Godzember, 2019: The Showa Era (1954--1975), Volume I

Alright, here's a thing I'll do for December.  Having recently been gifted the Criterion set containing all of the Godzilla films from the Showa era (a period that coincides with the rule of emperor Showa -- his reign lasted until his death in 1989 but somehow the Godzilla films considered "Showa" films stopped at 1975.  Yet, there was another film in 1985 ("Godzilla 1985") but I guess that's a standalone, era-less film).  Anyway, this set (really it's a giant hardcover book that's too big to fit on any of my shelves) is incredible.  The artwork, the extras, the well-done write-ups for each film.  I'm not going to get into any of the packaging.  I'm just going to do do brief (maybe?) pieces on each film.  Each post will likely cover 4 to 5 films.  So, here we go:

Godzilla (1954)
Director:  Ishiro Honda
Length:  96 minutes
Kaiju appearing:
Godzilla 

"Godzilla" was birthed out of real tragedy, an incident involving a Japanese fishing boat whose crew was contaminated by radiation from a U.S. missile test.  And, of course, the U.S. dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki less than a decade earlier.  The idea of using a giant monster amidst all this sadness was inspired by the American film "The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms" which came out a year before.  This is all on Wikipedia.  Go read about it.  I also knew this, I swear!  "Beast" is also a great picture, check it out.  Some wonderful Harryhausen stop motion animation.  That picture was inspired by a Ray Bradbury short story about a lighthouse.  Like, see that lighthouse over there?  Now picture a giant monster right behind it.  But, enough about "Beast".

I've seen "Godzilla" many times, dating back to my childhood but did not see the original Japanese version until I was a full fledged adult and could actually buy it on DVD.  The Americanized version with Raymond Burr ("Godzilla King of the Monsters") was on TV (usually as a Saturday matinee) constantly.  It's fine?  You get the monster.  Destruction.  And a white guy taking control of the situation.  More on that one in a bit, i guess.  So, "Godzilla"....it's the saddest fucking monster picture I've ever seen.  Imbued with a sense of national grief (again, bombs, radiation, etc) we got the story of a prehistoric creature, stirred awake by atomic bomb tests.  Its natural habitat (a system of underwater caves) destroyed, the creature heads to the surface.  The picture opens with a tragedy mirroring the real life fishing boat tragedy when Godzilla (we don't see Godzilla, but we hear it, feel it) attacks and sinks a Japanese boat, the Eiko-maru.  Later, the ship sent to investigate (the Bingo-maru) is also sunk.  Death for these sailors is almost immediate, except for three survivors who somehow make it to a neighboring island, inhabited by villagers stuck in the turn of the century (19th to 20th) living a peaceful existence and also telling folktales about the mystical creature from the sea, Godzilla.  I guess we'll go with that name says some scientists later on.

The Godzilla series is not really known for its human characters but, here, we've got some pretty good ones.  We're introduced to Ogato (a captain of a ship, he was not involved in the earlier sinkings) and Emiko (his love interest).    Ogato, consumed by vengeance for his dead fellow seamen, would like to see the creature destroyed.  More interesting, we're introduced to Dr. Kyohei Yamane, father of Emiko, and a paleontologist.  He views the creature as a wonder, something they should learn to live with.   This leads to an awkward moment when Ogato and Yamane get into an argument over what to do with the creature just as he was about to ask for permission to marry his daughter.  The engagement will have to wait.  The only other character of note is probably the best human character to ever appear in a Godzilla film, Dr. Serizawa.

First, he's got an eyepatch.  So, that's pretty cool right there.  What makes this guy great, beyond the fact that he is also in love with Emiko, is he spent the war working with German scientists developing weapons of mass destruction.  He regrets all of that shit.  One such weapon, The Oxygen Destroyer, will probably make an appearance later on in this picture, I'm guessing.  His character is full of torment over things he's created.  His ultimate decision will destroy more than a few things, probably.

Anyway, the story.   The island near where the ships were sunk is called Odo.  One night, most of the seaside village was leveled in a nighttime attack.  The devastation the creature leaves, the shots of destroyed houses reminiscent of the images of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, post bomb drop.  So, Dr. Yamane is dispatched to the island to investigate, bring back facts. Yamane takes a geiger counter.  They find a footprint, it's radioactive...also within the footprint they find the remains of a long extinct arthropod (or something).  Where the fuck did that come from?  How did it get there?  That alone could be the scientific discovery of the century if not for the footprint the size of a house.  And then, we hear it.  The stomping sounds, now iconic.  The swelling music, exactly as iconic (seriously, this might be a top ten film score -- credit to Akira Ifukube) and, shit, that probably even more iconic than the stomping and the score, roar.  On the other side of the hill, they see it.  The head, the giant prehistoric head.  It looks down at them, roars once, twice and then disappears.  The villagers flee in a panic.  An old village statesman give it its name, Godzilla.  History is pretty much made.  I gotta say though, that first appearance, in broad daylight, isn't the greatest.  I mean, I love it but just seeing its head was a bit silly.  They appeared to have used stop motion.    It had a goofy look on his face.  His eyes reminded me of Kong's eyes in the 1933 "Kong", twenty years earlier.  Of course, I'll argue with anyone that says King Kong isn't a great special effect so now I'm back to thinking Godzilla's first appearance in this thing is actually great.  It is great.  It's great.  I didn't get a picture, sorry.  Google that shit.

So, Yamane returns to the mainland of Japan with his report.  We've got a giant prehistoric beastie that we're calling Godzilla, a creature over 150 feet tall.  It's radioactive.  Debate commences.  There's a lot of debate in these pictures.  Almost all of these pictures.  Men in rooms, wearing suits.  Newspaper headlines slap on the screen:  "Disaster Response Team Established!" Scientists argue with bureaucrats.  Money versus reason.  One scientist flatly says "Godzilla was born in the fires of the H bomb.  What could possibly kill him now?"  Meanwhile Godzilla approaches Tokyo from the sea.

After overturning a pleasure cruise Godzilla makes landfall and levels the whole god damned city of Tokyo.  This takes a while.  It's also where we get our first look at it and finally, here, it is spectacular.

Like a lot of these giant movie monsters, Godzilla hates trains.

Its rampage across the city is not exhilarating so much as it is soul shattering.  We learn this quickly when the camera keeps cutting to a mother and her young daughter, stranded in the city as the wreckage rains down around them.  Later we see that same young girl in a triage center, her mother lying in a bed beside her, dead.   Godzilla's all hard edges in this picture.  He's an animal out of place, out of time, scared, pissed off.  We see it, here, use its atomic breath for the first time, its three pronged spikes across its back glowing, alarming the city dwellers to impending incineration.  It incinerates pretty much everything in its path.  Well, what it doesn't incinerate it crushes with its tail or its feet.  I spent a lot of time studying the design of Godzilla here.  Its first appearance in this film, basically a disembodied head, may have veered towards goofy but, here, it is decidedly not that.  Its arms are even useful, terrifying, as it picks up a bridge and tosses it aside.  Later iterations began to trend towards silly.  Here it's legitimately scary, that rare moment when sound, effects, (wonderful miniatures and an astoundingly effective man-in-suit design -- As we'll find out in later pictures the man-in-suit design creates a much different tone at night than it will during the day), and music coalesce perfectly.

And then, like in most of the good Godzilla films the big guy begins to grow weary.  The tanks and planes make their attack but it swats them away as if they were gnats, making its way back to the sea, finally disappearing beneath a violent wake.  After it's gone, the sadness overwhelms.  The choiral music gently, sadly sobering us as we take in the aftermath.  Our human characters, Ogato, Emiko, Yamane, and Serizawa reemerge.  The debate is over.  Godzilla must be destroyed.  But how?  Emiko confronts Serizawa.  His weapon, The Oxygen Destroyer, must be used.  He destroys his design notes and then with great regret and resignation says "the notes are one thing but everything is up here" (points to his head).  He knows he can still be used to nefarious purposes by people with power.

So, Ogata and Serizawa volunteer for the assignment.  They will ship out to where Godzilla is believed to be resting and unleash the power of Serizawa's weapon upon it (we've seen it tested, it removed the oxygen from the water and then skeletonized some fishes).  They'll have to submerge themselves using those old fashioned deep diving suits, connected to a line at the surface, on a ship.  It's not long before they find Godzilla.

He stirs, seems to notice them but takes little action.  There is no final battle, just a sort of quiet awfulness.  Serizawa forces Ogata to surface and unleashes his weapon ("you two have a good life together" he laments, I kind of wish he didn't bring that up, to be honest).  Godzilla attempts to surface, struggles, and that's it.  It succumbs.  Honestly, I can't imagine an American picture ever wrapping up this way.  This is a decade of anguish in movie form.  Obviously, I'm not going to worry about spoilers here.  Godzilla is dead.  It's left a skeleton at the bottom of the sea.  The next creature will not be this creature, but it will be Godzilla.

Godzilla King of the Monsters (1956)
Director(s):  Terry O. Morse & Ishiro Honda
Length:  80 minutes

Ok, this is the same Godzilla as the first picture except here the Americans went and mucked it up.  They cut, I don't know, all of the sad shit that made the film unique and replaced it with Raymond Burr on a plane, in a room, etc.  Talking, smoking.  Here he is smoking on a plane, talking in voiceover about going to meet his old school chum, Dr. Serizawa.

So, this is a garbage film that I loved as a kid but there's no reason to watch it now that the original version is readily available.  I'm glad I rewatched it, I guess.   It was my introduction to Godzilla after all but I felt no real nostalgia for any of this shit.  As I said way up above, it's fine question mark.  I mean, I guess show this one to your kids, maybe?