Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 1: We have a new episode of Weird House Cinema coming
Speaker 1: out this week that is going to feature Godzilla, So
Speaker 1: we are going to explore one of our past episodes today.
Speaker 1: This is an episode that originally published seven sixteen, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one. It is on the a really great Godzilla picture,
Speaker 1: Godzilla Versus Hetera from nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Godzilla time on the podcast.
Speaker 3: But maybe at Godzilla you're a little bit less familiar
Speaker 3: with one that was new to me as of this week.
Speaker 3: Today we are doing the Godzilla picture that was too
Speaker 3: hot for Toho, the Godzilla film that is too rat
Speaker 3: it's too dangerous, it must be stopped. It's Godzilla versus Hetera.
Speaker 1: Yes, Godzilla versus Hetera, one I had never seen before.
Speaker 1: And I think you know, I've seen a fair number
Speaker 1: of Godzilla films over time, and I think I tend
Speaker 1: to have watched the ones that were either on TBS,
Speaker 1: back in the day they would show me in like
Speaker 1: the Afternoon when I was a kid, or ones that
Speaker 1: were featured on Mystery Science Theater three thousand later on.
Speaker 1: But there, of course have been tons of Godzilla films
Speaker 1: over the years, and this is one that simply fell
Speaker 1: through the cracks for me. I did not I did
Speaker 1: not 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.
Speaker 3: There.
Speaker 1: Well, let's do that one. It's the easiest one for
Speaker 1: me to see. And I'm so glad I did.
Speaker 3: The other option we were looking at. It's funny because
Speaker 3: the two movies have a kind of similar premise. The
Speaker 3: other one we were looking at was The Space of Me,
Speaker 3: which does not have Godzilla in it. It's a Kaiju
Speaker 3: movie about an alien microbe that lands on an island
Speaker 3: in the South Pacific and there it transforms some examples
Speaker 3: of local wildlife into giant monsters. I think it makes
Speaker 3: a big squid and a big crab and one other
Speaker 3: thing I don't recall, but in this movie we also
Speaker 3: have an alien microbe I think, coming from a gaseous
Speaker 3: nebula or a speculated by one character later on, from
Speaker 3: a planet covered in sludge, a sledgelike planet, dark sledgie planet,
Speaker 3: dark sluedgy planet that has come to Earth. And whereas
Speaker 3: many aliens would say, take me to your leader, this
Speaker 3: one says, take me to your smokestacks. I need to
Speaker 3: get high.
Speaker 1: Take me to your pollution. Yes. And the one character
Speaker 1: even says, wasn't this good? It can eat up our pollution?
Speaker 1: Like no, it's just too destructive, that's right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So this is a pollution monster that huffs airborne
Speaker 3: particulates straight out of smoke stacks. He is a broomstone
Speaker 3: beast from space that exudes sulfurous gas and acid and
Speaker 3: poison and is bad news all around.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So one thing about this film is this, First
Speaker 1: of all, this film is very much a Kaiju versus film,
Speaker 1: So it is going to largely hit the same plot
Speaker 1: points you're familiar with. Some new creature presents a threat
Speaker 1: to humanity. An established veteran, in this case, Godzilla, shows
Speaker 1: up to battle it. Human characters watch on as battle proceeds.
Speaker 1: You know, your good guy Monster is going to be
Speaker 1: on the ropes for a little bit, but it's going
Speaker 1: to have a big comeback and eventually win the day.
Speaker 1: So Godzilla versus Heter is going to give you all
Speaker 1: of those points. But there's so much additional weirdness here.
Speaker 1: There's so much visual flare in this film. I feel
Speaker 1: like it really stands apart from pretty much all the
Speaker 1: other Kaiju films that I've seen. I'm actually I seriously
Speaker 1: entertained putting it above Shin Godzilla is my favorite Godzilla movie.
Speaker 3: I was thinking about the same thing. This is a
Speaker 3: new favorite for me, definitely my top three now, and
Speaker 3: much like you, I also have Shin Godzilla near the
Speaker 3: top of the heap. But mainly it's the reason I
Speaker 3: was so enthralled by this movie was its novelty. Having
Speaker 3: seen many Kaiju movies, it has a lot of the
Speaker 3: familiar elements, and in fact, I would say the familiar
Speaker 3: elements are actually the weakest part of this movie as
Speaker 3: far as the big monster meet slam goes. I mean,
Speaker 3: there is a you know, extended thirty minute beat down
Speaker 3: at the end of the movie that is Okay, it's
Speaker 3: not one of the best, but it's also not one
Speaker 3: of the worst. But it is the other elements of
Speaker 3: this movie that really make it an absolute standout, without
Speaker 3: a doubt, the most bizarre Godzilla movie I've ever seen
Speaker 3: in that this movie believes it is art. Yes, absolutely, no, yeah,
Speaker 3: no question about this. It thinks it's art and it's
Speaker 3: making a statement and maybe it's going to change the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's probably the best example of an avant garde
Speaker 1: Godzilla film, and that's one of the reasons why it's
Speaker 1: so watchable. It's also one of the reasons that that
Speaker 1: its director was criticized back in the day and indeed
Speaker 1: never directed another Godzilla film. You'll see his directorial credit
Speaker 1: IMDb for some other Godzilla films, but that's because they
Speaker 1: utilized footage from previous films in those pictures.
Speaker 3: That's right. So the director was Yoshimitsubeno, and you will
Speaker 3: frequently see references to this as the movie that ended
Speaker 3: his Godzilla career. You know, he could have gone on
Speaker 3: to do all kinds of Godzilla stuff, but like I
Speaker 3: said at the beginning, this was just too hot for Toho.
Speaker 3: It was too weird. It was too radical. It was
Speaker 3: rocking the boat. You can't make movies like this.
Speaker 1: Man, Yeah, exactly. There are a lot of stories about
Speaker 1: how producer Tomoyuki Tanaka responded to this. There's at least
Speaker 1: one story in which he said, you've ruined Godzilla and
Speaker 1: there was a lot of anger and I was read.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of There's a great blog post about
Speaker 1: this from Patrick Galvin at Toho Kingdom dot com. You
Speaker 1: can look it up. He has a She Meets Subano
Speaker 1: in memoriam posts that goes through a lot of this
Speaker 1: and talks about his achievements, his you know what he
Speaker 1: gave the Godzilla franchise, but then also how it was
Speaker 1: received at the time. So, yeah, this is a movie
Speaker 1: that was maybe ahead of its time, and I think
Speaker 1: stands the test of time because it is doing things differently.
Speaker 3: So what is it doing differently? I could list a
Speaker 3: number of things. One thing I will say is the
Speaker 3: esthetic differences. It's much more free form than any other
Speaker 3: Godzilla movie I've ever seen in that it inserts things
Speaker 3: that are outside the normal stream of plot development. So
Speaker 3: it has musical numbers, it has animated segments. They're short,
Speaker 3: but there's several of them throughout the movie, and they
Speaker 3: were some of my favorite parts because they're beautiful animation.
Speaker 3: It's almost like a Godzilla movie with elements of like
Speaker 3: the Yellow Submarine movie and another sort of late sixties
Speaker 3: psychedelic films that involved a lot of exciting visuals with
Speaker 3: abstract colors and dancing in a club.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And also yeah, there's also a huge cultural element
Speaker 1: to this as well. There's a there's a sense of
Speaker 1: the youth movement and the youth culture and and the
Speaker 1: and and their rise and their importance and and their
Speaker 1: part in the fight. Generally, in a kaiju movie, who
Speaker 1: do you see fighting the kaiju? Who's raising arms against
Speaker 1: the kaiju? It is the military, right.
Speaker 3: The authorities?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, and in this we see the authorities playing
Speaker 1: a part but also failing in ways, and it's it's
Speaker 1: the youth who are who are leading the charge at
Speaker 1: one point.
Speaker 3: Yes, in this movie. Ultimately, I think the authorities are
Speaker 3: portrayed as almost entirely incompetent, that like, they are not
Speaker 3: the ones preserving order. Ultimately, it's Godzilla who's the one
Speaker 3: who is preserving order? And Godzilla I was trying to
Speaker 3: think about what Godzilla represents in this movie, because I
Speaker 3: think you can make a case that a lot of
Speaker 3: the Godzilla films have a I mean, you know, it's
Speaker 3: it's hard to say they have a very clear message.
Speaker 3: But to the extent that there is a message in them,
Speaker 3: it's a kind of vague environmental one. It's you know,
Speaker 3: that we have done things to the earth, and in
Speaker 3: doing things to the earth, through maybe weapons testing or industry,
Speaker 3: we have upset the natural order and we have unleashed
Speaker 3: forces that are beyond our control. But like I said,
Speaker 3: I think that that critique is in most Godzilla movies
Speaker 3: very buried under the surface, very vague. In this movie,
Speaker 3: it's the opposite. It's not only overt, it's extremely overt.
Speaker 3: They are screaming in your face with an environmental message. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they definitely lean into the idea that Godzilla is
Speaker 1: is not only it's not just a big monster for kids,
Speaker 1: so they acknowledge that, but he is also something of
Speaker 1: unembodiment of the nations of or a culture's will, you know,
Speaker 1: Like like Godzilla represents in a sense humanity struggle against pollution,
Speaker 1: against destructive elements of the world, and the question of
Speaker 1: can Godzilla defeat this enemy is ultimately a question of
Speaker 1: whether we can, whether we have the public will to
Speaker 1: confront it.
Speaker 3: That's another transition I would say. Originally, Godzilla is sort
Speaker 3: of the manifestation of us having unleashed forces beyond our
Speaker 3: control by our upsetting of the natural order. In this movie,
Speaker 3: he is the thing that fights back against the monster
Speaker 3: created by industrial pollution. Yeah, now I have a question.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you know the answer to this.
Speaker 3: One of the fun things we see with the Godzilla
Speaker 3: arc is that in the very first Toho Godzilla movie,
Speaker 3: Godzilla is the antagonist of the film, like, you know,
Speaker 3: this is a dangerous, scary, dark monster that brings great destruction.
Speaker 3: But by the later films, Godzilla is often sort of
Speaker 3: the hero of the film, is portrayed as a force
Speaker 3: who is inherently dangerous, but which ultimately fights against a
Speaker 3: force that is even more threatening or even more malevolent.
Speaker 3: And that's the case in this movie. So I wonder,
Speaker 3: like how exactly that arc develop and is that the
Speaker 3: case for other movies, Like I've watched some of the
Speaker 3: Gamera movies, where you know, Gamera is doing the same
Speaker 3: thing Godzilla is doing in the In the later movies,
Speaker 3: Gamera is good and he's fighting against the bad monsters.
Speaker 3: Was that always the case with Gamera or did Gamera
Speaker 3: start as bad like Godzilla did?
Speaker 1: If memory serves, Gamera followed the exact same track. Guy
Speaker 1: Gamera in the first film is a threat that has
Speaker 1: to be overcome and launched into space, I think ultimately,
Speaker 1: and this would be This would be for a more
Speaker 1: in depth discussion later, perhaps drawing on the work of
Speaker 1: people who've 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, and 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 I wonder how you know, in a loose sense anyway,
Speaker 1: Godzilla is a deity. He exists not in the the
Speaker 1: the myth realm of you know of say, like the
Speaker 1: ancient world or even modern religion. But he's in the
Speaker 1: film myth world and is therefore not quite the same
Speaker 1: as our traditional ideas of deity, but perhaps subject to
Speaker 1: some of the same changes in the way we perceive him.
Speaker 3: Well, maybe Before we go on any further, we should
Speaker 3: hit some trailer audio.
Speaker 1: All right, let's have it. This, I believe is from
Speaker 1: the English trailer for Godzilla Versta.
Speaker 4: Out of the Polis of Waters. It came to become
Speaker 4: the most fearful menace that ever threatens manki growing ever
Speaker 4: more deadly on smug Only one course there stand up
Speaker 4: towards over powering evil. Nothing man can do can stop
Speaker 4: the smug Monster and Godzilla save the earth from this
Speaker 4: mastodon of destruction.
Speaker 1: All right, sounds good to me, and we should, of
Speaker 1: course note that in the US, this I think was
Speaker 1: originally released as Godzilla versus the Smog Monster.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, though, from what I understand in the movie,
Speaker 3: the monster is not made of smog. The monster is
Speaker 3: made mostly of waterborne pollutants and then comes out onto
Speaker 3: land to huff the smog.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's made out of like sludge and minerals and all.
Speaker 1: A quick quick bit of trivia. In Germany, this film
Speaker 1: was released as Frankenstein's Battle against the Devil's Monster.
Speaker 3: That doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1: This was new to me, but apparently in the German
Speaker 1: release of Godzilla films, it was often explained that doctor
Speaker 1: Victor Frankenstein created the monsters that Godzilla fights, and it
Speaker 1: just had to do with with how they were releasing
Speaker 1: them at the time, so you had multiple toh films.
Speaker 1: Toho did some Frankenstein films about drink Giant Frankenstein's and
Speaker 1: I checked. It's okay if I called them Frankenstein's. I
Speaker 1: checked with the Frankenstein's monster on this. But this sort
Speaker 1: of set the precedent for how you would release a
Speaker 1: big monster movie in Germany.
Speaker 3: I remember reading a few weeks ago about a movie
Speaker 3: I'd never heard of before, that is it is directly
Speaker 3: a Frankenstein kaishuvy, not just called Frankenstein. It's like about
Speaker 3: now that I'm about to say this, this really sounds wrong,
Speaker 3: but I think what it is is a Nazi scientist
Speaker 3: takes Frankenstein's brain to Japan for study and there it
Speaker 3: gets it somehow gets turned into a giant monster.
Speaker 1: Yep, I believe that's right.
Speaker 3: Okay, strange, yeah, right, Maybe.
Speaker 1: We'll come back to it. We were talking about doing
Speaker 1: some Frankenstein films eventually.
Speaker 3: All right, I guess we should come back to talk
Speaker 3: about the director of Godzilla versus Hetera, who was again
Speaker 3: and Yoshimtsubano.
Speaker 1: Yes, director, also co writer. He lived nineteen thirty one
Speaker 1: through twenty seventeen. This was his first and only Godzilla movie. Again,
Speaker 1: you'll see him credited on the Gigan and the Megalon movies,
Speaker 1: but that's just because they utilize older footage. He previously
Speaker 1: served as assistant director and second assistant director on some
Speaker 1: really notable Akira Kurosawa pictures, including Throne of Blood in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty seven that's that wonderful Samurai Macbeth movie, and
Speaker 1: also The Hidden Fortress in nineteen fifty eight, which I
Speaker 1: think is often cited as one of George Lucas's influences
Speaker 1: in the creation of the original Star Wars picture.
Speaker 3: Both great films.
Speaker 1: Yes, I've also read that Bano was was very much
Speaker 1: a part of the Toho film system. So he came
Speaker 1: up in Toho and he stood under several notable Toho directors.
Speaker 3: I believe his grip on this film is strong, because
Speaker 3: unlike some other Kaiju films, this is one in which
Speaker 3: I detect not just a Toho house style, but I
Speaker 3: feel a really strong, bold, individual director's vision guiding the
Speaker 3: whole thing.
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, and I think It's why at the time
Speaker 1: there seems to have been tension with producer Tanaka over this.
Speaker 1: It seems like he he fell out of good graces
Speaker 1: with Toho and ultimately went on to be more of
Speaker 1: a producer. He was, but was EP on the twenty
Speaker 1: fourteen American Godzilla movie, and I believe he's credited even
Speaker 1: though he's occurred after his death. I think he's credited
Speaker 1: on Godzilla King of the Monsters from twenty nineteen and
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one's Godzilla versus calng But yeah, I think
Speaker 1: this is the reason why he was controversial at the
Speaker 1: time but is memorable today. You know, there have been
Speaker 1: so many Godzilla films, how many of them are really
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. And it's different than a lot of the
Speaker 3: other best ones, because I would say a lot of
Speaker 3: the other best Godzilla movies, apart from the first one,
Speaker 3: the first one is very dark and gloomy. A lot
Speaker 3: of the other best ones are very bright and lively
Speaker 3: and sort of fast moving and fun. This one is
Speaker 3: also overall dark and gloomy, but it's excellently dark and gloomy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, all right. So there was another writer on this,
Speaker 1: Takeishi Kimura, who lived nineteen twelve through nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 1: A studio writer for Toho, he was involved in more
Speaker 1: than thirty films, including some really notable ones including Rodin
Speaker 1: the Mysterians. Oh, he was the writer of Matango.
Speaker 3: Allegedly he believed this was his finest work.
Speaker 1: It is a fine work. We may have to come
Speaker 1: back to Matango. This is about an island where where
Speaker 1: a fungal infection turns humans into my connid mutations. It's
Speaker 1: pretty fabulous, So yes, Mattango's worth checking out. Kimura also
Speaker 1: worked on Frankenstein Versus Beragon. This was a giant Frankenstein
Speaker 1: movie from Toho, The War of the Gargantuans, King Kong
Speaker 1: Escapes Destroy All Monsters, and and of course this wonderful
Speaker 1: Godzilla film.
Speaker 3: Takeshi Kimura is interesting because I was finding a lot
Speaker 3: of very tantalizing biographical details about him online, but not
Speaker 3: in very solid looking sources, and I couldn't find them
Speaker 3: backed up anywhere that looked more solid, So frustratingly, I
Speaker 3: can't report a lot about him with confidence, but if,
Speaker 3: for example, some of the like user submitted biographies I've
Speaker 3: found of him on various sites have any truth to them.
Speaker 3: He was a strange and interesting figure. He was allegedly
Speaker 3: known for writing Toho monster movies with a more gloomy
Speaker 3: outlook and serious political themes, as opposed to the happy,
Speaker 3: go lucky beatdowns of other you know, repeat Kaiju screenwriters.
Speaker 1: Well, as we turned to the cast here, let's go
Speaker 1: right to the beat down. We're going to talk about
Speaker 1: the human characters played by human actors, but let's start
Speaker 1: with the monsters.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, So here's something about this movie. Despite the
Speaker 3: fact that it has a much darker tone, the Godzilla
Speaker 3: in this movie is kind of sassy. I really detect
Speaker 3: a sense of humor in Godzilla's gestures and expressions in
Speaker 3: this film. There's even a really funny moment later on
Speaker 3: where the military is trying to do something to defeat
Speaker 3: the opposing monster and fails, and Godzilla does almost kind
Speaker 3: of a shrug, like, oh boy, do I have to
Speaker 3: do everything myself?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, there is a little bit of sas. He's
Speaker 1: a bit of a show boat at times. I mean,
Speaker 1: he's on the ropes a lot in this, but he
Speaker 1: shows he's a little bit of a showboat in a
Speaker 1: few scenes, and he also takes some really inventive bumps,
Speaker 1: like he'll get shot with a laser and do a
Speaker 1: complete front flip. So there are times like that where
Speaker 1: I was really admiring the performance. And indeed the performer
Speaker 1: here is Haruo Nakajima, who lived nineteen twenty nine through
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen. He is kind of an all star of
Speaker 1: the Godzilla franchise. He played Godzilla in twelve consecutive films.
Speaker 1: He was also in Mathra in the War of the
Speaker 1: Gargantua's as well as Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. Most people
Speaker 1: forget that in original cut of that the Seven Samurai
Speaker 1: battled a giant monster. No, not really, but he played
Speaker 1: a non monster in that. But generally he's considered a
Speaker 1: legend of the rubber monster suit, the rubber suit actor
Speaker 1: par excellence.
Speaker 3: I haven't seen Mosra in a long time, but I
Speaker 3: remember that one is known for being one of the
Speaker 3: best of the meat slams. It's like a really great
Speaker 3: monster throwdown.
Speaker 1: Now, the enemy in this is played by Kimpachiro Satsuma,
Speaker 1: who was born in nineteen forty seven, and as of
Speaker 1: this recording is still alive. 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 from nineteen eighty four through nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 3: Seeing those dates though, did make me a little bit
Speaker 3: sag with sadness as I imagine the transition from Godzilla
Speaker 3: and his monster enemies being a person in a suit
Speaker 3: to being a CGI creation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you got to love love the suit,
Speaker 1: and you know there there. I think there have been
Speaker 1: a whole documentaries about about what was required of these gentlemen
Speaker 1: because these were very physical performances. They involve suits that
Speaker 1: were often not very well ventilated and you're, you know,
Speaker 1: you're you're sweating profusely inside them. And as we mentioned,
Speaker 1: like with Godzilla, there's a certain it's not just a
Speaker 1: stammer around and smash a building. There's a certain physicality
Speaker 1: to the performance that really shines through. You have to
Speaker 1: portray more than just brute lizard strength or anything like that.
Speaker 1: There is a character there that the actor is portraying.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's get into the human characters. Now,
Speaker 1: most most of these characters are going to be members
Speaker 1: of the Yano family, Theyano family being the key family
Speaker 1: of humans. And let's start with the child. The boy.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: This is here Yuki Kawasi playing Kenyano and he was
Speaker 1: This actor was born in nineteen sixty four. Child actor
Speaker 1: was also I think he showed up in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: three's Godzilla versus Megalon as well, and he wasn't in much,
Speaker 1: but he was in a TV series called Sorrow Sorrow
Speaker 1: Nu Gundan, which I believe is Army of the Apes
Speaker 1: if you translated. This was eventually cut and released as
Speaker 1: a film in the US by Sandy Frank as Time
Speaker 1: of the Apes Science Theater three thousand. Viewers will be
Speaker 1: familiar with this film, which is a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: But I have never had the chance to watch the
Speaker 1: original TV series, but there's a lot of it and
Speaker 1: it has huge fans in Japan. People still follow it,
Speaker 1: and it seems like there's a lot more like what
Speaker 1: you see in Time of the Apes is very much
Speaker 1: a compressed plot line. There's apparently a lot more going on.
Speaker 1: There's a robot in it, I would love to know more,
Speaker 1: and I'd love to hear from anyone who's watched it
Speaker 1: in full. I don't think it's been really widely available
Speaker 1: on DVD or Blu Ray or even like you know,
Speaker 1: streaming services outside of Japan.
Speaker 3: Now, Rob, I have a Kaiju question. Maybe you can
Speaker 3: shed some light on this for me. Okay, In Godzilla
Speaker 3: versus heter this young boy Ken has a kind of
Speaker 3: psychic connection with the monsters. He has apocalyptic visions of
Speaker 3: the smog creature Hetera, and he has and he sort
Speaker 3: of has omens about when Godzilla will appear to save
Speaker 3: the day. So and this is not the only film
Speaker 3: where there is some kind of psychic or at least
Speaker 3: an emotional bond between the Kaiju monster and a young child.
Speaker 3: That's often true in like the Gamera movies. And do
Speaker 3: you know is there a reason for this recurring theme.
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's one of those things that is
Speaker 1: often with gammers, like Gamma is a friend of children,
Speaker 1: you know, there is this innate connection. I don't think
Speaker 1: I have personally seen a Kaiju film other than this
Speaker 1: one where it's described as an over psychic link, a
Speaker 1: telepathic link between monster and child. Like there is some
Speaker 1: sort of sacred bond there. I feel like it's something,
Speaker 1: and I could be wrong on this because I'm not
Speaker 1: a Kaiju movie expert or a Godzilla expert or anything,
Speaker 1: but I feel like this. In this case, our screenwriters said, well,
Speaker 1: obviously 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.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, I mean, maybe it could just be that
Speaker 3: you need to have some kind of demonstration of an
Speaker 3: emotional connection between the monster and the human characters, and
Speaker 3: maybe it's just natural to assume that only a child
Speaker 3: has the moral purity to have that connection with the
Speaker 3: big beast.
Speaker 1: Now, if we do go back to that idea of
Speaker 1: Godzilla as an actual deity, it is interesting the use
Speaker 1: of in this film. I don't know if you notice
Speaker 1: some of these details, but first of all, the boy
Speaker 1: Ken he has toy Godzilla's and he has something like
Speaker 1: a Godzilla shrine set up, and this is kind of
Speaker 1: lightly juxtaposed with the casual use of tiny amulets, and
Speaker 1: you know, visions of I think like the like the
Speaker 1: Buddha that are arranged around the television sets and other
Speaker 1: scenes yes, yes, So I don't know how much what
Speaker 1: they're how much they're really trying to say with that,
Speaker 1: but I feel like if one wants to really chew
Speaker 1: on the matter, you can definitely start making those connections.
Speaker 3: I love the fact that Ken is playing with Godzilla
Speaker 3: dolls in this movie because it's like that scene in
Speaker 3: Halloween three where Tom Atkins is sitting at the bar
Speaker 3: and he's watching the first Halloween movie on a TV.
Speaker 1: That's pretty good. All right, Let's move on to some
Speaker 1: of these other human characters. So the matriarch of the
Speaker 1: Yano family is is Toshi Yano, played by Toshi Kimura.
Speaker 1: She acted in such pictures as sort of The Beast
Speaker 1: Revenge and The Three Outlass Samurai. And then Akira Yamauchi
Speaker 1: plays doctor Toru Yano, the patriarch of the family. He
Speaker 1: lived nineteen twenty one through nineteen ninety three. This seems
Speaker 1: to be his biggest role, but was He also had
Speaker 1: had a part in Lone Wolf and Cub Baby cart
Speaker 1: in the Land of Demons from nineteen seventy one. This
Speaker 1: is of course a classic of the genre and was
Speaker 1: also a major inspiration on the Mandalorian TV series.
Speaker 3: So he plays the scientist character. Usually in these movies
Speaker 3: you need at least one scientist character who's there to
Speaker 3: figure out the nature of the new threat. And so
Speaker 3: he's some kind of biologist who has an early encounter
Speaker 3: with the hetero beast in the water and ends up
Speaker 3: like with a big sulfuric acid burn on his face.
Speaker 3: And there's a very funny scene later on where he's,
Speaker 3: you know, he's trying to solve the problem and he's
Speaker 3: lying awake and his wife comes in and says something
Speaker 3: like she's like, stop thinking about hetero and go to bed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he spends a lot of the picture of kind
Speaker 1: of bed ridden and recovering from his injuries.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right there.
Speaker 1: Well, I also have a couple of characters who are
Speaker 1: not members of the Yano family but are very close
Speaker 1: with them. The first of all is the care director
Speaker 1: Yukio Kuchi, played by Toshio Shiba, and this is the Karen,
Speaker 1: the youth with the really captivating eyes.
Speaker 3: I think Yukio is supposed to be Toshi's brother, the
Speaker 3: kin's mother's brother, so ken Ken's uncle.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, that was kind of lost on me,
Speaker 1: I guess.
Speaker 3: But yeah, But otherwise He's just like a young guy
Speaker 3: who hangs out with the family and then later goes
Speaker 3: to a psychedelic nightclub.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So Shiba had a long TV and film career,
Speaker 1: including the nineteen seventy one Kaiju movie Mirror Man, and
Speaker 1: I think he's still active. He was born in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty seven.
Speaker 3: He has amazingly distinctive eyes. He's one of those people
Speaker 3: who you've probably had this experience before where I saw
Speaker 3: him and I was like, oh, he looks so familiar.
Speaker 3: What have I seen him in before? And I looked
Speaker 3: and I couldn't find anything. So I think maybe I've
Speaker 3: never seen him in anything before. He just has such
Speaker 3: a distinctive look that he seemed familiar.
Speaker 1: Yeah, same, all right. And then we also have a
Speaker 1: character by the name of Miki Fuji Nomiya. This played
Speaker 1: by the singer Kiki O Maari. This is I think
Speaker 1: her only film role, but she does seem to have
Speaker 1: had a much richer career as a singer, and it
Speaker 1: looks like she's still active, at least on Japanese language
Speaker 1: social media. She seems to have a following as being
Speaker 1: I mean, it's kind of like, I guess cinematically it's
Speaker 1: kind of like having been a Bond girl if you
Speaker 1: were a Godzilla girl. I think there's actually a documentary
Speaker 1: about like Godzilla Girls, and she's featured in it.
Speaker 3: She has a fabulous musical number in this There are
Speaker 3: multiple musical numbers in this movie.
Speaker 1: Actually, yeah, But she has a lot of style. She
Speaker 1: brings a style and hypnis to the film that certainly
Speaker 1: stands the test of time. And finally, I'm gonna mention
Speaker 1: the composer is Richiro Manabi who lived nineteen twenty four
Speaker 1: through twenty fifteen. He has one hundred and fourteen score
Speaker 1: credits on IMDb. I'm not sure if he's responsible though
Speaker 1: for the opening music. I guess he is. We'll get
Speaker 1: to that in a minute. But has really really nice
Speaker 1: opening music, a really nice theme song they keep really
Speaker 1: turning to. It's really nice. It's just great. I did
Speaker 1: read that Guy Hemric did the lyrics for the English version.
Speaker 1: I have not heard that because the version we watched
Speaker 1: is the one on HBO Max that's up there with
Speaker 1: the TCM collection and it is in the original Japanese
Speaker 1: with subtitles. But I guess there was an English language
Speaker 1: version of it, like they dubbed it for release in
Speaker 1: the States, and Himrick is the guy who did a
Speaker 1: lot of lyrics for beach movies back in the day,
Speaker 1: stuff like Beach Blanket Bingo and muscle beach parties. So
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna guess here, but I'm I'm guessing that
Speaker 1: his lyrics did not retain the strong and dire environmental
Speaker 1: message that we find in the actual Japanese lyrics.
Speaker 3: Maybe not the beach movies, the bikini movie the peak
Speaker 3: of human artistic achievement.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's get in the plot a bit here.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, one thing this movie really does is
Speaker 3: it sticks to its themes. It hits you right with
Speaker 3: them at the outset, and then it does not give up.
Speaker 3: So you start with, of course, as always, the classic
Speaker 3: glorious Toho logo. And then very first thing you see smokestacks, Yeah,
Speaker 3: billowing clouds of soot, rushing water slicked with oil and
Speaker 3: green foam. The message is clear, the earth is disgusting,
Speaker 3: The earth is just ruined. And then and then you
Speaker 3: see water and what's this what's coming out of the water?
Speaker 3: Is it a slimy, cancerous garbage bag with red crocodile eyes?
Speaker 3: Boiling up to the surface. That's right, you see Hetera
Speaker 3: poking up out of the water right at the top.
Speaker 3: Just no waiting at all.
Speaker 1: Now you don't see all of them though it's sneaking
Speaker 1: at you.
Speaker 3: No, no, much like a crocodile like looking up over
Speaker 3: the top of the water. You just see a kind
Speaker 3: of the pebbled surface of the top of his head
Speaker 3: and the eyes looking out there. And he has these
Speaker 3: vertically oriented red eyes that are very very prominently featured
Speaker 3: throughout this movie in fact, and eyes somehow seem to
Speaker 3: be a theme of the film because remember, like his
Speaker 3: eyes or his power, Godzilla partially defeats him by pulling
Speaker 3: his eyes out and electrocuting them. Yeah, but as soon
Speaker 3: as you see Hetera title card Godzilla versus Hetera, and
Speaker 3: then bam straight to a James Bond style musical introduction. Amazing.
Speaker 3: And when I say James Bond style, I really mean it,
Speaker 3: as in, there's like a glamorous singer doing a theme
Speaker 3: song for the movie over over colorful abstract backgrounds, just
Speaker 3: like in a in a James Bond title sequence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this track, by the way, is called give Back
Speaker 1: the Sun exclamation point, and you can find this on
Speaker 1: whatever your streaming music side of choice happens to be.
Speaker 1: I'll also try to include this embedded on the blog
Speaker 1: post for this episode at Summuta music dot com.
Speaker 3: I had one of those moments where I was watching
Speaker 3: this by myself, but I just wanted to be looking
Speaker 3: around to find somebody else in the room, like are
Speaker 3: you seeing this? Are you seeing the same thing I'm seeing?
Speaker 3: The song is tremendous.
Speaker 1: I loved it, Yeah, but I mean because the lyrics
Speaker 1: are so solid and gloomy, and it's an interesting juxtaposition
Speaker 1: between the tone of the lyrics and the style of
Speaker 1: the song. But then yeah, we have this you know,
Speaker 1: this fabulous you know splash of color behind her as
Speaker 1: she's singing. You know, this is this bond sense of
Speaker 1: of of wonder and it's kind of I guess the
Speaker 1: stuff behind her too, with the kind of like oil lights.
Speaker 1: It's like the the Joshua Light Show, that stuff you
Speaker 1: see in a lot of like psychedelic performances. Uh So
Speaker 1: it's we have a strong opening with with psychedelia and
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: the movie fraug When we talked about frogs in a
Speaker 1: previous episode of Weird House, we talked about the problem
Speaker 1: of eating fake looking garbage, fake looking pollution. And I
Speaker 1: feel like this movie nails its pollution. The pollution looks
Speaker 1: real and yet has a surreal quality to it that
Speaker 1: feels like it is it is art.
Speaker 3: It's disgusting. Yeah, yeah, And oh the lyrics of the song,
Speaker 3: it's all like the birds and the fish they are
Speaker 3: all dead. It's the you know, the Goldfinger song, but
Speaker 3: it's about pollution. And there's a great part where in
Speaker 3: the verse she's just listing off names of chemicals. She's
Speaker 3: singing mercury, cobalt, cadmium, All life is gone. The fields
Speaker 3: in the mountains are silent, and there's like green bubbles
Speaker 3: in the background, and then and then when she gets
Speaker 3: to the line, there's no one left on earth. This
Speaker 3: also ties back to our discussion from frogs, because what
Speaker 3: is the single piece of garbage or litter that conveys
Speaker 3: squalor better than anything else. It is a discarded doll.
Speaker 3: And what do you see here floating in the oil
Speaker 3: in the trash? It is a filthy, discarded doll. Or
Speaker 3: maybe it's a mannequin, but it's a dull manquin humanoid shape.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pir the plastic likeness of the human form
Speaker 1: discarded in the plastic strewn, polluted mess, this patina that
Speaker 1: encompasses our culture.
Speaker 3: Oh and there's a Grandfather clock floating in the imak.
Speaker 1: That's pretty great too.
Speaker 3: It's so good.
Speaker 1: So this movie really comes out strong. A lot of
Speaker 1: Kaiju movies are just about like it doesn't even like
Speaker 1: you just want to skip to the big battle at
Speaker 1: the end, like the big battle in the destruction and
Speaker 1: the monster beat down, that's all that matters. Usually in
Speaker 1: this film, everything else is done to such a high level.
Speaker 1: I feel like you'd be hard pressed to find a
Speaker 1: Godzilla movie or any Kaiju movie that is more interesting
Speaker 1: in its scenes that are not about monsters battling.
Speaker 3: I totally agree. In fact, it was inverted for me.
Speaker 3: The only time in this movie that I did start
Speaker 3: to get a little bored was during the big monster
Speaker 3: fight toward the.
Speaker 1: End, which which does go on a bit long. But
Speaker 1: I'm not even sure that's an appropriate criticism for me
Speaker 1: to make of a giant monster movie.
Speaker 3: But I do just want to reiterate one more time,
Speaker 3: you are correct, this movie passes the fake garbage test.
Speaker 3: It's not like in Frogs, like where you're seeing discarded
Speaker 3: beer cans that look like somebody just drank them.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But from here we go straight into the action, and
Speaker 3: it is what we mentioned before, a young boy playing
Speaker 3: with Godzilla dolls. There's actually pretty interesting framing in this scene.
Speaker 3: As we've said many times, this is a visually interesting movie.
Speaker 3: It's got a well, you know, it's got a good
Speaker 3: sense of mees on sen to be pretentious about it.
Speaker 3: Interesting photography, interesting framing. So this boy is playing with
Speaker 3: Godzilla dolls on an idyllic grassy hillside that overlooks a
Speaker 3: vast urban landscape that's just covered with smokestacks, like a
Speaker 3: valley of thorns. Yeah, but he's got this Godzilla shrine
Speaker 3: and this surrounded flowers and it's beautiful. Uh. And and
Speaker 3: here we get to meet the main human characters, the
Speaker 3: members of the boys family. The boy, of course is Ken,
Speaker 3: and we meet his father, doctor torru Yano, who's a
Speaker 3: marine biologist, his mother Toshi, his uncle or friend Yuki
Speaker 3: oh I think his uncle and h and Ken and
Speaker 3: Yukio are talking at the beginning of Yukio is like, hey,
Speaker 3: is Godzilla your favorite? And Ken says, yes, he's a superman.
Speaker 3: Is he a man?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess you could certainly say he is
Speaker 3: super compared to man. Yeah. But anyway, they're hanging around
Speaker 3: when their unusual fish guy shows up. There's this guy
Speaker 3: named mister Gohey, and as soon as he arrives, they're
Speaker 3: they're like, oh, hello, have you brought us another unusual fish?
Speaker 3: So I think it's because the father is a marine
Speaker 3: biologist that they've got a go to guy for unusual fish.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And uh. And indeed the father what he has
Speaker 1: various jars of strange specimens that he's collected lining the
Speaker 1: wall great set.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so mister Gohey brings in the specimen, which
Speaker 3: looks like a gigantic tadpole. It's like a fist sized tadpole.
Speaker 3: But they conclude that it cannot be a tadpole because
Speaker 3: mister Gohey caught it at the prime spot for shrimp
Speaker 3: fishing in Saruga Bay. And do tadpoles live in the ocean.
Speaker 3: The father says no, they do not, and mister Gohy notes,
Speaker 3: you know, Seruga Bay is getting really really bad, Like
Speaker 3: he didn't catch a single shrimp there this time, and
Speaker 3: it's almost as if the world is sort of is failing,
Speaker 3: is giving out on them. And then meanwhile, once again
Speaker 3: this movie does not make you wait on developing things.
Speaker 3: The family starts watching reports on TV about a giant
Speaker 3: creature that's breaking up ships in Seruga Bay, Like oil
Speaker 3: tankers are coming into the bay and they're crashing into
Speaker 3: each other and then getting snapped in half, almost as
Speaker 3: if something is wanting to like drink the oil out
Speaker 3: of the boats.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the pacing in the film is excellent leading up
Speaker 1: to full monster reveal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so of course it's investigation time. The scientist
Speaker 3: and the scientist father and Ken have to go into
Speaker 3: the bay and see what's going on. So Ken hangs
Speaker 3: out on the rocks by the shore while doctor Yano
Speaker 3: goes into the water to see what's up, and we
Speaker 3: get to see some underwater sequences. One of the things
Speaker 3: I loved. I didn't know what to make of this.
Speaker 3: There's a piece of trash sunk to the bottom of
Speaker 3: Suruga Bay that looks like an artificial swan. Okay, it
Speaker 3: is just there. Meanwhile, Ken up on the Rocks is
Speaker 3: like prying up muscles and he discovers that they're empty
Speaker 3: and the crabs are bleached and dead. So it's just
Speaker 3: this place has been ruined by pollution. Everything's dead. It
Speaker 3: almost reminded me of the recent episodes we did about
Speaker 3: marine mucilage. Yeah, but here I think we get our
Speaker 3: first vision of Hetera. In fact, well it's a combination
Speaker 3: scene because Hetera actually does appear in one form, but
Speaker 3: also Ken is having visions of Hetera that seem to
Speaker 3: go beyond what he is actually doing in this scene.
Speaker 3: Did you understand it the same way?
Speaker 1: Well, there was a lot coming at me at this point.
Speaker 1: I think I was just like generally geeking out at
Speaker 1: how terrific this was visually. But yeah, like the father,
Speaker 1: the doctor is having his own encounter under underwater, and
Speaker 1: then Ken is encountering all this stuff above the water. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's and is this when we start getting the cartoons?
Speaker 3: No, that's not yet, not yet. This scene finishes with
Speaker 3: like Ken being confronted by Hetera and Hetero like flies
Speaker 3: over him and he reaches up with a knife and like, yes,
Speaker 3: part of it.
Speaker 1: Yes, this is the free Willy moment. It's like the
Speaker 1: moment in Free Willy, except imagine that instead of it
Speaker 1: being an orca, it was a sledge monster, and instead
Speaker 1: of touching the creature, you were driving a knife up
Speaker 1: into its sledge belly. That's literally what happens, and it's terrific.
Speaker 3: Ken does a really great sledge belly slicing, and meanwhile,
Speaker 3: doctor Yeno down in the water is severely burned, and
Speaker 3: so we go back to the house and he's got
Speaker 3: bandages all over his face. He has been attacked, and
Speaker 3: we learned a number of things. We learned that Hetera,
Speaker 3: he's already got a name. Now, he's named after a
Speaker 3: type of sludge called hetero. I don't know what hetero means,
Speaker 3: but yeah, soon after this, we get our first cartoon sequence,
Speaker 3: which these cartoons are absolutely wonderful. This one was labeled
Speaker 3: Happy Hetera and it very much reminds me of the
Speaker 3: animation style of The Blue Meanies and the Yellow Submarine movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a real sense of weirdness and whimsy to them,
Speaker 1: and it's just just fat. I wish there were actually
Speaker 1: more animated sequences in this film, because they just do
Speaker 1: a great job of breaking up the pay thing and
Speaker 1: just you know, upping the visual pizazz of the whole feature.
Speaker 3: Now, like the last episode, I don't think from here
Speaker 3: I'm going to do a complete, like scene by scene
Speaker 3: breakdown of the whole movie, but just maybe wanted to
Speaker 3: focus on some things that caught our attention as we
Speaker 3: as we went through. Because you know, this is a
Speaker 3: kaiju movie. You can probably guess basically the structure it takes.
Speaker 3: The hetero monster becomes increasingly menacing, attacks the city until
Speaker 3: eventually Godzilla appears to fight it off, and then it
Speaker 3: comes back even stronger, and now it looks like Godzilla
Speaker 3: and the people are in trouble. But then Godzilla and
Speaker 3: the people come up with ways of fighting back, and
Speaker 3: you know, it's pretty standard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's going to be some buildings screwed up, there's
Speaker 1: going to be some sort of large scale technological approach
Speaker 1: to fighting the monster with mixed results. All that stuff
Speaker 1: is in play. You will not be surprised by anything
Speaker 1: that actually happens from a plot standpoint for the most part,
Speaker 1: but some of the specific choices they make are still amazing.
Speaker 3: One of the main ones I would say is in
Speaker 3: the first big hetera attack scene where he comes out
Speaker 3: of the water and he attacks the lane. He comes
Speaker 3: out of the water to huff smoke stacks. But the
Speaker 3: way they set that scene up is that we see
Speaker 3: I think yukioh is there at the nightclub scene, isn't he?
Speaker 1: Yes, he is, He's he's seems to be having I
Speaker 1: don't know, he is. The scene where he's drinking, like
Speaker 1: he's just down some sort of cocktail or some sort
Speaker 1: of alcohol in the rocks and then he kind of
Speaker 1: looks at the glass like he's he's having mixed thoughts
Speaker 1: about what he just drank. He has a love hate
Speaker 1: relationship with this cocktail, and he's he's dressed in this
Speaker 1: really cool outfit. He's got this wonderful colorful shirt on
Speaker 1: and this weird tie that absolutely love. And meanwhile, the
Speaker 1: nightclub itself is just amazing. You've got more Joshua light
Speaker 1: show stuff going on behind them, You've got this, You've
Speaker 1: got Kikio Omari doing some sort of a performance and
Speaker 1: she's wearing this weird Naiad costume with like nautical details
Speaker 1: on it. It's it's very psychedelic. It's just a really
Speaker 1: cool nightclub sequence. You watch it and you want to
Speaker 1: be there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, love love Love the sequence. It's it's so strange
Speaker 3: and it's so good and and I think they're in
Speaker 3: a way reprising the song from the opening, or at
Speaker 3: least playing on variations of it, because both of them
Speaker 3: have that phrase they keep saying, give it back. I
Speaker 3: think means like give give the natural resources back to
Speaker 3: the earth. But it's so strange because from there we
Speaker 3: go from the song and the nightclub to first of all,
Speaker 3: a heatera prank call to the police station. Did you
Speaker 3: understand this?
Speaker 1: I don't think I quite got to say. This was
Speaker 1: a section with film where I started watching it with
Speaker 1: my son too, so I might have been slightly distracted
Speaker 1: as we talked about what was going on on screen.
Speaker 3: And then so you see a police officer answer the
Speaker 3: phone and say like, hello, who is it? And then
Speaker 3: he's like, that's ridiculous. Hetero is a sea monster. So
Speaker 3: somebody's calling and saying they're hetero maybe oh, or.
Speaker 1: Maybe they're just reporting. They're like, hey, heterroa is attacking
Speaker 1: the city and they're like, no, no, no, I can't be.
Speaker 1: That could be in the sea. Because one of the
Speaker 1: themes here is that heater is going through a transformation
Speaker 1: he's going from an aquatic form to a quadrupedal form.
Speaker 1: Ultimately he goes through a flying phase and then into
Speaker 1: a bipedal form for the final fight that he also
Speaker 1: backtracks to a flying form a little bit at will.
Speaker 3: I think you're right, that must be how to understand it,
Speaker 3: because my version didn't make any sense. I was like,
Speaker 3: what's with this prank call? But yeah, no, I think
Speaker 3: he's saying, somebody reports Hetera being on land and he's like, no, no,
Speaker 3: that can't be because Hetero is in the water. But
Speaker 3: what does Hetera do once Hetera comes on land? Just
Speaker 3: slips its mouth right over the top of a smoke
Speaker 3: stack and starts huffing the gas.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And of course in all of this, Hetera is
Speaker 1: also emitting like sulphuric acid clouds, And either at this
Speaker 1: point or very shortly afterwards, we start seeing scenes of
Speaker 1: it just like obliterating crowds, like turning people to skeletons
Speaker 1: in the street.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, like people literally just turn into piles of
Speaker 3: bone ones. Yeah, but we also watch Hetera like Hetera
Speaker 3: has these tumor looking things, these bumps all over its body.
Speaker 3: Should we describe can we describe? Hetero. I don't even
Speaker 3: know how to say what Hetero looks like. Hetero looks
Speaker 3: like a big ball of garbage with like trailing slime
Speaker 3: tentacles that has these vertically oriented red eyes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he's kind of glistening, kind of sparkling. It's
Speaker 1: really quite an ambitious and effective monster costume, because if
Speaker 1: you see enough Kaiju film, do you realize there are
Speaker 1: only so many things you can really do with a
Speaker 1: human in a suit for or and or the use
Speaker 1: of puppetry, and there are limitations in both areas. And
Speaker 1: I feel like they did a great job with this
Speaker 1: costume and that it's clearly built around a bipedal human performer,
Speaker 1: and yet it does have that feel of some sort
Speaker 1: of a morphous sledge monster.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So this horrible thing is attacking the city. What's
Speaker 3: going to happen? Is Godzilla going to come and save
Speaker 3: the day. Well, we had a hint earlier that he would,
Speaker 3: because I think that Ken was writing an essay for
Speaker 3: school when he said, like, I think this is what
Speaker 3: it is. Ken is writing an essay for the second
Speaker 3: grade for a second grade class, and it says something like,
Speaker 3: you know, the water is polluted with cadmium and mercury
Speaker 3: and all this, and then it ends with saying, I
Speaker 3: bet Godzilla would be mad if he saw.
Speaker 1: This, Yes, and then eventually he has like a visual hallucination,
Speaker 1: like a vision a prophecy, and he's like, Godzilla is coming,
Speaker 1: Godzilla is coming to clear this up.
Speaker 3: That's right, And then what's that? It is? Godzilla? Godzilla
Speaker 3: coming over the horizon and Godzilla and Hetero throwdown. They
Speaker 3: have a great fight, a great fight with very weird energy,
Speaker 3: unlike any other fight I can think of from a
Speaker 3: Godzilla movie that I recall because it's a fight with
Speaker 3: basically no music and very little sound effects. The fight
Speaker 3: later in the movie has a lot more the Godzilla
Speaker 3: squealing sound this one. There are long stretches where it's
Speaker 3: very quiet, this kind of low anticipatory rumble as the
Speaker 3: two monsters just kind of regard one another and stand
Speaker 3: there swaying in the darkness. It's it's very unusual, very effective.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I also like how some of these fight maybe
Speaker 1: all of the fight scenes, but some of the key
Speaker 1: fight scenes take place in like a great field, like
Speaker 1: it feels like a like a battlefield instead of it
Speaker 1: being I don't know, a lot a lot of Kaiju
Speaker 1: movies they end up taking place on a model city
Speaker 1: or around a model city, and I don't know, this
Speaker 1: one just just had a different feel to it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, two monsters, they're like like engines idling almost. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I should say, all this is going on, the
Speaker 3: fight is sizing up between them while they're while Yukioh
Speaker 3: is still in the nightclub, and he's starting to have
Speaker 3: hallucinations of all the dancers in the club wearing fish masks,
Speaker 3: which was just so it's one of multiple parts of
Speaker 3: this movie that reminded me of The Wicker Man. Uh
Speaker 3: so they're they're fish masks here. But then later on
Speaker 3: in the movie, all the young people they decide, they're like, well,
Speaker 3: Hetera's here, and you know, the earth is so polluted,
Speaker 3: we're basically near the end of human civilization anyway, so
Speaker 3: let's just go have a big Wickerman party on Mount Fuji,
Speaker 3: which is exactly what they do. They go up and
Speaker 3: they do a summarile kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it's a it's a it's kind of a
Speaker 1: somber affair. They're kind of I guess mourning, but also
Speaker 1: ultimately bringing the fight to Hetera. That the military has
Speaker 1: has mostly failed, and it's up to the youth to
Speaker 1: to raise their voices in song and then ultimately like
Speaker 1: throwing torches at Hetera as he advances. It's it's pretty
Speaker 1: stirring because it you know, it's it's it's about the
Speaker 1: youth culture. And then there's this other uh and their
Speaker 1: role in perhaps fighting these important battles of the future,
Speaker 1: you know, certainly and environmentally, but it but also you
Speaker 1: have these sequences in this whole sequence you see these
Speaker 1: kind of ghostly looking old people watching on from shadows
Speaker 1: with kind of somber looks on their faces. Oh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was one of the strangest things to me.
Speaker 3: I didn't know what to make of that. I thought
Speaker 3: maybe I had missed a scene explaining what was going
Speaker 3: on there or something. But while there is this Mount
Speaker 3: Fuji young people Wickerman party and they're out playing guitars
Speaker 3: and dancing in the field, there are these like ghastly
Speaker 3: people of the wheat who are just standing behind these
Speaker 3: tall grassy stalks with these gray and passive faces and
Speaker 3: just watching.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it reminded me a lot. This movie reminded me
Speaker 1: a lot in general of some of the works of
Speaker 1: Miyazaki because he has a lot of environmental themes in
Speaker 1: his work, but also there are he does deal with
Speaker 1: these kind of generational conflicts as well. And I feel like,
Speaker 1: and I could be wrong on this, but I feel
Speaker 1: like that's the territory that this director was getting into
Speaker 1: with god Zilvers's Hetera, at least just a flash of it.
Speaker 1: There's this idea of generational conflict concerning the confrontation of
Speaker 1: in this case, environmental issues.
Speaker 3: So maybe it's like the gray people of the weed
Speaker 3: are kind of like the adults and spirited away who
Speaker 3: can't see the magic and are just sitting at the
Speaker 3: food stall stuffing their faces until they turn into pigs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, perhaps, But of course eventually it's it's all
Speaker 1: about Godzilla and Hetera battling each other, and boy do
Speaker 1: they battle. They battle. They battle a lot. They've battle
Speaker 1: hard there, Godzilla's on the ropes. They are comebacks, and
Speaker 1: then and there's a sequence where where there's also flying,
Speaker 1: like Hetera 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 this then then Hetera is going
Speaker 1: to like sludge flood the hole Oh, it gets it
Speaker 1: gets really intense there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, horrible. So it's a part where you think Godzilla
Speaker 3: is maybe gonna die, like Hetera throws him into an
Speaker 3: open grave of toxic sewage. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh, and then but the fly ying Heroro is not
Speaker 1: the only one to fly. Godzilla flies in this and
Speaker 1: I don't think i'd seen this before.
Speaker 3: I started shouting when I saw it. Godzilla like balls
Speaker 3: up basically like Tuck. I was gonna say, he tucks
Speaker 3: his tail. That makes it sound like he's ashamed. He
Speaker 3: like balls up into an almost kind of fetal position,
Speaker 3: and then kind of hurt like blows out the radiation
Speaker 3: breath like a jetpack exhaust trail and flies.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I thought I'd seen all Godzilla's tricks before, but
Speaker 1: this is my first time seeing this. I'm curious if
Speaker 1: this ever came up again in another Godzilla film, or
Speaker 1: if they decided not to. I mean, I thought it
Speaker 1: would look it fit perfectly in this film. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if other Godzilla directors would have liked it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, if Godzilla can fly, that kind of
Speaker 3: changes the whole equation. I'm sure there have been other
Speaker 3: movies where he flies. I have a vague tingling recollection
Speaker 3: that happens in something else, but it's certainly not all
Speaker 3: of them. Okay, Now, ultimately there it's one of those
Speaker 3: sequences where it involves the human characters trying to set
Speaker 3: some kind of technological trap for the Montster. They're trying
Speaker 3: to electrocute Hetera because the scientist character figures out that
Speaker 3: electricity dries out the sludge and this is the only
Speaker 3: way it can be defeated. And if they're not able
Speaker 3: to defeat it with these big electrodes, then it will
Speaker 3: get too big for even Godzilla to handle, and then
Speaker 3: it will just take over the world. Right.
Speaker 1: Also oxygen, so they bomb it with oxygen from helicopters
Speaker 1: a little bit.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, I remember that. But like we were saying, ultimately,
Speaker 3: the military is not very good at upholding their part
Speaker 3: of the deal, and Godzilla kind of has to do
Speaker 3: everything for them, and Godzilla like sighs and shrugs his shoulders,
Speaker 3: like really, guys. But eventually Godzilla pairs his radiation breath
Speaker 3: with the giant electrodes, and of course, you know who
Speaker 3: wins in the end. You know, yes, it's not hard
Speaker 3: to guess, but there's a lot of great stuff along
Speaker 3: the way. One of my favorite parts was when Godzilla.
Speaker 3: It almost seems like the good guys think they have
Speaker 3: defeated the monster, like twice already, but it keeps coming back.
Speaker 3: So Godzilla, having defeated it another time, starts sort of
Speaker 3: reaching into the sludge corpse body and just like ripping
Speaker 3: out guts and throwing them all over the place, like
Speaker 3: you know, you get some guts, and you get some guts,
Speaker 3: and all the bits of guts all dry out in
Speaker 3: the electric field. And I thought that part was great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, just breath blasts the whole field afterwards, and
Speaker 1: then it's done.
Speaker 3: So I don't know if you noticed the same thing
Speaker 3: I did. It's possible I'm mistaken about this, But did
Speaker 3: the movie show a very brief flash of that famous
Speaker 3: woodblock the Great Wave off Kanagawa for a second at
Speaker 3: the end.
Speaker 1: It did, and then I think it had it added
Speaker 1: the text like will it happen again?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I wondered, did you know what to make
Speaker 3: of that? Like why the Great Wave? In particular?
Speaker 1: I believe that this is this is a piece of
Speaker 1: art we've discussed in the show before, when we talked
Speaker 1: about it on a stuff to blow your mind episode
Speaker 1: about rogue waves.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because but I believe to depict a rogue wave
Speaker 3: right right.
Speaker 1: And I was looking up for like a nice concise
Speaker 1: description of what this picture is and what it perhaps means,
Speaker 1: and I found one at the Yale University Art Gallery,
Speaker 1: and this is what they have written there.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 1: At first glance, snow capped Mount Fuji looks calm in
Speaker 1: the background of this print, far from the boats and
Speaker 1: towering waves. But the mountain is slightly obscured by a
Speaker 1: boat whose sharp, sickle like tip threatens to lop off
Speaker 1: Mount Fuji's peak. And recent scholars suggests that this print
Speaker 1: has political implications. Mount Fuji, a symbol of Japan, is
Speaker 1: menaced by boats and overpowering waves, both of which may
Speaker 1: imply a fear of foreign powers encroaching on Japanese shores. Indeed,
Speaker 1: in eighteen fifty three, roughly twenty years after this print
Speaker 1: was made, the American commodore Matthew Perry led a United
Speaker 1: States Navy fleet into the Tokyo Harbor and forcibly open
Speaker 1: Japan to trade. So I think we might interpret this
Speaker 1: as meaning like pollution is the next great wave, or
Speaker 1: it is the current great wave and it is threatening Japan,
Speaker 1: and you know, can we stop it? Can we rise
Speaker 1: up against? Like what is our what is our resolve
Speaker 1: against this threat?
Speaker 3: And Godzilla himself embodies that resolve?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I believe so. By the way, there are multiple versions.
Speaker 1: You know, this is a very popular piece of art,
Speaker 1: so there's been various reinterpretations and parodies of it over time.
Speaker 1: If you just do a quick Google image search for
Speaker 1: the Great Wave off Kanda Gawa Godzilla, you will find
Speaker 1: depictions of Godzilla battling the wave, literally depictions of Godzilla
Speaker 1: as the wave. It's pretty fun.
Speaker 3: That's good, all right. Well should we wrap it up there?
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's go ahead and close the book on this one.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: If you're wondering though, where can I watch Godzilla versus cetera.
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,
Speaker 1: pick it up as part of their Criterion Collection box set.
Speaker 1: Godzilla The Shoa Era Films nineteen fifty four through nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five. So yes, I think this marks the first
Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema film that is also in the Criterion Collection.
Speaker 3: Oh I'm not so sure about that. Isn't there a
Speaker 3: criterion of Split Second? What about Robot Jocks?
Speaker 1: Not yet?
Speaker 3: I used to believe.
Speaker 1: I think I could be right. I think this is
Speaker 1: their first Criterion collect because I don't think Mad Love
Speaker 1: is in the Criterion Collection. Oh really?
Speaker 3: And transfers to Return of Jack Dead.
Speaker 1: No no, not yet? Not yet?
Speaker 3: All right. Well, I got to say, honestly, this is
Speaker 3: one of the most enjoyable Godzilla movies I've ever seen.
Speaker 3: It's kind of notorious. Actually, if you look at, you know,
Speaker 3: lists of people ranking the best Godzilla films, it does
Speaker 3: not usually make the top tier. But I disagree. I
Speaker 3: would put it right up there with the best. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pleasant to watch. So if you if you're
Speaker 1: looking for a Godzilla film, give this one your consideration.
Speaker 1: All right, So we're wrapping it up here. As always,
Speaker 1: you can catch Weird House Cinema every Friday in the
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Speaker 3: Huge things As always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 3: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 3: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 3: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 3: say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff
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