Sixteen Further Screams For Halloween: Day 12 (Godzilla Vs. Hedorah)

It wouldn't be a Halloween marathon without a little bit of kaiju posting. Having done a whole bunch of Heisei Gamera, and a whole bunch of the really stupendous Godzilla films, I didn't have any actual recommendations on where to go from there. So I went with this film, which I happened to have laying around. Oh. Oh my good God what in the fuck is happening here? Godzilla Vs. Hedorah is many strange and inscrutable things, all at once. It is a profoundly ambitious film, attempting to mash together dissonant styles and tones. It is a film with a ton of attempted meaning, wanting to make a claim on the effects of pollution circa the early 70's. It is a film that, at times, just gets weird as fuck. It is also a film with several jarring missteps that just crater the thing into the ground, over and over again. Within the last 30 minutes of the film I grew to hate it. I was feeling a deep-seated disappointment. I had to cool off, reconvene, talk to folks about it, and let that sludge settle and simmer. I no longer want to torpedo the film into the sun, and I admire that it had its heart in the right place... but holy fuck is this a goddamn mess. Let's dig into that.

Alright, the positives and stuff. The ambition and mixing tones sounds like it shouldn't work, but in theory there's a proven case of such disparate elements working. Let me explain. This is a 70's Godzilla movie, which from my understanding places Godzilla firmly in the role of Heroic Kaiju To All Japanese Children Everywhere. I like him better as a menacing walking disaster leaving destruction in its wake, and adults grappling with that (c.f. Godzilla 1954, Godzilla 1984, Shin Godzilla, Godzilla Minus One), but this was a mode that Toho rolled with for a lot of the 60's and 70's and a lot of folks like it, so I won't harsh it too bad. We have a child as the main POV character, he's got Godzilla toys and a mild telepathic connection with Godzilla. Okay, fine. Godzilla as protector of the youth. I can roll with that as long as the movie doesn't undercut it in the climax of the motion picture. (Foreshadowing is a literary device in which--) For a child-friendly movie, this shit gets kind of fucked up. Hedorah causes a significant death count, and it's a lot more visceral than just Godzilla crushing a building while people inside scream. Hedorah exudes sulfuric acid which melts people's skin and leaves skeletons behind. It's ultra gnarly, especially for something that has this all-ages child focus on it. I don't know if it works, but I can think of  an example of this sort of approach working: Doctor Who. It's the nearest British equivalent to tokusatsu, and in the 70's it was famously mixing an all-ages approach with imagery made to scare the piss out of its child audience. Hell, with the environmental message and early 70's release date, this is basically a Jon Pertwee story with kaiju in it. The Black Death, if you will.

The movie flits with this sense of childlike whimsy amidst the horror and terror of Hedorah. You have little animated interstitals, and some of the moments are camp as almighty fuck. For those who rate this film highly on Letterboxd or something, I can imagine the "so bad it's good" meter having a thumb on the scale. There's also the weird subplot involving what I can only describe as 70's psychedelia kids. They play in a club and dance and there's a wall displaying bizarre imagery. 1971 feels a little out of date for that sort of thing, but maybe it was different in Japan. It's strange, but that acid rock aesthetic is something you can latch onto! All the cool kids in Japan, jamming and having a good time amidst the terrors unfolding. And then the movie kills them off in the stupidest way possible. They have a jam session in a field, Godzilla and Hedorah appear, and they decide that instead of running they will throw torches at the kaiju. Then it kills them all, save the little kid and the girl one. At best this is just a mean-spirited sort of escalation of the movie's unflinching body count. At worst it's reactionary garbage, depicting the youth of Japan as a bunch of out-of-touch hippies who are too stupid to live. GMK did the same sort of thing, but at least that movie was about being angry and vengeful. Or something. What the fuck is Hedorah about? Environmentalism and natural harmony with the world? Sounds right, but the goddamn movie can't even get it straight.

There's an interesting notion in the film about how both fallout from atomic weapons and pollution are manmade follies that have damaged the Earth, and how kaiju are the consequence of that. It's basic stuff that mirrors both Godzilla and Hedorah as being created from the same hubris in different ways, and has potential to create a new source of trauma that's lost from our destruction of the environment due to industrialization and whatnot. Real environmentalist shit. Except the movie completely bungles this by making Hedorah a goddamn space alien that came to Earth and multiplied because of pollution. How do you fuck this up? It's more compelling if the monster is fully our fucking fault because of pollution! That's how you sell the goddamn idea that pollution is bad in your movie about a giant black sludge pollution monster! You don't make it because of goddamn space aliens, you make it because of us! The last 30 minutes are a mega slog, an interminable final battle in which Godzilla only wins because the military set up an electric force field to drain Hedorah dry. Godzilla only wins via assist. From the goddamn military. Do I even need to explain myself here? I'm bitching and bitching, but at the end of the day I can't hate this movie. I can hate the last 30 minutes, but not the thing in full. The ambition is there, the heart is there... but they just fucked it up one too many times for me. Still, there's something interesting in watching a car crash of a movie, the intricate way in which it crumples under the full force of impact. Holy hell does this movie crumple, but it's fascinating to look at all the same.