Ataragon

This is a great kaiju movie from Toho Studios. Right off the beginning of this film, we see an already intriguing scene when a scientist gets kidnapped by a creature from under the sea. The suspense builds when the creatures reveal themselves to be habitants of the Undersea Kingdom of Mu, and that they have come to Earth to reclaim its land (of course the Earth people do not accept that, so it's the super-submarine Atragon to the rescue). The scenes where it show the origin and the places of the Mu Kingdom are very entertaining. We actually get to see what the Mu Kingdom looks like. The scene where the Mu people sing and dance and worship is a real charmer. For this movie, the special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya are spectacular and the screenplay by Shinichi Sekizawa is exciting, spellbinding, and full of suspense and drama. The plot is solid and perfect and Ishiro Honda's directing is superb. The music by Akira Ifukube is excellent and fantastic. The main title music is full of melody and harmony and is probably my favorite Akira Ifukube music score. And, virtually everybody is in this movie: Tadao Takashima, Yoko Fujiyama, Yu Fujiki, Ken Uehara, Jun Tazaki, Kenji Sahara, Hiroshi Koizumi, Yoshifumi Tajima, Akihiko Hirata, Eisei Amamoto, and Susumu Fujita.

The scenes where the Earth humans and the Mu people battle each other is inspiring. Manda, the giant sea serpent, is an awesome-looking monster. He is the protector of the Mu Kingdom. From the sounds of the worships, Manda seemed to be a powerful creature. However, he is actually pretty weak since he hardly put up a descent battle with Atragon, and he appeared only briefly throughout the entire movie. That was a disappointment - more scenes of Manda would have made this an even better feature. But overall, this film is a great one from Toho.

Grade B+

There's something about this film that I can't help but like.

Everything is just one step beyond plausible. The bad guys have all sorts of powers that are used once and then never used again. The flying submarine Atragon has been built completely in secret by an Japanese Navy unit, in self-imposed exile, that is preparing to win World War 2 for Japan in 1963! There's a giant pet serpent that attacks the submarine. An entire city is destroyed in a way I won't describe but is completely wacky.

Silly and lots of fun. The special effects go from great to cheap to unbelievably weird. The movie is slow at points but when the sub finally takes off, it's non-stop action. You'll recognize the actors from many of the Godzilla films.

This movie succeeds where many typical Japanese monster movies fail. The plot is thick and evolves into some sort of spy story about a renegade, long lost naval officer, whose daughter is in the custody of his former commanding officer who -in turn- has kept silent about him for 20 years. On top of that, some mysterious submarine empire wants to conquer earth, and demands that said lost officer be handed over, in addition to the latter's brainchild, a powerful submarine. The renegade is now assembling his submarine on a remote island with a garrison of left over soldiers & natives, hoping to win WWII in the 60's. Such submarine ( the 60'ish version of GOTENGO in final wars, again coming in the 70's Tsuburaya production "I-zenborg" ) is the last hope for humankind. The plot -as said- is unexpectedly solid, a cut above most monster movies, and adds drama and spy story in a credible fashion. Of course that's from the Godzilla crew, so we have to adjust our expectations period & genre-wise. Trademarks abound, EG the submarine invaders look like the "savages" on the Mothra island: they just wave spears & dance around pseudo-Egyptian monuments.Overall a cut above the usual man-in-suit smashing cartonbox miniatures movie and without too many bond movie cloned moments.

Toho was totally on fire for a brief period in the early to mid 60's. Though even later they sporadically came up with something great like WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS or BATTLE OF THE SEA OF JAPAN, most of their best film were actually non-Godzilla films.

ATRAGON is one of the first and best examples of 60's Toho lunacy and excellent Tsuburaya special effects, combined with excellent acting. There's plenty of absurd science, ridiculous ideas like flying subs, massive destruction, fast-paced action, and even a giant monster to keep anyone's attention.

The only thing weighing this film down is the pacing being totally off. There is waaaay too much time devoted build-up and fleshing out too many 1-dimensional characters. A lot of sequences (like finding the legendary lost captain on an uncharted island) are way too drawn out and sap the film of a lot of excitement. The monster "Manda" is poorly animated and underutilized.

That said, the city destruction presented toward the end is some of Toho's best, with a massive crater opening up under the city and sucking buildings down several hundred feet, presumably killing thousands! Another highlight comes with the Mu sub going nuts on Tokyo bay destroying several merchantmen over and over again. It's colorful fun all the way which refreshingly can appeal to children and adults alike. Toho's later scifi films tended to try too hard to stay kid-friendly.

With a little editing and a few script rewrites, this could have been Japan's definitive sci fi epic. As it is, a flawed but enjoyable romp through Godzilla territory sans atomic lizard.

Nothing particularly special, so don't have a lot to say, but it wasn't a bad watch. It involves another group of non-humans threatening to take over the world, there's some slow-moving parts in the first half, and there's a bit monster too (but you don't see it much).

It was directed by Ishiro Honda, who directed a number of classic early Godzilla films, including the original. He was always reliable when it came to non-Godzilla science-fiction/horror/adventure films, even if they don't quite live up to Godzilla, the gold standard.

The credits weren't translated but I could still tell the music was done by Akira Ifukube, who is as the main composer behind the Godzilla music for many years. It sounds pretty similar here, almost like Ifukube kept brushing up against familiar Godzilla themes, but I guess what's not really broken shouldn't be fixed too much.