Godzilla - Furia di mostri

This film has a really post modern feel to it. It begins with a song in Japanese called Save the Earth that (like The Lost Continent song) you won't stop singing (Kaishan! Kaishan! Kaishan!). The opening credits mix in shots of a girl singing the song with shots of a sludge clogged Tokyo harbor. Things get stranger from here. It opens with an annoying kid and his dad going swimming. The kid's father's face is disfigured and the kid gets his hand burned off by a smog monster named Hedorah who spits acid balls and inhales the fumes off smokestalks. Things get even stranger from there. Theres a Save the Earth concert or something with this girl in spandex with stuff painting on singing, this lava lamp like thing on the wall (definitely hippies) and this teenager who gets drunk and starts halucinating and sees everyone with fish masks on (when I saw this the first time when I was six, couldn't get why everyone started wearing fish masks and why the teen seemed so disturbed about it) until Hedorah suddenly attacks after sucking up fumes. Well Godzilla comes and saves everybody and they start fighting really bizarrely (similar to the Saturday night wrestling scenes from King Kong vs. Godzilla. They wrestle and wrestle some more. Though released in 1971, this is very sixties. Director Yoshimitsu Banno blends mind twisting images, real scenes of Tokyo bay covered with sludge, the scenes with the hippies, disturbing scenes with dying babies on mutiple screens, gory scenes of Hedorah's victems being reduced to skeletons, scenes with the kid and his scientist father trying to figure out how to stop the monster, and scenes with a newscaster. This is very poetic, bizarre, beautiful, and sometimes extremely disturbing and has about the strongest anti pollution messages I've ever seen (Japan was polluted the most back then). This is one colorful film. P.S. I don't know how this film got a G rating with all the disturbing images in it.

Okay, so.... Godzilla vs Hedorah! It's been said that this is a Godzilla movie you either love or hate, so it's either a 10 or a 0. For me personally, this movie is a 5; right smack dab in the middle! It's not a shining gem or a smouldering turd, it's just kinda "eh" *gesture where you shake your hand with all the fingers flat out*

So, the premise; rampant water and air pollution has spawned Hedorah, a sentient monster made of pollution that is like a mix of the Blob and a garbage dump! Hedorah is able to melt people to bones! The only hope for humanity, as always, is GODZILLAAAAA~!!!!

Hedorah is a notable monster as he is the last monster of the Showa era that is acting on his own will, he isn't obeying anyone or under mind control, unlike Ghidorah, Gigan, Megalon, Mechagodzilla, and Titanosaurus of the succeeding Showa films.

This movie is different; there's bizarre animation, trippy montages, and drug innuendos a-plenty!!! Now, the animation shown isn't anime, it's just some bizarre animation straight out of Uncanny Valley. Hedorah is shown sucking on a smokestack from a factory and exhaling the smoke before showing his bloodshot eyes, a blatant reference to taking a bong hit.

As someone who has taken a few bong hits before, I found this to be a clever little thing. The drug innuendos can be excused because this movie was made in 1971; weed culture was still in it's very huge first run!

There are two or three POV shots from Hedorah's perspective.

Also, no review of Godzilla vs Hedorah would be complete without mentioning the bizarre scene where Godzilla FLIES. This was a total WTF moment.

All in all, if you watch this movie with a sober mind like I did, you'll either hate it or it'll just be "eh". If you watch it after smoking some weed or ingesting an edible, it'll be the best damn Godzilla movie you've ever seen!

Godzilla vs Hedora (AKA The Smog Monster) is less slick than many of the later productions. It is also somewhat less serious, and features a Godzilla who is more mythic than consistent with his earlier and later portrayals. The Godzilla in this film is a force of nature in more than just a figurative sense. She is also highly intelligent and a defender of the earth and, to some extent, its people.

Even from the title, its easy enough to figure out what this film is about. Tadpoles mutate because of the mutagenic properties of pollution in Tokyo Bay (interestingly, this somewhat silly idea is far less absurd than most of the latter pseudoscience used in Godzilla scripts - almost as bad as Star Trek Voyager sometimes was). The mutant tadpoles fuse at the cellular level and grow into a giant tadpole which then mutates three or four times, spewing out its own toxic pollutants, first as terrestrial and eventually as air pollution. The visuals are good, but the special effects are admittedly below even Toho's usual standards.

Created in the early 1970s, this film is metaphorical and symbolic, although it is still, at heart, a Godzilla film. Hedora is an unsubtle metaphor for the ecological state of the world, and is, in that sense, a monster of our own making. Godzilla is an embodiment of nature, and is to be viewed as a positive force for all life on earth. These symbols are particularly apparent in the use of cartoons as transitional devices from one plot point to another.

Godzilla Vs Hedora walks a very thin line between giant-monster violence and a kid-oriented film. As somebody who has since his early teens, been interested in the environment and as somebody who always liked Japanese Monster films, I developed a sentimental attachment to this film very early on. In fact, this is my all-time favorite Godzilla film, and more than any other film, it is the reason why I consider myself a fan of the big green lizard. This is the film which establishes Godzilla as an environmentalist and a friend to young people - his two best roles.

Highly controversial Godzilla movie which is loved or hated by fans.

In the late 60s/early 70s Japan had a very serious pollution problem that was killing people all over the place. I had no knowledge of this event until first viewing the flick (in 2022) so this Godzilla film was also a history lesson.

Some old Godzilla films are too talky but this one is more concerned with the creatures and less concerned with the humans - GOOD.

Enter Smog Monster! He might be my favourite Godzilla enemy? Enter young Japanese people taking drugs and perhaps reliving 60s "Woodstock". Enter Godzilla flying in the air for the first time. Enter the strangest Godzilla film score ever! Where do I stop?

This is a wonderful movie on so many levels and, as stated above, a great history lesson about Japan. Not for all tastes but I love it.

This psychedelic Goji entry features a very formidable opponent in Hedorah and some very memorable trippy imagery. It has an environmental message and is truly unlike any Goji film.

Hedorah has a certain special aura about it, very memorable moments and a great soundtrack that makes this one of the Showa era's finest.

8 Smog Clouds out of 10!