: uh that that it's director was criticized back in the day,
Speaker 1: and indeed never directed another Godzilla film. You'll see his
Speaker 1: directorial credit I and IMDb for some other Godzilla films
Speaker 1: with us because they utilized a footage from previous films
Speaker 1: in those those pictures. That's right. So the director was
Speaker 1: Yoshimitsu Bano and uh and you will frequently see references
Speaker 1: to this as the movie that ended his Godzilla career.
Speaker 1: You know, he could have gone on to do all
Speaker 1: kinds of Godzilla stuff, but like I said to the beginning,
Speaker 1: this was just too hot for Toho. It was too weird,
Speaker 1: it was too radical, it was rock in the boat.
Speaker 1: You can't make movies like this, man, Yeah, exactly. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of stories about how producer Tomoyuki Tanaka
Speaker 1: responded to this. There's at least one story in which
Speaker 1: he said, you've ruined Godzilla. Uh, And there was a
Speaker 1: lot of anger, and I was there's a lot of
Speaker 1: There's a great blog post about this from Patrick Galvin
Speaker 1: at Toho Kingdom dot com. You can look it up.
Speaker 1: He has a Yoshimitsu Bano in Memorium post that goes
Speaker 1: through a lot of this and talks about his his achievements,
Speaker 1: his uh you know what he gave the Godzilla UM franchise,
Speaker 1: but then also how it was received at the time.
Speaker 1: UH So, yeah, this is this is a movie that
Speaker 1: was maybe ahead of its time, and I think stands
Speaker 1: the test of time because it is doing things differently.
Speaker 1: So what is it doing differently? I could list a
Speaker 1: number of things. One thing I will say is the
Speaker 1: esthetic differences. It's much more free form than any other
Speaker 1: Godzilla movie I've ever seen in that it uh it
Speaker 1: inserts things that are outside the normal stream of plot development.
Speaker 1: So it has musical numbers. It has animated segments there.
Speaker 1: They're short, but there's several of them throughout the movie,
Speaker 1: and there they were some of my favorite parts because
Speaker 1: they're beautiful animation. It's almost like a Godzilla movie with
Speaker 1: elements of like the Yellow Submarine movie and uh and
Speaker 1: other sort of late sixties psychedelic films that involved a
Speaker 1: lot of uh, exciting visuals with abstract colors and dancing
Speaker 1: in a club. Yeah. And also yeah, there's also a
Speaker 1: huge cultural element to this as well. There's a there's
Speaker 1: a sense of the youth movement and the youth culture
Speaker 1: and and and and and their rise and their importance
Speaker 1: and and their part in the fight. Generally, in a
Speaker 1: kaiju movie, who do you see fighting the kaiju? Who's
Speaker 1: raising arms against the kaiju? It is the military, right,
Speaker 1: the authorities? Yeah? Yeah, and in this we see the
Speaker 1: authorities playing a part but also failing in ways, and
Speaker 1: it's the youth who are who are leading the charge
Speaker 1: at one point. Yes, in this movie. Ultimately, I think
Speaker 1: the authorities are portrayed as almost entirely incompetent, that like,
Speaker 1: they are not the ones preserving order. Ultimately, it's Godzilla
Speaker 1: who's the one who is preserving order and Godzilla. Um.
Speaker 1: I was trying to think about what Godzilla represents in
Speaker 1: this movie, because I think you can make a case
Speaker 1: that a lot of the Godzilla films have a um
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it's it's hard to say they
Speaker 1: have a very clear message, but to the extent that
Speaker 1: there is a message in them, it's a kind of
Speaker 1: vague environmental one. It's, you know that we have done
Speaker 1: things to the earth, and in doing things to the earth,
Speaker 1: through maybe weapons testing or industry, we have upset the
Speaker 1: natural order and we have unleashed forces that are beyond
Speaker 1: our control. But like I said, uh, I think that
Speaker 1: that critique is in most Godzilla movies very buried under
Speaker 1: the surface, very vague. In this movie it's the opposite.
Speaker 1: It it's not only overt, it's extremely over there, screaming
Speaker 1: in your face with an environmental message. Yeah. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: definitely lean into the idea that Godzilla is is not
Speaker 1: only it's not just a big monster for kids, so
Speaker 1: they acknowledge that, but he is also something of an
Speaker 1: embodiment of the nation's or a cultures will you know,
Speaker 1: Like like Godzilla represents, uh in a sense, humanity struggle
Speaker 1: against pollution, against destructive elements of of the world, and
Speaker 1: the question of can Godzilla defeat this enemy is ultimately
Speaker 1: a question of whether we can, whether we have the
Speaker 1: public will to confront it. That's another transition I would say. Originally,
Speaker 1: Godzilla is sort of the manifestation of of us having
Speaker 1: unleashed forces beyond our control by our upsetting of the
Speaker 1: natural order. In this movie, he is the thing that
Speaker 1: fights back against the monster created by industrial pollution. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not a question. I don't know if you know the
Speaker 1: answer to this. One of the fun things we see
Speaker 1: with the Godzilla arc is that in the very first
Speaker 1: Toho Godzilla movie, Godzilla is the antagonist of the film, like,
Speaker 1: you know, this is a dangerous, scary, dark monster that
Speaker 1: that that brings great destruction. But by the later films,
Speaker 1: Godzilla is often sort of the hero of the film,
Speaker 1: is portrayed as a force who is inherently dangerous, but
Speaker 1: which ultimately fights against a force that is even more
Speaker 1: threatening or even more malevolent. And that's the case in
Speaker 1: this movie. So I wonder, like, how exactly does that
Speaker 1: arc develop? And is that the case for other movies,
Speaker 1: Like I've watched some of the Gammera movies where you know,
Speaker 1: Gammera is doing the same thing Godzilla is doing in
Speaker 1: the In the later movies, Gammera is good and he's
Speaker 1: fighting against the bad monsters. Was that always the case
Speaker 1: with Gammera or did Gamera start as bad like Godzilla did?
Speaker 1: If memory serves Gammera follow the exact same track Gammera
Speaker 1: in the first film as a threat that has to
Speaker 1: be overcome and launched into space. I think ultimately and
Speaker 1: this would be This would be for a more in
Speaker 1: depth discussion later, perhaps drawing on the work of people
Speaker 1: who have maybe thought longer and harder about this than
Speaker 1: we have. But I imagine there is there are a
Speaker 1: lot of comparisons to be made with the way deities
Speaker 1: change over time. Uh, you know, we can. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it would be the exact same trajectory or
Speaker 1: would be kind of an inverse trajectory in some cases.
Speaker 1: But uh, I wonder how you know, in a loose
Speaker 1: sense anyway, Godzilla is a deity. He exists not in
Speaker 1: the the the mythic realm of you know, like the
Speaker 1: ancient world or even modern religion. But he's in the
Speaker 1: film myth world and and is therefore not quite the
Speaker 1: same as our traditional ideas of deity, but perhaps subject
Speaker 1: to some of the same changes in the way we
Speaker 1: perceive him. Well, maybe before we go on any further,
Speaker 1: we should hit some trailer audio. All right, let's have it.
Speaker 1: This I believe is from the English trailer for Godzilla
Speaker 1: Versus to Become the most fearful mennace that ever threatened mankind,
Speaker 1: growing ever more deadly un smug. Only one pos dares
Speaker 1: stand up lords overpowering evil. Nothing men can do can
Speaker 1: stop the smug Monster and Godzilla save the earth from
Speaker 1: this mastodon of destruction. All right? Sounds good to me
Speaker 1: and and we we should, of course, note that in
Speaker 1: the US, this I think, was originally released as Godzilla
Speaker 1: Versus the Smog Monster. Yeah, that's right, though from what
Speaker 1: I understand in the movie, the monster is not made
Speaker 1: of smog. The monster is made mostly of why are
Speaker 1: born pollutants and then comes out onto land to huff
Speaker 1: the smog. Yeah, he's made out of like sludge and
Speaker 1: minerals and all. Um A quick quick bit of trivia. Uh.
Speaker 1: In Germany, this film was released as Frankenstein's Battle against
Speaker 1: the Devil's Monster. That doesn't make any sense? Um. I
Speaker 1: was this was new to me, but apparently uh. In
Speaker 1: the German release of Godzilla films, it was often explained
Speaker 1: that Dr Victor Frankenstein created the monsters that Godzilla fights, uh,
Speaker 1: and it just had to do with with how they
Speaker 1: were releasing them at the time. So he had multiple
Speaker 1: Toho films Tohoe did some Frankenstein films about Jenking Giant
Speaker 1: Frankenstein's and uh, and I checked, It's okay if I
Speaker 1: called them Frankenstein's. I checked with the Frankenstein's monster on this.
Speaker 1: But but this sort of set the precedent for how
Speaker 1: you would release a big monster movie in Germany. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I remember reading a few weeks ago about a movie
Speaker 1: I've never heard of before. That is it is directly
Speaker 1: a Frankenstein Kaischen, not just called Frankenstein. It's like about
Speaker 1: now that I'm about to say this, this really sounds wrong,
Speaker 1: but I think what it is is a Nazi scientist
Speaker 1: takes Frankenstein's brain to Japan for study and there it
Speaker 1: gets uh it somehow gets turned into a giant monster. Yep.
Speaker 1: I believe that's right, Okay, strange or maybe we'll come
Speaker 1: back to it. We're talking about doing some Frankenstein films eventually.
Speaker 1: All right, I guess we should come back to talk
Speaker 1: about the director of Godzilla versus Hetera, who was again
Speaker 1: Yoshi Mitsu Bano. Yes, um director, also co writer. He
Speaker 1: lived one through two thousand and seventeen. This was his
Speaker 1: first and only Godzilla movie. Um again you'll see him
Speaker 1: credited on the Gigan and the Megalon movies, but that's
Speaker 1: just because they utilize older footage. He previously served as
Speaker 1: assistant director and second assistant director on some really notable
Speaker 1: A Kira Kurosawa pictures, including Throne of Blood in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty seven. That's that wonderful Samurai Macbeth movie, and also
Speaker 1: The Hidden Fortress, in which I think is often cited
Speaker 1: as one of George Lucas's influences in UM the creation
Speaker 1: of the original Star Wars picture, both great films. Yes,
Speaker 1: I've also read that Banno was was very much a
Speaker 1: part of the Toho film system. So he came up
Speaker 1: in Toho and he stowed it under several notable Toho directors.
Speaker 1: I believe his grip on this film is strong, because
Speaker 1: unlike some other Kaiju films, this is one in which
Speaker 1: I detect not just a Toho House style, but I
Speaker 1: feel a really strong, bold, individual director's vision guiding the
Speaker 1: whole thing. Yes, that absolutely, and I think it's why
Speaker 1: at the time there seems to have been tensioned with
Speaker 1: producer Tanaka over this UM. It seems like he he
Speaker 1: fell out of good graces with Toho and ultimately went
Speaker 1: on to be more of a producer. He was but
Speaker 1: was EP on the two thousand fourteen American Godzilla movie,
Speaker 1: and I believe he's credited even though he's occurred after
Speaker 1: his death. I think he's credited on Godzilla, King of
Speaker 1: the Monsters from and Godzilla Versus Kong. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: think this is the reason why he was controversial at
Speaker 1: the time but is memorable today. You know, there have
Speaker 1: been so many Godzilla films, how many of them are
Speaker 1: really worth looking up and seeing if you're not a completist,
Speaker 1: I would say this is one that's worth going back
Speaker 1: and seeing. Yes, totally. Uh. And it's different than a
Speaker 1: lot of the other best ones because I would say
Speaker 1: a lot of the other best Godzilla movies, apart from
Speaker 1: the first one, the first one is very dark and gloomy.
Speaker 1: A lot of the other best ones are very bright
Speaker 1: and lively and sort of fast moving and fun. This
Speaker 1: one is also overall dark and gloomy, but it's excellently
Speaker 1: dark and gloomy. Yeah, yeah, alright. So there was another
Speaker 1: writer on this, u Takeishi Kimura, who lived through a
Speaker 1: studio writer for Toho. He was involved in more than
Speaker 1: thirty films, including some really notable ones including Rodan the Mysteriens.
Speaker 1: Oh he was he was the fer of Matango. Allegedly
Speaker 1: he believed this was his finest work, and it is
Speaker 1: a fine work. We may have to come back to Mettango.
Speaker 1: This is about an island where where a fungal infection
Speaker 1: turns humans into um my conned uh mutations. It's it's
Speaker 1: pretty fabulous, so yes, Metango is worth checking out. Kimura
Speaker 1: also worked on Frankenstein Versus Beragon. This was a giant
Speaker 1: Frankenstein movie from from Toto, The War of the Gargantuans,
Speaker 1: King Kong Escapes Destroy All Monsters and uh. And of
Speaker 1: course this wonderful Godzilla film Takeshi Kimura. Is interesting because
Speaker 1: I was finding a lot of very tantalizing biographical details
Speaker 1: about him online, but not in very solid looking sources.
Speaker 1: That and I couldn't find them backed up anywhere that
Speaker 1: looked more solid. So so frustratingly, I can't report a
Speaker 1: lot about him with confidence. But if, for example, some
Speaker 1: of the like user submitted biographies I found of him
Speaker 1: on various sites have any truth to them, uh, he
Speaker 1: was a strange and interesting figure. He was allegedly known
Speaker 1: for writing Tohoe monster movies with a more gloomy outlook
Speaker 1: and and serious political themes, as opposed to the happy
Speaker 1: golokie beat downs of other you know repeat Kaiju screenwriters. Well,
Speaker 1: and as we turned to the cast here, let's go
Speaker 1: right to the beat down. We're gonna talk about the
Speaker 1: human characters played by human actors, but let's start with
Speaker 1: the monsters. Oh yeah, So here's something about this movie.
Speaker 1: Despite the fact that it has a much darker tone,
Speaker 1: the Godzilla in this movie is kind of sassy. I
Speaker 1: really detect a sense of humor in Godzilla's gestures and
Speaker 1: expressions in this film. There's even a really funny moment
Speaker 1: later on where the military is trying to do something
Speaker 1: to defeat the opposing monster and fails, and Godzilla does
Speaker 1: almost kind of a shrug, like, oh boy, do I
Speaker 1: have to do everything myself? Yeah? Yeah, there's a little
Speaker 1: bit of sass. He's a he's a bit of a
Speaker 1: showboat at times. I mean, he's on the ropes a
Speaker 1: lot in this but he but he does. He shows
Speaker 1: he's a little bit of a showboat in a few scenes.
Speaker 1: And he also takes some really inventive bumps, like he'll
Speaker 1: get shot with a laser and do a complete front flip.
Speaker 1: So there are times like that where I was really
Speaker 1: admiring the performance. And indeed the performer here is Haruo
Speaker 1: Nakajima who lived nineteen sev He is uh is kind
Speaker 1: of an all star of the of the Godzilla franchise.
Speaker 1: He played Godzilla in twelve consecutive films. He was also
Speaker 1: in Mathra and the War of the Gargantua's uh as
Speaker 1: as All, as well as Akira Kua SAWA's Seven Samurai
Speaker 1: uh Most people forget that in the original cut of
Speaker 1: that the Seven Samurai Battle the Giant Monster. No, not
Speaker 1: not really, but he played a non monster in that.
Speaker 1: But generally he's considered a legend of the rubber Monster suit,
Speaker 1: the rubber Suit actor par excellence. I haven't seen Mosra
Speaker 1: in a long time, but I remember that one. This
Speaker 1: is known for being one of the best of the
Speaker 1: meat slams. It's like a really great monster throwdown. Now,
Speaker 1: the enemy in this cetera is played by uh Kimpachiro Satsuma,
Speaker 1: who was born in seven and as of this recording
Speaker 1: is is still alive. Um And while he plays Godzilla's
Speaker 1: enemy in this picture. Satsuma would go on to play
Speaker 1: the King of Monsters himself after Nakajima retired, so Satsuma
Speaker 1: served as Godzilla um from through. Seeing those dates though,
Speaker 1: did make me a little bit sag with sadness as
Speaker 1: I imagine the transition from Godzilla and and his monster
Speaker 1: enemies being a person in a suit to being a
Speaker 1: c G. I creation, M. Yeah, I mean, you gotta
Speaker 1: love love the suit and you know there there. I
Speaker 1: think there's been a whole documentaries about about what was
Speaker 1: required of these gentlemen because these were very physical performances.
Speaker 1: They involve suits that were often not very well ventilated,
Speaker 1: and you're, you know, you're you're sweating profusely inside them.
Speaker 1: And as we mentioned, like with Godzilla, there's a certain
Speaker 1: it's not just a stammer around and smash a building.
Speaker 1: There's a certain physicality to the performance that really shines through. Uh.
Speaker 1: You have to betray more than just brute lizard strength
Speaker 1: or anything like that. There is a character there that
Speaker 1: the actor is portraying. All right, well, let's get into
Speaker 1: the human characters. Now. Most most of these characters are
Speaker 1: going to be members of the Yanno family, the Yano
Speaker 1: family being the key family of humans. And um, let's
Speaker 1: start with the child the boy. Uh. This is um
Speaker 1: Hiroyuki Kawasi playing Kenyano and he was This actor was
Speaker 1: born in nineteen sixty four. Child actor was also uh.
Speaker 1: I think he showed up in ninety three's Godzilla versus
Speaker 1: Megalon as well, and he wasn't in much, but he
Speaker 1: was in a TV series called Sorrow Sorrow Nu Guandan,
Speaker 1: which I believe is Army of the Apes uh if
Speaker 1: you translated. Uh. This was eventually cut and released as
Speaker 1: a film in the US by Sandy Frank as Time
Speaker 1: of the APESCE Theater three thousand. Viewers will be familiar
Speaker 1: with this film, um, which is a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: But i've i've I have never had the chance to
Speaker 1: watch the original TV series, but there's a lot of
Speaker 1: it and it has huge fans in Japan. Uh people
Speaker 1: still follow it, and it seems like there's a lot
Speaker 1: more like well, what you see in Time of the
Speaker 1: Apes is very much a compressed uh plot line. There's
Speaker 1: apparently a lot more going on. There's a robot in it. Uh.
Speaker 1: I would love to know more and I'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from anyone who's watched it in full. I don't
Speaker 1: think it's been really widely available on DVD or Blu
Speaker 1: ray or even uh like you know, streaming services outside
Speaker 1: of Japan. Now, Rob, I have a Kaiju question. Maybe
Speaker 1: you can shed some light on this for me. In
Speaker 1: Godzilla versus Hetera, this young boy Ken has a kind
Speaker 1: of psychic connection with the monsters. He has apocalyptic visions
Speaker 1: of the small creature Hetera, and he has uh and
Speaker 1: he he sort of has omens about when Godzilla will
Speaker 1: pere to save the day. So and and this is
Speaker 1: not the only film where there is some kind of
Speaker 1: psychic or at least emotional bond between the Kaiju monster
Speaker 1: and a young child. It's often true in like the
Speaker 1: Gammera movies. And do you know, is there a reason
Speaker 1: for this recurring theme. I don't know. It's it's one
Speaker 1: of those things that is often with Gammer's Like Gammer
Speaker 1: is a friend of children, you know, there there is
Speaker 1: this innate connection. I don't think I have personally seen
Speaker 1: a Kaiju film other than this one where it's described
Speaker 1: as an overt you know, psychic link, a telepathic link
Speaker 1: between monster and child, like there's some sort of sacred
Speaker 1: bond there. I feel like it's something, And I could
Speaker 1: be wrong on this, because I'm not a Kaiju movie
Speaker 1: expert or a Godzilla expert or anything, but I feel
Speaker 1: like this. In this case, our screenwriters said, well, obviously
Speaker 1: there's this link is here. Let's actually explain what it
Speaker 1: is a bit to a certain extent while still retaining
Speaker 1: its mystery. Okay, okay, I mean, maybe it could just
Speaker 1: be that you need to have some kind of demonstration
Speaker 1: of an emotional connection between the monster and the human characters.
Speaker 1: And maybe it's just natural to assume that only a
Speaker 1: child has the moral purity to to have that connection
Speaker 1: with the big beast. Now, if we do go back
Speaker 1: to that idea of Godzilla's an actual deity, it is
Speaker 1: interesting the use of in this film. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you notice some of these details, but first of all,
Speaker 1: the boy Ken he has toy Godzilla's and he has
Speaker 1: something like a Godzilla shrine set up, and this is
Speaker 1: kind of lightly juxtaposed with the casual use of of
Speaker 1: tiny um amulets and uh and you know, visions of
Speaker 1: I think like the like the Buddha that are arranged
Speaker 1: around the television sets and other scenes. Yes, yes, so
Speaker 1: I don't know how much what they're how much they're
Speaker 1: really trying to say with that, but I feel like
Speaker 1: if one wants to really chew on the matter, you
Speaker 1: can definitely start making those connections. I love the fact
Speaker 1: that Ken is playing with Godzilla dolls in this movie
Speaker 1: because it's like that scene in Halloween three where Tom
Speaker 1: Atkins is sitting at the bar and he's watching the
Speaker 1: first Halloween movie on a TV. That's pretty good. All right,
Speaker 1: Let's move on to some of these other human characters.
Speaker 1: Um So, the matriarch of the Yano family is um
Speaker 1: Is Toshi Yano, played by Toshi Kimura. She acted in
Speaker 1: such pictures as sort of The Beast, Revenge and The
Speaker 1: Three Outlaws Samurai and then Akira Yamauchi plays Dr Toru Yano,
Speaker 1: the patriarch of the family. He lived through nine. This
Speaker 1: seems to be his biggest role, but he was He
Speaker 1: also had had a part in Lone Wolf and cub
Speaker 1: Baby cart in the Land of Demons from one um
Speaker 1: This This is of course a classic of the genre
Speaker 1: and was also a major inspiration on the Mandalorian TV series.
Speaker 1: So he plays the scientist character. Usually in these movies
Speaker 1: you need at least one scientist character who's there to
Speaker 1: to figure out the nature of of the new threat.
Speaker 1: And so he's some kind of biologist who has an
Speaker 1: early encounter with the head or a beast in the
Speaker 1: water and ends up like with a big sulfuric acid
Speaker 1: burn on his face. And there's a very funny scene
Speaker 1: later on where he's, you know, he's trying to solve
Speaker 1: the problem and uh, he's lying awake and his wife
Speaker 1: comes in and says something like she's like, stop thinking
Speaker 1: about hetera and go to bed. Yeah. He spends a
Speaker 1: lot of the picture kind of bedridden and recovering from
Speaker 1: his injuries. Yeah, all right there. Well, also have a
Speaker 1: couple of characters who are not members of the Yano
Speaker 1: family but are very close with them. The first of
Speaker 1: all is the character Yukio Kuchi played by uh Toshio Shiba,
Speaker 1: and this is the the the youth with the really
Speaker 1: captivating eyes. I think Yukio is supposed to be Toshi's brother,
Speaker 1: the okay Kin's mother's brother, so ken Ken's uncle. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, that was that was kind of lost on me,
Speaker 1: I guess, But otherwise he's He's just like a young
Speaker 1: guy who hangs out with the family and then later
Speaker 1: goes to a psychedelic nightclub. Uh. So Shiba had a
Speaker 1: long TV and film career, including the nineteen seventy one
Speaker 1: Kaiju movie Mirror Man. Uh and I think he's still active.
Speaker 1: He was born in n he has amazingly distinctive eyes.
Speaker 1: He's one of those people who, uh, You've probably had
Speaker 1: this experience before where I saw him and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: he looks so familiar. What have I seen him in before?
Speaker 1: And I looked and I couldn't find anything. So I
Speaker 1: think maybe I've never seen him in anything before. He
Speaker 1: just has such a distinctive look that that he seemed familiar. Yeah, same,
Speaker 1: all right. And then we also have a character by
Speaker 1: the name of Miki Fuji no Miya uh this uh
Speaker 1: play played by the singer Kiki Omari. This is I
Speaker 1: think her only film role, but she does seem to
Speaker 1: have had a much richer career as a singer. Um
Speaker 1: and it looks like she's still active, at least on
Speaker 1: Japanese language social media. She seems to have a following
Speaker 1: as being I mean, it's kind of like I guess cinematically,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like having been a Bond girl if
Speaker 1: you were a Godzilla girl. I think there's actually a
Speaker 1: documentary about like Godzilla Girls, and she's featured in it.
Speaker 1: She has a fabulous musical number in this There are
Speaker 1: multiple musical numbers in this movie. Actually, yeah, but she
Speaker 1: has a lot of style. She brings a style and
Speaker 1: hit nous to the film that that certainly stands the
Speaker 1: test of time. And finally, I'm going to mention the
Speaker 1: composer is Richiro Manabi who he has a hundred and
Speaker 1: fourteen score credits on IMDb. I'm not I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if he's responsible though for the opening music. I guess
Speaker 1: he is. Well, we'll get to that in a minute.
Speaker 1: But has really really nice opening music, a really nice
Speaker 1: theme song they keep really returning to. It's really nice.
Speaker 1: It's just great. I did read that Guy Henrick did
Speaker 1: the lyrics for the English version. I have not heard
Speaker 1: that because the version we watched is the one on
Speaker 1: HBO Max that's up there with the TCM collection um
Speaker 1: and it is. It is in the original Japanese with subtitles.
Speaker 1: But I guess there was an English language version of it,
Speaker 1: like they dubbed it for releasing the States, and Himrik
Speaker 1: is the guy who did a lot of lyrics for
Speaker 1: beach movies back in the day, stuff like Beach Blanket
Speaker 1: Bingo and Muscle Beach Party. So I'm just gonna guess here,
Speaker 1: but I'm I'm guessing that his lyrics did not retain
Speaker 1: the strong and dire environmental message that we find in
Speaker 1: the the actual Japanese lyrics. Maybe not the beach movies,
Speaker 1: the bikini movie that the peak of human artistic achievement.
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's let's get into the plot a
Speaker 1: bit here. All right. Well, one thing this movie really
Speaker 1: does is it sticks to its themes. It hits you
Speaker 1: right with them at the outset, and then it does
Speaker 1: not give up. So you start with, of course, as always,
Speaker 1: the classic glorious Toho logo, and then very first thing
Speaker 1: you see smokestacks, billowing clouds of soot, rushing water slicked
Speaker 1: with oil and green foam. The message is clear, the
Speaker 1: earth is disgusting, the earth is just ruined. And then
Speaker 1: and then you see water and what's this? What's coming
Speaker 1: out of the water? Is it a slimy, cancerous garbage
Speaker 1: bag with red crocodile eyes boiling up to the surface.
Speaker 1: That's right, you see Hetera poking up out of the
Speaker 1: water right at the top. Just no waiting at all.
Speaker 1: Now you don't see all of them, no, no, much
Speaker 1: like a crocodile like looking up over the top of
Speaker 1: the water. You just see a kind of the pebbled
Speaker 1: surface of the top of his head and the eyes
Speaker 1: looking out there. And he has these vertically oriented red
Speaker 1: eyes that are very very prominently featured throughout this movie
Speaker 1: in fact, and eyes somehow seemed to be a theme
Speaker 1: of the film because remember, like his eyes or his power,
Speaker 1: Godzilla partially defeats him by pulling his eyes out and
Speaker 1: electrocuting them. But as soon as you see Hetera title card,
Speaker 1: Godzilla versus Hetera, and then bam straight to a James
Speaker 1: Bond style musical introduction. Amazing. And and when I say
Speaker 1: James Bond style, I really mean it, as in, there's
Speaker 1: like a glamorous singer doing a theme song for the
Speaker 1: movie over over colorful abstract backgrounds, just like in a
Speaker 1: in a James Bond title sequence. Yeah. This this track,
Speaker 1: by the way, is called give Back the Sun exclamation point,
Speaker 1: and you can find this on whatever you're you're streaming music,
Speaker 1: side of choice happens to be. I'll also try to
Speaker 1: include this embedded on the blog post for this episode
Speaker 1: at Samuda music dot Com. I had one of those
Speaker 1: moments where I was watching this by myself, but I
Speaker 1: just wanted to be looking around to find somebody else
Speaker 1: in the room, like are you seeing this? Are you
Speaker 1: seeing the same thing I'm seeing? The song is is tremendous.
Speaker 1: I loved it, Yeah, but I mean because the lyrics
Speaker 1: are are so solid and gloomy and and it's and
Speaker 1: it's it's an interesting juxtaposition between the tone of the
Speaker 1: lyrics and the the style of the song. But then yeah,
Speaker 1: that we have this um you know this fabulous uh
Speaker 1: you know splash of color behind her um as she's
Speaker 1: singing of this is this bond sense of of of
Speaker 1: wonder and it's kind of I guess the stuff behind
Speaker 1: her too with a kind of like oil lights. It's
Speaker 1: like the the Joshua Light Show, that stuff you've see
Speaker 1: in a lot of like psychedelic performances. Uh So it's
Speaker 1: we have a strong opening with with psychedelia and um
Speaker 1: in music and fashion, but then also scenes of sludge
Speaker 1: and pollution. And and I have to say we in
Speaker 1: in the movie Frog. When we talked about Frogs in
Speaker 1: a previous episode of Weird House, we talked about the
Speaker 1: problem of creating fake looking garbage, fake looking pollution. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I feel like this movie nails its pollution. The
Speaker 1: pollution looks real and yet has a surreal quality to
Speaker 1: it that feels like it is it is art. It's disgusting. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the oh, the lyrics of the song, it's all
Speaker 1: like the birds and the fish they are all dead. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's the you know, the gold Finger song, but it's
Speaker 1: about pollution. And there's a great part where in the
Speaker 1: verse she's just listing off names of chemicals. She's singing mercury, cobalt, cadmium,
Speaker 1: All life is gone. The fields and the mountains are silent. Uh.
Speaker 1: And there's like green bubbles in the background and uh.
Speaker 1: And then and then when she gets to the line,
Speaker 1: there's no one left on earth. This also ties back
Speaker 1: to our discussion from frogs, because what is the single
Speaker 1: piece of garbage or litter that conveys squalor better than
Speaker 1: anything else. It is a discarded doll And what do
Speaker 1: you see here? Floating in the oil in the trash.
Speaker 1: It is a filthy discarded doll, or maybe it's a mannequin,
Speaker 1: but it's a it's a doll mannequin humanoid shape. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's perfectly the plastic likeness of the human form discarded
Speaker 1: in the plastic strewn, polluted mess. Uh. The the this
Speaker 1: this this patina that encompasses our culture. Oh and there's
Speaker 1: a grandfather clock floating in the muck. That's pretty great.
Speaker 1: So good. So this movie really comes out strong. A
Speaker 1: lot of Kaiju movies are just about like it doesn't
Speaker 1: even like you just want to skip to the big
Speaker 1: battle at the end, like the big battle in the
Speaker 1: destruction and the monster beat down, that's all the matters.
Speaker 1: Usually in this film, everything else is done to such
Speaker 1: a high level. Uh. I feel like you'd be hard
Speaker 1: pressed to find a Godzilla movie or any Kaiju movie
Speaker 1: that is more interesting in its scenes that are not
Speaker 1: about monsters battling. I totally agree. In fact, it was
Speaker 1: inverted for me. The only time in this movie that
Speaker 1: I did start to get a little board was during
Speaker 1: the big monster fight towards the end, which which does
Speaker 1: go on a bit long. But I'm not even sure,
Speaker 1: that's a an appropriate criticism for me to make of
Speaker 1: a giant monster movie. But I do just want to
Speaker 1: reiterate one more time. You are correct. This movie passes
Speaker 1: the fake garbage test. It's not like in Frogs, like
Speaker 1: where you're seeing discarded beer cans that look like somebody
Speaker 1: just strank them. Yeah. But from here we go straight
Speaker 1: into the action, and it is what we mentioned before,
Speaker 1: a young boy playing with Godzilla dolls. There's actually pretty
Speaker 1: interesting framing in this scene. As we've said many times,
Speaker 1: this is a visually interesting movie. It's got a well, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's got a good sense of mis on
Speaker 1: send to be pretentious about it. Interesting photography, interesting framing.
Speaker 1: So this boy is playing with Godzilla dolls on an idyllic,
Speaker 1: grassy hillside that overlooks a vast urban landscape that's just
Speaker 1: covered with smoke stacks, like a valley of thorns. But
Speaker 1: he's got this Godzilla shrine and is surrounded by flowers
Speaker 1: and and it's beautiful. Uh. And and here we get
Speaker 1: to meet the main human characters, the members of the
Speaker 1: boy's family. The boy, of course, is Ken, and we
Speaker 1: meet his father, Dr. Tooru Yano, who's a marine biologist,
Speaker 1: his mother, Toshi, his his uncle or friend Yukio, I
Speaker 1: think his uncle and uh and and Ken and Yukio
Speaker 1: are talking at the beginning of Yukio is like, hey,
Speaker 1: is Godzilla your favorite? And Kin says, yes, he's a superman.
Speaker 1: Is he a man? I don't know. I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess you could certainly say he is super compared to man. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But anyway, they're hanging around when their unusual fish guy
Speaker 1: shows up. There's this guy named Mr go Hey and
Speaker 1: as soon as he arrives there, they're like, oh, hello,
Speaker 1: have you brought us another unusual fish? So I think
Speaker 1: it's because the father is a marine biologist that they've
Speaker 1: got to go to guy for unusual fish. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and uh and and indeed the father what he has
Speaker 1: various um jars of strange specimens that he's collected lining
Speaker 1: the wall. Great set. Yeah, And so Mr go Hey
Speaker 1: brings in the specimen, which looks like a gigantic tadpole.
Speaker 1: It's like a fist sized tadpole. But they conclude that
Speaker 1: it cannot be a tadpole because Mr go Hey caught
Speaker 1: it at the prime spot for shrimp fishing in Saruga
Speaker 1: Bay and do tadpoles live in the ocean? Uh? The
Speaker 1: father says no, they do not, and Mr go Hey notes,
Speaker 1: you know, Saruga Bay is getting really really bad, Like
Speaker 1: he didn't catch a single shrimp there this time, and
Speaker 1: it's almost as if the world is sort of is failing,
Speaker 1: is giving out on them. And then meanwhile, once again,
Speaker 1: this movie does not make you wait on developing things.
Speaker 1: The family starts watching reports on TV about a giant
Speaker 1: creature that's breaking up ships in in Saruga Bay, Like
Speaker 1: oil tankers are coming into the bay and they're crashing
Speaker 1: into each other and then getting snapped in half, almost
Speaker 1: as if something is wanting to like drink the oil
Speaker 1: out of the boats. Yeah. The pacing in the film
Speaker 1: is excellent leading up to full monster reveal. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so of course it's investigation time. The scientist and the
Speaker 1: scientist father and Ken have to go into the bay
Speaker 1: and and see what's going on. So Ken hangs out
Speaker 1: on the rocks by the shore while Dr Yano goes
Speaker 1: into the water to see what's up, and we get
Speaker 1: to see some underwater sequences. They're one of the things
Speaker 1: I loved. I didn't know what to make of this
Speaker 1: there's a piece of trash sunk to the bottom of
Speaker 1: Saruga Bay that looks like an artificial swan. Okay, it's
Speaker 1: just there. I Meanwhile, Ken up on the rocks is
Speaker 1: like prying up muscles and he discovers that they're empty
Speaker 1: and the crabs are bleached and dead. So it's just
Speaker 1: this place has been ruined by pollution. Everything is dead.
Speaker 1: It almost reminded me of the recent uh episodes we
Speaker 1: did about marine mucilage. Yeah, but here I think we
Speaker 1: get our first vision of Hetera. In fact, well it's
Speaker 1: a it's a combination scene because Hetera actually does appear
Speaker 1: in one form, but also Ken is having visions of
Speaker 1: Hetera that seemed to go beyond what Hetera is actually
Speaker 1: doing in this scene. Did you understand it the same way? Um? Well,
Speaker 1: there was a lot coming at me at this point.
Speaker 1: I think I was just like generally geeking out at
Speaker 1: at how terrific this was visually. But the yeah, like
Speaker 1: the father that the doctor is having his own encounter
Speaker 1: under underwater, and then Kim is encountering all this stuff
Speaker 1: above the water. Um, yeah, it's it's and is this
Speaker 1: when we start getting the cartoons? No, that's not yet,
Speaker 1: not yet. This finishes with like Ken being confronted by Hetera,
Speaker 1: and Hetera like flies over him and he reaches up
Speaker 1: with a knife, and and like, yes, part of it. Yes,
Speaker 1: it is the Free Willie moment. It's like the moment
Speaker 1: in Free Willy, except imagine that instead of it being
Speaker 1: an orca, it was a sludge monster. And instead of
Speaker 1: touching the creature, you were driving a knife up into
Speaker 1: a sledge belly. That's literally what happens, and it's terrific.
Speaker 1: Ken does a really great sledge belly slicing and uh.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile Dr Yano down in the water is severely
Speaker 1: burned and when so we go back to the house
Speaker 1: and he's got bandages all over his face. He has
Speaker 1: been attacked, and we learned a number of things. We
Speaker 1: learned that Hetera he's already got a name. Now he's
Speaker 1: named after a type of sludge called Hetero. I don't
Speaker 1: know what hetero means, but yes. Soon after this we
Speaker 1: we get our first cartoon sequence, which these cartoons are
Speaker 1: absolutely wonderful. This one was labeled Happy Hetera uh, and
Speaker 1: it very much reminds me of the animation style of
Speaker 1: the Blue Meanies and the Yellow Submarine movie. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a real sense of weirdness and whimsy to them. Uh
Speaker 1: and and it's it's just fab I wish there were
Speaker 1: actually more animated sequences in this film because they just
Speaker 1: do a great job of breaking up the pacing um
Speaker 1: and uh and and just you know, upping the visual
Speaker 1: pizzazz of the whole feature. Now, like the last episode,
Speaker 1: I don't think from here I'm going to do a complete,
Speaker 1: like scene by scene breakdown of the whole movie, but
Speaker 1: just maybe wanted to focus on some things that caught
Speaker 1: our attention as we as we went through, because you know,
Speaker 1: this is a Kaiju movie. You can probably guess basically
Speaker 1: the structure it takes. The head remonster becomes increasingly menacing,
Speaker 1: attacks the city until eventually Godzilla appears to fight it off,
Speaker 1: and then it comes back even stronger, and now it
Speaker 1: looks like Godzilla and the people are in trouble. But
Speaker 1: then Godzilla and the people come up with ways of
Speaker 1: fighting back, and you know, it's pretty standard. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: gonna be some buildings screwed up, there's gonna be some
Speaker 1: sort of large scale technological approach to fighting the monster,
Speaker 1: with mixed results. All that stuff is in play, you
Speaker 1: will not be surprised by anything that actually happens from
Speaker 1: a plot standpoint for the most part. But some of
Speaker 1: the specific choices they make are still amazing. One of
Speaker 1: the main ones I would say is in the first
Speaker 1: big hetera attack scene where he comes out of the
Speaker 1: water and he attacks the lane. He comes out of
Speaker 1: the water to huff smoke stacks. But the way they
Speaker 1: set that scene up is that, uh, we see I
Speaker 1: think U k O is there at the nightclub scene,
Speaker 1: isn't he Yes, he is, He's he seems to be
Speaker 1: having I don't know he is the scene where he's
Speaker 1: drinking like he's just down some sort of cocktail or
Speaker 1: some sort of alcohol in the rocks and then he
Speaker 1: kind of looks at the glass like he's he's having
Speaker 1: mixed thoughts about what he just drank. He has a
Speaker 1: love hate relationship with this cocktail, and he's he's dressed
Speaker 1: in this really cool outfit. He's got his wonderful Um
Speaker 1: colorful Um shirt on and this weird tie that absolutely love.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile the nightclub itself is just amazing. You've got
Speaker 1: more Joshua light show stuff going on behind them. You've
Speaker 1: got this. You've got Kikiomari doing some sort of a
Speaker 1: performance and she's wearing this weird Naiad costume with like
Speaker 1: a nautical details on it. It's it's very psychedelic. I
Speaker 1: it's it's just a really cool nightclub sequence. You watch
Speaker 1: it and you want to be there. Yeah, love, love,
Speaker 1: love the sequence. It's it's so strange and it's so good.
Speaker 1: And uh, and I think there in a way we're
Speaker 1: prising the song from the opening, or at least playing
Speaker 1: on variations of it, because both of them have that
Speaker 1: phrase they keep saying, give it back. I think means
Speaker 1: like give give the natural resources back to the earth. Um.
Speaker 1: But it's so strange because from there we go from
Speaker 1: the song and the nightclub to, first of all, a
Speaker 1: header up prank call to the police station. Did you
Speaker 1: understand this? Um? I don't. I don't think I quite
Speaker 1: got to say. This was a section with film where
Speaker 1: I started watching it with my son too, so I
Speaker 1: might have been slightly distracted as we we talked about
Speaker 1: what was going on on screen. And then so you
Speaker 1: see a police officer answered the phone and say like hello,
Speaker 1: who is it? And then he's like, uh, that's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Hetera is a sea monster. So somebody's calling and saying
Speaker 1: their Heatera maybe or maybe they're just reporting. They're like, hey,
Speaker 1: Hero is attacking the city, and they're like, no, no,
Speaker 1: it can't be. That could be to the sea, because
Speaker 1: one of the themes here is that Hero is going
Speaker 1: through a transformation. He's going from um an aquatic form
Speaker 1: to a quadrupedal form. Ultimately he goes through a flying
Speaker 1: phase and then into a bipedal form for the final fight,
Speaker 1: though he also backtracks to a flying form a little
Speaker 1: bit at will. I think you're right that that must
Speaker 1: be how to understand it, because my version didn't make
Speaker 1: any sense. I was like, what's with this prank call?
Speaker 1: But yeah, no, I think he's saying, somebody reports Heatera
Speaker 1: being on land and he's like, no, no, that can't
Speaker 1: be because Heatera is in the law her. But what
Speaker 1: does Hetera do once Hetera comes on land? Just slips
Speaker 1: its mouth right over the top of the smoke stack
Speaker 1: and starts huffing the gas yeah and um and of
Speaker 1: course in all of this, Hetera is also emitting like
Speaker 1: sulfuric acid clouds and um. Either at this point or
Speaker 1: very Shortly afterwards, we start seeing scenes of it just
Speaker 1: like obliterating crowds, like turning people to skeletons in the street. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: like people literally just turned into piles of bones. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But we also watch Hetera, like Heatera has these tumor
Speaker 1: looking things, these bumps all over its body. Should we
Speaker 1: describe can we describe Hetera? I don't even know how
Speaker 1: to say what Hetera looks like. Hetera looks like a
Speaker 1: big ball of garbage with with like trailing slime tentacles
Speaker 1: that has these vertically oriented red eyes. Yeah, and he's
Speaker 1: kind of glistening, kind of sparkling, and it's it's really
Speaker 1: quite a vicious and effective monster costume, because if you
Speaker 1: see enough Kaiju films, you realize there are only so
Speaker 1: many things you can really do with a with a
Speaker 1: human in a suit. Uh. For or and or the
Speaker 1: use of puppetry and their their limitations on in both areas, uh.
Speaker 1: And I feel like they did a great job with
Speaker 1: this costume and that it's clearly built around a bipedal
Speaker 1: human performer. Uh, And yet it does have that feel
Speaker 1: of some sort of amorphous sludge monster. Yeah. So this
Speaker 1: horrible thing is attacking the city. What's going to happen?
Speaker 1: Is Godzilla going to come and save the day. Well,
Speaker 1: we had a hint earlier that he would because I
Speaker 1: think was it that Ken was writing an essay for
Speaker 1: school when when he said, like, I think this is
Speaker 1: what it is. Ken is writing an essay for the
Speaker 1: second grade for a second grade class, and it says
Speaker 1: something like, you know, the water is polluted with with
Speaker 1: cadmium and mercury and all this, and then it ends
Speaker 1: with saying, I bet Godzilla would be mad if he
Speaker 1: saw this. Yes, And then eventually he has like a
Speaker 1: a visual hallucination, like a vision a prop to see
Speaker 1: and he's like, Godzilla is coming, Godzilla is coming to
Speaker 1: clear this up. That's right? And then what's that? It is? Godzilla?
Speaker 1: Godzilla coming over the horizon and Godzilla and and hetera
Speaker 1: throw down. They have a great fight, a great fight
Speaker 1: with very weird energy, unlike any other fight I can
Speaker 1: think of from a from a Godzilla movie that I
Speaker 1: recall because it's a fight with basically no music and
Speaker 1: very little sound effects. The fight later in the movie
Speaker 1: has a lot more of the Godzilla squealing sound this one.
Speaker 1: There are long stretches where it's very quiet, this kind
Speaker 1: of low anticipatory rumble as the two monsters just kind
Speaker 1: of regard one another and stand there swaying in the darkness.
Speaker 1: It's it's very unusual, very effective. Yeah. I also like
Speaker 1: how some of these five, maybe all of the fight scenes,
Speaker 1: but some of the key fight scenes take place in
Speaker 1: like a great field like it. It feels like a
Speaker 1: like a battle field, um, instead of it being in
Speaker 1: I don't know, a lot. A lot of Kaiju movies
Speaker 1: they end up taking place on a model city or
Speaker 1: around a model city, and I don't know, this one
Speaker 1: just just had a different feel to it. Yeah, two monsters,
Speaker 1: they're like like engines, idoling almost. Yeah, And I should say,
Speaker 1: all this is going on the fight is is sizing
Speaker 1: up between them while they're while Yuko is still in
Speaker 1: the nightclub, and he's starting to have hallucinations of all
Speaker 1: the dancers in the club wearing fish masks, which was
Speaker 1: just so it's one of multiple parts of this movie
Speaker 1: that reminded me of The wicker Man. So they're they're
Speaker 1: fish masks here. But then later on in the movie,
Speaker 1: all the young people they decided like, well, Heatera is here,
Speaker 1: and you know, the earth is so polluted. We're basically
Speaker 1: near the end of human civilization anyway, So let's just
Speaker 1: go have a big Wickerman party on Mount Fuji, which
Speaker 1: is exactly what they do. They go up and that
Speaker 1: they do a summer ile kind of thing. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a it's kind of a somber affair. They're
Speaker 1: kind of I guess morning, but also ultimately bringing the
Speaker 1: fight to Hedra that the military has has mostly failed, UH,
Speaker 1: and it's up to the youth to to raise their
Speaker 1: voices in song and then ultimately like throwing torches at
Speaker 1: Hetera as he advances. It's it's pretty stirring because it
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's it's about the youth culture. And
Speaker 1: then there's this other UH and their role in perhaps
Speaker 1: fighting these important battles of the future, you know, certainly
Speaker 1: and environmentally, but it but also you have these sequences
Speaker 1: in this whole sequence, you see these kind of ghostly
Speaker 1: looking old people watching on from the shadows with kind
Speaker 1: of somber looks on their faces. Oh yeah, that was
Speaker 1: one of the strangest things to me. I didn't know
Speaker 1: what to make of that. I thought maybe I had
Speaker 1: missed a scene explaining what was going on there or something.
Speaker 1: But while there is this Mount Fuji young people Wickerman
Speaker 1: party and they're out playing guitars and dancing in the field,
Speaker 1: there are these like ghastly people of the wheat who
Speaker 1: are just standing behind these tall grassy stalks with these gray,
Speaker 1: impassive faces and just watching. Yeah. I it reminded me
Speaker 1: a lot. This movie reminded me a lot in general
Speaker 1: of some of the works of Miyazaki um because he
Speaker 1: has a lot of environmental themes in his work, but
Speaker 1: also there are he does deal with these kind of
Speaker 1: generational um conflicts as well. Uh. And I feel like,
Speaker 1: and I could be could be wrong in this, but
Speaker 1: I feel like that's the territory that that this director
Speaker 1: was getting into with Godzilla versus hetera, at least just
Speaker 1: a flash of it. There's this this idea of generational conflict, uh,
Speaker 1: concerning the confrontation of in this case, environmental issues. So
Speaker 1: maybe it's like the gray people of the weed are
Speaker 1: kind of like, uh, the adults and spirited away who
Speaker 1: can't see the magic and are just sitting at the
Speaker 1: food stall, stuffing their faces until they turn into pigs. Yeah. Yeah, perhaps,
Speaker 1: but of course eventually it's it's all about Godzilla and
Speaker 1: had a battling each other. And boy did they battle.
Speaker 1: They battle. They battle a lot. They've had a hard there.
Speaker 1: Godzillas on the ropes they or comebacks. And then uh
Speaker 1: and and there's a sequence where where there's also flying
Speaker 1: like Heatera goes into a flying form, drops Godzilla onto
Speaker 1: the side of a mountain, and then Godzilla falls into
Speaker 1: a hole. And then then then Hetera is going to
Speaker 1: like sludge flood the hole. It gets it gets really
Speaker 1: intense there. Yeah, horrible. Is so that it's a part
Speaker 1: where you think Godzilla is maybe gonna die, like Heatera
Speaker 1: throws him into an open grave of toxic sewage. Yeah. Oh,
Speaker 1: and then but the flying heater is not the only
Speaker 1: one to fly. Godzilla flies in this And I don't
Speaker 1: think i'd seen this before. I started shouting when I
Speaker 1: saw it. Godzilla like balls up basically like I was
Speaker 1: gonna say, he tucks his tail. That makes it sound
Speaker 1: like he's ashamed. He's not. He like balls up into
Speaker 1: an almost kind of fetal position and then kind of
Speaker 1: hurt like blows out the radiation breath like a jet pack.
Speaker 1: Exhaust trail and flies. Yeah. I I thought I'd seen
Speaker 1: all Godzilla's tricks before, but this is my first time
Speaker 1: seeing this. I'm curious if this ever came him up
Speaker 1: again in another Godzilla film, or if they decided not to.
Speaker 1: I mean, I thought it would look it fit perfectly
Speaker 1: in this film. I'm not sure if other Godzilla directors
Speaker 1: would have liked it. Yeah, I mean, if Godzilla can fly,
Speaker 1: that kind of changes the whole equation. I'm sure there
Speaker 1: have been other movies where he flies. I have a
Speaker 1: vague tingling recollection that that happens in something else, but
Speaker 1: it's certainly not all of them now Ultimately there it's
Speaker 1: one of those sequences where it involves the human characters
Speaker 1: trying to set some kind of technological trap for the monster.
Speaker 1: They're trying to electrocute Hetera because the scientists character figures
Speaker 1: out that electricity drives out the sludge and this is
Speaker 1: the only way it can be defeated. And if they're
Speaker 1: not able to defeat it with these big electrodes, uh,
Speaker 1: then it will get too big for even Godzilla to handle,
Speaker 1: and then it will just take over the world. Right also, oxygen,
Speaker 1: so they bombit with oxygen from helicopters a little bit.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I remember that. But like we were saying, ultimately,
Speaker 1: the military is not very good at uphold they're part
Speaker 1: of the deal, and Godzilla kind of has to do
Speaker 1: everything for them, and Godzilla like size and shrugs his shoulders,
Speaker 1: like really, guys. But but eventually Godzilla pairs his radiation
Speaker 1: radiation breath with the giant electrodes, and of course you
Speaker 1: know who wins in the end, but you know, it's
Speaker 1: not hard to guess. But uh, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: great stuff along the way. One of my favorite parts
Speaker 1: was when Godzilla it almost seems like the good guys
Speaker 1: think they have defeated the monster like twice already, but
Speaker 1: it keeps coming back, and so Godzilla, having defeated it
Speaker 1: another time, starts sort of reaching into the sludge corpse
Speaker 1: body and just like ripping out guts and throwing them
Speaker 1: all over the place, like you know, you get some guts,
Speaker 1: and you get some guts, and all the bits of
Speaker 1: guts all dry out in the electric field, and and
Speaker 1: I thought that part was great. Yeah, just breath blast
Speaker 1: the whole field afterwards, and then it's done. So I
Speaker 1: don't know, if you notice the same thing I did.
Speaker 1: It's possible I'm mistaken about this. But did the movie
Speaker 1: show a very brief flash of that that famous woodblock
Speaker 1: the great Wave off Kinagaua for a second at the end?
Speaker 1: It did? And then I think it had it added
Speaker 1: the text like will it happen again? Yeah, So I wondered,
Speaker 1: did you know what to make of that? Like why
Speaker 1: the great wave? In particular? I believe this is a
Speaker 1: This is a piece of art we've discussed in the
Speaker 1: show before. We think we talked about it on a
Speaker 1: stuff to Well your Mind episode about rogue waves, because
Speaker 1: but I believe to depict a rogue wave right right? Um?
Speaker 1: And uh I was. I was looking up for like
Speaker 1: a nice concise description of what this what this picture is,
Speaker 1: and what it perhaps means. And I found one at
Speaker 1: the Yale University Art Gallery. Um, and this is this
Speaker 1: is what they they have written there. Quote. At first glance,
Speaker 1: snow capped Mount Fuji looks calm in the background of
Speaker 1: this print, far from the boats and towering waves, But
Speaker 1: the mountain is slightly obscured by a boat whose sharp,
Speaker 1: sickle like tip threatens to lop off Mount Fujie's peak,
Speaker 1: and recent scholars suggests that this print has political implications.
Speaker 1: Mount Fuji, a symbol of Japan, is menaced by boats
Speaker 1: and overpowering waves, both of which may imply a fear
Speaker 1: of foreign powers encroaching on Japanese shores. Indeed, in eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty three, roughly twenty years after this print was made,
Speaker 1: the American commodore Matthew Perry led a United States Navy
Speaker 1: fleet into the Tokyo Harbor and forcibly open Japan to trade.
Speaker 1: So I think we might interpret this as as is,
Speaker 1: meaning like pollution is the next great wave, or it
Speaker 1: is the current great wave, and it is threatening Japan,
Speaker 1: and and you know, can we stop it? Can we
Speaker 1: rise up against? Like what is our what what is
Speaker 1: our resolve against this threat? And god Zilla himself embodies
Speaker 1: that resolve. Yeah, I believe so. By the way, there
Speaker 1: are multiple versions. You know, this is a very popular
Speaker 1: piece of art, so there's been various reinterpretations and parodies
Speaker 1: of it over time. If you just do a quick
Speaker 1: goal image search for the Great Wave off kind of
Speaker 1: Gawa Godzilla, you will find depictions of Godzilla battling the wave. Literally,
Speaker 1: um depictions of Godzilla as the Wave. It's pretty fun.
Speaker 1: That's good, all right? Well should we wrap it up there? Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and close the book on this one. Now.
Speaker 1: If you're wondering, though, where can I watch Godzilla Versus Hetera? Uh?
Speaker 1: If you if you subscribe to HBO Max, you can
Speaker 1: find it in the TCM collection there, which is where
Speaker 1: we watched it in really just glorious quality. But you
Speaker 1: can also pick it up in various other formats including
Speaker 1: Blu ray and if you want to go for something special, uh,
Speaker 1: pick up pick it up as part of the Criterion
Speaker 1: Collection box set Godzilla the Showa era Films through. So yes,
Speaker 1: I think this marks the first weird house cinema film
Speaker 1: that is also in the Criterion Collection. Oh, I'm not
Speaker 1: so sure about that. Didn't there a criterion of Split Second? What?
Speaker 1: What about Robot Shocks? Not yet? Used to believe? I
Speaker 1: think that I could be right. I think this is
Speaker 1: their first Criterion colley because I don't think Mad Love
Speaker 1: is in the Criterion Collection and transfers to Return of
Speaker 1: Jack Death not yet, not yet? All right, Well, I
Speaker 1: gotta say honestly, this is one of the most enjoyable
Speaker 1: Godzilla movies I've ever seen. It's it's kind of notorious. Actually,
Speaker 1: if you look at you know, lists of people ranking
Speaker 1: the best Godzilla films, it does not usually make the
Speaker 1: top tier, but I disagree. I would put it right
Speaker 1: up there with the best. Yeah, it's pleasant to watch,
Speaker 1: So if you if you're looking for a Godzilla film,
Speaker 1: give this one your consideration. Alright, so we're wrapping it
Speaker 1: up here. As always, you can catch Weird House Cinema
Speaker 1: every Friday, and the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. Uh,
Speaker 1: you can find that feed wherever you get your podcast,
Speaker 1: but if you want to get to it quickly, you
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Speaker 1: It's just you know, just for fun um. But the
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Speaker 1: just simply to rate, review and subscribe wherever you have
Speaker 1: the power to do so huge things as always to
Speaker 1: our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would
Speaker 1: like to get in touch with us with feedback on
Speaker 1: this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for
Speaker 1: the future, or just to say hello, you can email
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