Atragon

ATRAGON (1963, aka KAITEI GUNKAN) is a fun, fast paced sci-fi action thriller by the Japanese makers and stars of the Godzilla series. It seems the undersea kingdom of Mu wants to reclaim their rule on Earth. It's up to a plucky cheesecake photographer (Tadao Takashima) and a self-exiled WW2 Japanese Naval officer (Jun Tazaki) to stop them. There are laps of logic, which kind of add to the fun, and some well staged sequences. Film gets especially silly when the undersea Mu empire sends the Japanese Government an 8mm film explaining Mu's history and plans. This little film has optical titles, a narration, the works. Does this undersea kingdom have a film production unit complete with a film processing lab? Giddy fun here. ]

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+

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.

This is one of the better non-Godzilla films from the minds of Honda, Tanaka, Tsubaraya and Ifukube. Even though this film pretty much covers the same ground as they did in the Mysterians (even using some stock footage from that film), it still was a great film. The special effect's work by Tsubaraya has to rank as some of his best and the story is better than average for this type of film. I loved how they pretty much showed how tortured Jinguji was as he was torn between his loyalty to Japan, his love for his daughter and the needs of the world as they were being attacked by the Mu Empire. Also, in an interesting bit of casting, Akihiko Hirata and Kenji Sahara play villains instead of their normal heroic roles. It also was interesting that the threat to Earth in this film didn't come outer space but from beneath the ocean by one of the most legendary lost civilizations after Atlantis. This is definitely a great film.

This is one of Toho's gem that has gone unnoticed for many years. The original story was written by a Japanese science fiction writer Oshikawa Shunro in 1900, which was then heavily modified for this movie adaptation by Shinichi Sekizawa. Casting is good, and the plot is very original.

During WW II, Japan created three largest submarines in the world the I 400 class which housed 3 bomber planes with plans to covertly bomb the Panama Canal. The story's premise is that a 4th variation of this sub I 403 was made by the Japanese, commanded by Capt. Jinguji (Jun Tazaki). It was thought that this sub sank off the coast of Saipan with all hands lost, but Jinguji and his crew survived and created an underground base in an uncharted island. There Jinguji also being an engineer, puts into action his plan to build a flying battleship/submarine called the Gotengo. The year is 1964 and there're few mysterious kidnapping of scientists in Japan and sitings of a strange submarine. The culprit (Akihiko Hirata) tries to kidnap ex-Lt. Admiral Kozumi (Ken Uyehara) and Jinguji's daughter Makoto (Yoko Fujiyama) but fails, and reveals that there's a plan for the Muans from the lost continent of Mu to return to the surface for world conquest. Kozumi now aware of Jinguji's survival and his creation the Gotengo, is asked by the UN to convince Jinguji to use it against the Muans. During their excursion to Jinguji's island, Muan spy (Kenji Sahara) kidnaps Makoto and her fiancée Hatanaka (Tadao Takashima). Jinguji's original idea was to use Gotengo to win the war (WW II that is) for Japan, but is now convinced he will have to fight the Muans.

The star of this movie is the outrageously cool looking flying battleship/submarine (Designed by notable Japanese science fiction artist Shigeru Komatsuzaki) that's armed to its teeth. This submarine comes with a drill at its nose and can drill through earth where the enemy has their lair. The Muans who are the race of people from the legendary continent Mu which sank in the pacific 12000 years ago (There are three lost continent legend if you're not familiar with Mu. One is Atlantis, other is Mu in the Pacific, and third is Lemuria in the Indian ocean which all sank around the same time ) are planning to return to the surface, and take over the world. Gotengo (the name of the sub) challenges Muans in their world to stop their invasion plan. As director of special effects Shinji Higuchi once said, Japanese might be the only people who have fetish for a flying battleship. This story, and Uchu Senkan Yamato is a prime example.

The American title of this movie "Atragon" which is also the American name for Gotengo is an abbreviation of the words "Atomic Dragon".

When I first saw the picture of this submarine, I long waited for the day I could see the movie. I saw a badly dubbed version on TV which was disappointing, but now a DVD is available with original Japanese dialogs. This is a movie worth watching.