July 16, 2021 • 56 mins
In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss 1971’s “Godzilla vs. Hedorah,” also known as “Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster.” The king of all monsters tears it up with a pollution-powered alien kaiju.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is
Rob Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Godzilla time
on the podcast. But maybe a Godzilla you're a little
bit less familiar with one that was new to me
(00:23):
as of this week. Today we are doing the Godzilla
picture that was too hot for Toho, the Godzilla film
that is too radical, it's too dangerous, it must be stopped.
It's Godzilla versus headera. Yes, Godzilla versus Headera. One I
had never seen before. And I think you know, I've
seen a fair number of Godzilla films over time, and
(00:45):
I think I tend to have I tend to have
watched the ones that were either on TBS back in
the day they would show them in like the Afternoon
when I was a kid, or ones that were featured
on Mystery Science Theater three thousand later on. But there, there,
of course have been at tons of Godzilla films over
the years, and this is one that simply fell through
the cracks for me. I did not I did not
know it existed until this week when you said, Hey,
(01:07):
why don't we do a Kaiju movie. Why don't we
do either this one or that one? And I looked
and I saw, well, it looks like Godzilla versus Hetera
is available on HBO Max as part of the Turner
Classic Films selection. There. Well, let's do that one. It's
the easiest one for me to to see. And I'm
so glad I did the other option we were looking at.
It's funny because the two movies have a kind of
(01:28):
similar premise. The other one we were looking at was
The Space Amiba, which does not have Godzilla in it.
It's a kaiju movie about an alien microbe that lands
on an island in the South Pacific and there it
transforms uh some examples of local wildlife into giant monsters.
I think it makes a big squid and a big
crab and one other thing I don't recall. Um. But
(01:50):
in this movie we also have an alien microbe I think,
coming from a gaseous nebula or a speculated by one
character later on, from a planet covered in sludge sludge
like planet, dark sludgy planet, dark sludgy planet that has
come to Earth. And whereas many aliens would say take
me to your leader, this one says take me to
your smoke stacks. I need to get high. Take me
(02:11):
to your pollution. Yes, And then the one character even says,
wasn't this good? It can eat up all our pollution,
Like no, it's just too destructive, that's right. Yeah, So
this is a pollution monster that huffs airborne particulates straight
out of smoke stacks. He is a brimstone beast from
space that exudes sulfurous gas and acid and poison and
(02:33):
uh and and his bad news all around. Yeah. So
one thing about this film is this, first of all,
this film is very much a Kaiju versus film. So
he is going to largely hit the same plot points
you're familiar with. Some new creature presents a threat to
humanity and established veteran in this case, Godzilla shows up
(02:54):
to battle it. Human characters watch on his battle proceeds. Um,
you know that you're you're guy. Monster is gonna be
on the ropes for a little bit, but it's gonna
have a big comeback and eventually win the day. So
God Deliversus Hetera is going to give you all of
those points. But there's so much additional weirdness here. There's
so much visual flare in this film, I feel like
(03:15):
it really stands apart from pretty much all the other
Kaiju films that I've seen. I'm actually I seriously entertained
putting it above Shin Godzilla is my favorite Godzilla movie.
I was thinking about the same thing. This is a
new favorite for me, definitely my top three now um
and much like you, I also have Shinn Godzilla near
the top of the heap. But mainly it's the reason
(03:37):
I was so enthralled by this movie was its novelty.
Having seen many Kaiju movies, it has a lot of
the familiar elements, and in fact, I would say the
familiar elements are actually the weakest part of this movie
as far as the big monster meet Slam goes. I mean,
there is a you know, extended thirty minute beat down
at the end of the movie that is Okay, it's
(03:58):
not one of the best, but it's also not one
of the worst. But it is the other elements of
this movie that really make it an absolute standout, without
a doubt, the most bizarre Godzilla movie I've ever seen.
Uh in that this movie believes it is art, yes, absolutely, no, no, yeah,
no question about this. It thinks it's art and it's
(04:18):
making a statement and maybe it's going to change the world. Yeah,
it's it's probably the best example of an avant garde
Godzilla film, and that's one of the reasons that why
it's so watchable. It's also one of the reasons that
uh that that it's director was criticized back in the day,
and indeed never directed another Godzilla film. You'll see his
directorial credit I and IMDb for some other Godzilla films
(04:42):
with us because they utilized a footage from previous films
in those those pictures. That's right. So the director was
Yoshimitsu Bano and uh and you will frequently see references
to this as the movie that ended his Godzilla career.
You know, he could have gone on to do all
kinds of Godzilla stuff, but like I said to the beginning,
this was just too hot for Toho. It was too weird,
(05:03):
it was too radical, it was rock in the boat.
You can't make movies like this, man, Yeah, exactly. There
are a lot of stories about how producer Tomoyuki Tanaka
responded to this. There's at least one story in which
he said, you've ruined Godzilla. Uh, And there was a
lot of anger, and I was there's a lot of
There's a great blog post about this from Patrick Galvin
(05:26):
at Toho Kingdom dot com. You can look it up.
He has a Yoshimitsu Bano in Memorium post that goes
through a lot of this and talks about his his achievements,
his uh you know what he gave the Godzilla UM franchise,
but then also how it was received at the time.
UH So, yeah, this is this is a movie that
was maybe ahead of its time, and I think stands
(05:47):
the test of time because it is doing things differently.
So what is it doing differently? I could list a
number of things. One thing I will say is the
esthetic differences. It's much more free form than any other
Godzilla movie I've ever seen in that it uh it
inserts things that are outside the normal stream of plot development.
(06:07):
So it has musical numbers. It has animated segments there.
They're short, but there's several of them throughout the movie,
and there they were some of my favorite parts because
they're beautiful animation. It's almost like a Godzilla movie with
elements of like the Yellow Submarine movie and uh and
other sort of late sixties psychedelic films that involved a
lot of uh, exciting visuals with abstract colors and dancing
(06:31):
in a club. Yeah. And also yeah, there's also a
huge cultural element to this as well. There's a there's
a sense of the youth movement and the youth culture
and and and and and their rise and their importance
and and their part in the fight. Generally, in a
kaiju movie, who do you see fighting the kaiju? Who's
raising arms against the kaiju? It is the military, right,
(06:52):
the authorities? Yeah? Yeah, and in this we see the
authorities playing a part but also failing in ways, and
it's the youth who are who are leading the charge
at one point. Yes, in this movie. Ultimately, I think
the authorities are portrayed as almost entirely incompetent, that like,
they are not the ones preserving order. Ultimately, it's Godzilla
(07:13):
who's the one who is preserving order and Godzilla. Um.
I was trying to think about what Godzilla represents in
this movie, because I think you can make a case
that a lot of the Godzilla films have a um
I mean, you know, it's it's hard to say they
have a very clear message, but to the extent that
there is a message in them, it's a kind of
(07:34):
vague environmental one. It's, you know that we have done
things to the earth, and in doing things to the earth,
through maybe weapons testing or industry, we have upset the
natural order and we have unleashed forces that are beyond
our control. But like I said, uh, I think that
that critique is in most Godzilla movies very buried under
(07:56):
the surface, very vague. In this movie it's the opposite.
It it's not only overt, it's extremely over there, screaming
in your face with an environmental message. Yeah. Yeah, they
definitely lean into the idea that Godzilla is is not
only it's not just a big monster for kids, so
they acknowledge that, but he is also something of an
(08:17):
embodiment of the nation's or a cultures will you know,
Like like Godzilla represents, uh in a sense, humanity struggle
against pollution, against destructive elements of of the world, and
the question of can Godzilla defeat this enemy is ultimately
a question of whether we can, whether we have the
public will to confront it. That's another transition I would say. Originally,
(08:41):
Godzilla is sort of the manifestation of of us having
unleashed forces beyond our control by our upsetting of the
natural order. In this movie, he is the thing that
fights back against the monster created by industrial pollution. Yeah,
not a question. I don't know if you know the
answer to this. One of the fun things we see
with the Godzilla arc is that in the very first
(09:03):
Toho Godzilla movie, Godzilla is the antagonist of the film, like,
you know, this is a dangerous, scary, dark monster that
that that brings great destruction. But by the later films,
Godzilla is often sort of the hero of the film,
is portrayed as a force who is inherently dangerous, but
which ultimately fights against a force that is even more
(09:25):
threatening or even more malevolent. And that's the case in
this movie. So I wonder, like, how exactly does that
arc develop? And is that the case for other movies,
Like I've watched some of the Gammera movies where you know,
Gammera is doing the same thing Godzilla is doing in
the In the later movies, Gammera is good and he's
fighting against the bad monsters. Was that always the case
(09:45):
with Gammera or did Gamera start as bad like Godzilla did?
If memory serves Gammera follow the exact same track Gammera
in the first film as a threat that has to
be overcome and launched into space. I think ultimately and
this would be This would be for a more in
depth discussion later, perhaps drawing on the work of people
who have maybe thought longer and harder about this than
(10:05):
we have. But I imagine there is there are a
lot of comparisons to be made with the way deities
change over time. Uh, you know, we can. I don't
know if it would be the exact same trajectory or
would be kind of an inverse trajectory in some cases.
But uh, I wonder how you know, in a loose
sense anyway, Godzilla is a deity. He exists not in
(10:29):
the the the mythic realm of you know, like the
ancient world or even modern religion. But he's in the
film myth world and and is therefore not quite the
same as our traditional ideas of deity, but perhaps subject
to some of the same changes in the way we
perceive him. Well, maybe before we go on any further,
(10:49):
we should hit some trailer audio. All right, let's have it.
This I believe is from the English trailer for Godzilla
Versus to Become the most fearful mennace that ever threatened mankind,
growing ever more deadly un smug. Only one pos dares
(11:11):
stand up lords overpowering evil. Nothing men can do can
stop the smug Monster and Godzilla save the earth from
this mastodon of destruction. All right? Sounds good to me
(11:43):
and and we we should, of course, note that in
the US, this I think, was originally released as Godzilla
Versus the Smog Monster. Yeah, that's right, though from what
I understand in the movie, the monster is not made
of smog. The monster is made mostly of why are
born pollutants and then comes out onto land to huff
(12:03):
the smog. Yeah, he's made out of like sludge and
minerals and all. Um A quick quick bit of trivia. Uh.
In Germany, this film was released as Frankenstein's Battle against
the Devil's Monster. That doesn't make any sense? Um. I
was this was new to me, but apparently uh. In
the German release of Godzilla films, it was often explained
(12:24):
that Dr Victor Frankenstein created the monsters that Godzilla fights, uh,
and it just had to do with with how they
were releasing them at the time. So he had multiple
Toho films Tohoe did some Frankenstein films about Jenking Giant
Frankenstein's and uh, and I checked, It's okay if I
called them Frankenstein's. I checked with the Frankenstein's monster on this.
(12:45):
But but this sort of set the precedent for how
you would release a big monster movie in Germany. Yeah.
I remember reading a few weeks ago about a movie
I've never heard of before. That is it is directly
a Frankenstein Kaischen, not just called Frankenstein. It's like about
now that I'm about to say this, this really sounds wrong,
(13:06):
but I think what it is is a Nazi scientist
takes Frankenstein's brain to Japan for study and there it
gets uh it somehow gets turned into a giant monster. Yep.
I believe that's right, Okay, strange or maybe we'll come
back to it. We're talking about doing some Frankenstein films eventually.
(13:26):
All right, I guess we should come back to talk
about the director of Godzilla versus Hetera, who was again
Yoshi Mitsu Bano. Yes, um director, also co writer. He
lived one through two thousand and seventeen. This was his
first and only Godzilla movie. Um again you'll see him
credited on the Gigan and the Megalon movies, but that's
just because they utilize older footage. He previously served as
(13:49):
assistant director and second assistant director on some really notable
A Kira Kurosawa pictures, including Throne of Blood in nineteen
fifty seven. That's that wonderful Samurai Macbeth movie, and also
The Hidden Fortress, in which I think is often cited
as one of George Lucas's influences in UM the creation
of the original Star Wars picture, both great films. Yes,
(14:12):
I've also read that Banno was was very much a
part of the Toho film system. So he came up
in Toho and he stowed it under several notable Toho directors.
I believe his grip on this film is strong, because
unlike some other Kaiju films, this is one in which
I detect not just a Toho House style, but I
feel a really strong, bold, individual director's vision guiding the
(14:36):
whole thing. Yes, that absolutely, and I think it's why
at the time there seems to have been tensioned with
producer Tanaka over this UM. It seems like he he
fell out of good graces with Toho and ultimately went
on to be more of a producer. He was but
was EP on the two thousand fourteen American Godzilla movie,
and I believe he's credited even though he's occurred after
(14:58):
his death. I think he's credited on Godzilla, King of
the Monsters from and Godzilla Versus Kong. But yeah, I
think this is the reason why he was controversial at
the time but is memorable today. You know, there have
been so many Godzilla films, how many of them are
really worth looking up and seeing if you're not a completist,
I would say this is one that's worth going back
(15:20):
and seeing. Yes, totally. Uh. And it's different than a
lot of the other best ones because I would say
a lot of the other best Godzilla movies, apart from
the first one, the first one is very dark and gloomy.
A lot of the other best ones are very bright
and lively and sort of fast moving and fun. This
one is also overall dark and gloomy, but it's excellently
(15:41):
dark and gloomy. Yeah, yeah, alright. So there was another
writer on this, u Takeishi Kimura, who lived through a
studio writer for Toho. He was involved in more than
thirty films, including some really notable ones including Rodan the Mysteriens.
Oh he was he was the fer of Matango. Allegedly
(16:02):
he believed this was his finest work, and it is
a fine work. We may have to come back to Mettango.
This is about an island where where a fungal infection
turns humans into um my conned uh mutations. It's it's
pretty fabulous, so yes, Metango is worth checking out. Kimura
also worked on Frankenstein Versus Beragon. This was a giant
(16:23):
Frankenstein movie from from Toto, The War of the Gargantuans,
King Kong Escapes Destroy All Monsters and uh. And of
course this wonderful Godzilla film Takeshi Kimura. Is interesting because
I was finding a lot of very tantalizing biographical details
about him online, but not in very solid looking sources.
(16:43):
That and I couldn't find them backed up anywhere that
looked more solid. So so frustratingly, I can't report a
lot about him with confidence. But if, for example, some
of the like user submitted biographies I found of him
on various sites have any truth to them, uh, he
was a strange and interesting figure. He was allegedly known
for writing Tohoe monster movies with a more gloomy outlook
(17:05):
and and serious political themes, as opposed to the happy
golokie beat downs of other you know repeat Kaiju screenwriters. Well,
and as we turned to the cast here, let's go
right to the beat down. We're gonna talk about the
human characters played by human actors, but let's start with
the monsters. Oh yeah, So here's something about this movie.
Despite the fact that it has a much darker tone,
(17:27):
the Godzilla in this movie is kind of sassy. I
really detect a sense of humor in Godzilla's gestures and
expressions in this film. There's even a really funny moment
later on where the military is trying to do something
to defeat the opposing monster and fails, and Godzilla does
almost kind of a shrug, like, oh boy, do I
have to do everything myself? Yeah? Yeah, there's a little
(17:50):
bit of sass. He's a he's a bit of a
showboat at times. I mean, he's on the ropes a
lot in this but he but he does. He shows
he's a little bit of a showboat in a few scenes.
And he also takes some really inventive bumps, like he'll
get shot with a laser and do a complete front flip.
So there are times like that where I was really
admiring the performance. And indeed the performer here is Haruo
(18:10):
Nakajima who lived nineteen sev He is uh is kind
of an all star of the of the Godzilla franchise.
He played Godzilla in twelve consecutive films. He was also
in Mathra and the War of the Gargantua's uh as
as All, as well as Akira Kua SAWA's Seven Samurai
uh Most people forget that in the original cut of
(18:31):
that the Seven Samurai Battle the Giant Monster. No, not
not really, but he played a non monster in that.
But generally he's considered a legend of the rubber Monster suit,
the rubber Suit actor par excellence. I haven't seen Mosra
in a long time, but I remember that one. This
is known for being one of the best of the
meat slams. It's like a really great monster throwdown. Now,
(18:55):
the enemy in this cetera is played by uh Kimpachiro Satsuma,
who was born in seven and as of this recording
is is still alive. Um And while he plays Godzilla's
enemy in this picture. Satsuma would go on to play
the King of Monsters himself after Nakajima retired, so Satsuma
served as Godzilla um from through. Seeing those dates though,
(19:19):
did make me a little bit sag with sadness as
I imagine the transition from Godzilla and and his monster
enemies being a person in a suit to being a
c G. I creation, M. Yeah, I mean, you gotta
love love the suit and you know there there. I
think there's been a whole documentaries about about what was
required of these gentlemen because these were very physical performances.
(19:43):
They involve suits that were often not very well ventilated,
and you're, you know, you're you're sweating profusely inside them.
And as we mentioned, like with Godzilla, there's a certain
it's not just a stammer around and smash a building.
There's a certain physicality to the performance that really shines through. Uh.
You have to betray more than just brute lizard strength
(20:04):
or anything like that. There is a character there that
the actor is portraying. All right, well, let's get into
the human characters. Now. Most most of these characters are
going to be members of the Yanno family, the Yano
family being the key family of humans. And um, let's
(20:26):
start with the child the boy. Uh. This is um
Hiroyuki Kawasi playing Kenyano and he was This actor was
born in nineteen sixty four. Child actor was also uh.
I think he showed up in ninety three's Godzilla versus
Megalon as well, and he wasn't in much, but he
was in a TV series called Sorrow Sorrow Nu Guandan,
(20:51):
which I believe is Army of the Apes uh if
you translated. Uh. This was eventually cut and released as
a film in the US by Sandy Frank as Time
of the APESCE Theater three thousand. Viewers will be familiar
with this film, um, which is a lot of fun.
But i've i've I have never had the chance to
watch the original TV series, but there's a lot of
(21:13):
it and it has huge fans in Japan. Uh people
still follow it, and it seems like there's a lot
more like well, what you see in Time of the
Apes is very much a compressed uh plot line. There's
apparently a lot more going on. There's a robot in it. Uh.
I would love to know more and I'd love to
hear from anyone who's watched it in full. I don't
think it's been really widely available on DVD or Blu
(21:34):
ray or even uh like you know, streaming services outside
of Japan. Now, Rob, I have a Kaiju question. Maybe
you can shed some light on this for me. In
Godzilla versus Hetera, this young boy Ken has a kind
of psychic connection with the monsters. He has apocalyptic visions
of the small creature Hetera, and he has uh and
(21:56):
he he sort of has omens about when Godzilla will
pere to save the day. So and and this is
not the only film where there is some kind of
psychic or at least emotional bond between the Kaiju monster
and a young child. It's often true in like the
Gammera movies. And do you know, is there a reason
for this recurring theme. I don't know. It's it's one
(22:19):
of those things that is often with Gammer's Like Gammer
is a friend of children, you know, there there is
this innate connection. I don't think I have personally seen
a Kaiju film other than this one where it's described
as an overt you know, psychic link, a telepathic link
between monster and child, like there's some sort of sacred
bond there. I feel like it's something, And I could
be wrong on this, because I'm not a Kaiju movie
(22:41):
expert or a Godzilla expert or anything, but I feel
like this. In this case, our screenwriters said, well, obviously
there's this link is here. Let's actually explain what it
is a bit to a certain extent while still retaining
its mystery. Okay, okay, I mean, maybe it could just
be that you need to have some kind of demonstration
of an emotional connection between the monster and the human characters.
(23:04):
And maybe it's just natural to assume that only a
child has the moral purity to to have that connection
with the big beast. Now, if we do go back
to that idea of Godzilla's an actual deity, it is
interesting the use of in this film. I don't know
if you notice some of these details, but first of all,
the boy Ken he has toy Godzilla's and he has
(23:26):
something like a Godzilla shrine set up, and this is
kind of lightly juxtaposed with the casual use of of
tiny um amulets and uh and you know, visions of
I think like the like the Buddha that are arranged
around the television sets and other scenes. Yes, yes, so
I don't know how much what they're how much they're
really trying to say with that, but I feel like
(23:48):
if one wants to really chew on the matter, you
can definitely start making those connections. I love the fact
that Ken is playing with Godzilla dolls in this movie
because it's like that scene in Halloween three where Tom
Atkins is sitting at the bar and he's watching the
first Halloween movie on a TV. That's pretty good. All right,
Let's move on to some of these other human characters.
Um So, the matriarch of the Yano family is um
(24:13):
Is Toshi Yano, played by Toshi Kimura. She acted in
such pictures as sort of The Beast, Revenge and The
Three Outlaws Samurai and then Akira Yamauchi plays Dr Toru Yano,
the patriarch of the family. He lived through nine. This
seems to be his biggest role, but he was He
also had had a part in Lone Wolf and cub
(24:35):
Baby cart in the Land of Demons from one um
This This is of course a classic of the genre
and was also a major inspiration on the Mandalorian TV series.
So he plays the scientist character. Usually in these movies
you need at least one scientist character who's there to
to figure out the nature of of the new threat.
And so he's some kind of biologist who has an
(24:56):
early encounter with the head or a beast in the
water and ends up like with a big sulfuric acid
burn on his face. And there's a very funny scene
later on where he's, you know, he's trying to solve
the problem and uh, he's lying awake and his wife
comes in and says something like she's like, stop thinking
about hetera and go to bed. Yeah. He spends a
(25:16):
lot of the picture kind of bedridden and recovering from
his injuries. Yeah, all right there. Well, also have a
couple of characters who are not members of the Yano
family but are very close with them. The first of
all is the character Yukio Kuchi played by uh Toshio Shiba,
and this is the the the youth with the really
(25:38):
captivating eyes. I think Yukio is supposed to be Toshi's brother,
the okay Kin's mother's brother, so ken Ken's uncle. Okay,
all right, that was that was kind of lost on me,
I guess, But otherwise he's He's just like a young
guy who hangs out with the family and then later
goes to a psychedelic nightclub. Uh. So Shiba had a
(26:01):
long TV and film career, including the nineteen seventy one
Kaiju movie Mirror Man. Uh and I think he's still active.
He was born in n he has amazingly distinctive eyes.
He's one of those people who, uh, You've probably had
this experience before where I saw him and I was like, oh,
he looks so familiar. What have I seen him in before?
(26:21):
And I looked and I couldn't find anything. So I
think maybe I've never seen him in anything before. He
just has such a distinctive look that that he seemed familiar. Yeah, same,
all right. And then we also have a character by
the name of Miki Fuji no Miya uh this uh
play played by the singer Kiki Omari. This is I
(26:43):
think her only film role, but she does seem to
have had a much richer career as a singer. Um
and it looks like she's still active, at least on
Japanese language social media. She seems to have a following
as being I mean, it's kind of like I guess cinematically,
it's kind of like having been a Bond girl if
you were a Godzilla girl. I think there's actually a
documentary about like Godzilla Girls, and she's featured in it.
(27:06):
She has a fabulous musical number in this There are
multiple musical numbers in this movie. Actually, yeah, but she
has a lot of style. She brings a style and
hit nous to the film that that certainly stands the
test of time. And finally, I'm going to mention the
composer is Richiro Manabi who he has a hundred and
fourteen score credits on IMDb. I'm not I'm not sure
(27:28):
if he's responsible though for the opening music. I guess
he is. Well, we'll get to that in a minute.
But has really really nice opening music, a really nice
theme song they keep really returning to. It's really nice.
It's just great. I did read that Guy Henrick did
the lyrics for the English version. I have not heard
that because the version we watched is the one on
(27:50):
HBO Max that's up there with the TCM collection um
and it is. It is in the original Japanese with subtitles.
But I guess there was an English language version of it,
like they dubbed it for releasing the States, and Himrik
is the guy who did a lot of lyrics for
beach movies back in the day, stuff like Beach Blanket
Bingo and Muscle Beach Party. So I'm just gonna guess here,
(28:12):
but I'm I'm guessing that his lyrics did not retain
the strong and dire environmental message that we find in
the the actual Japanese lyrics. Maybe not the beach movies,
the bikini movie that the peak of human artistic achievement.
All right, well, let's let's get into the plot a
bit here. All right. Well, one thing this movie really
(28:34):
does is it sticks to its themes. It hits you
right with them at the outset, and then it does
not give up. So you start with, of course, as always,
the classic glorious Toho logo, and then very first thing
you see smokestacks, billowing clouds of soot, rushing water slicked
with oil and green foam. The message is clear, the
(28:56):
earth is disgusting, the earth is just ruined. And then
and then you see water and what's this? What's coming
out of the water? Is it a slimy, cancerous garbage
bag with red crocodile eyes boiling up to the surface.
That's right, you see Hetera poking up out of the
water right at the top. Just no waiting at all.
(29:19):
Now you don't see all of them, no, no, much
like a crocodile like looking up over the top of
the water. You just see a kind of the pebbled
surface of the top of his head and the eyes
looking out there. And he has these vertically oriented red
eyes that are very very prominently featured throughout this movie
in fact, and eyes somehow seemed to be a theme
(29:40):
of the film because remember, like his eyes or his power,
Godzilla partially defeats him by pulling his eyes out and
electrocuting them. But as soon as you see Hetera title card,
Godzilla versus Hetera, and then bam straight to a James
Bond style musical introduction. Amazing. And and when I say
(30:01):
James Bond style, I really mean it, as in, there's
like a glamorous singer doing a theme song for the
movie over over colorful abstract backgrounds, just like in a
in a James Bond title sequence. Yeah. This this track,
by the way, is called give Back the Sun exclamation point,
and you can find this on whatever you're you're streaming music,
(30:21):
side of choice happens to be. I'll also try to
include this embedded on the blog post for this episode
at Samuda music dot Com. I had one of those
moments where I was watching this by myself, but I
just wanted to be looking around to find somebody else
in the room, like are you seeing this? Are you
seeing the same thing I'm seeing? The song is is tremendous.
I loved it, Yeah, but I mean because the lyrics
(30:43):
are are so solid and gloomy and and it's and
it's it's an interesting juxtaposition between the tone of the
lyrics and the the style of the song. But then yeah,
that we have this um you know this fabulous uh
you know splash of color behind her um as she's
singing of this is this bond sense of of of
(31:03):
wonder and it's kind of I guess the stuff behind
her too with a kind of like oil lights. It's
like the the Joshua Light Show, that stuff you've see
in a lot of like psychedelic performances. Uh So it's
we have a strong opening with with psychedelia and um
in music and fashion, but then also scenes of sludge
and pollution. And and I have to say we in
(31:25):
in the movie Frog. When we talked about Frogs in
a previous episode of Weird House, we talked about the
problem of creating fake looking garbage, fake looking pollution. Uh.
And I feel like this movie nails its pollution. The
pollution looks real and yet has a surreal quality to
it that feels like it is it is art. It's disgusting. Yeah.
(31:45):
And the oh, the lyrics of the song, it's all
like the birds and the fish they are all dead. Uh.
It's the you know, the gold Finger song, but it's
about pollution. And there's a great part where in the
verse she's just listing off names of chemicals. She's singing mercury, cobalt, cadmium,
All life is gone. The fields and the mountains are silent. Uh.
(32:08):
And there's like green bubbles in the background and uh.
And then and then when she gets to the line,
there's no one left on earth. This also ties back
to our discussion from frogs, because what is the single
piece of garbage or litter that conveys squalor better than
anything else. It is a discarded doll And what do
(32:28):
you see here? Floating in the oil in the trash.
It is a filthy discarded doll, or maybe it's a mannequin,
but it's a it's a doll mannequin humanoid shape. Yeah,
it's perfectly the plastic likeness of the human form discarded
in the plastic strewn, polluted mess. Uh. The the this
this this patina that encompasses our culture. Oh and there's
(32:52):
a grandfather clock floating in the muck. That's pretty great.
So good. So this movie really comes out strong. A
lot of Kaiju movies are just about like it doesn't
even like you just want to skip to the big
battle at the end, like the big battle in the
destruction and the monster beat down, that's all the matters.
Usually in this film, everything else is done to such
(33:13):
a high level. Uh. I feel like you'd be hard
pressed to find a Godzilla movie or any Kaiju movie
that is more interesting in its scenes that are not
about monsters battling. I totally agree. In fact, it was
inverted for me. The only time in this movie that
I did start to get a little board was during
the big monster fight towards the end, which which does
(33:34):
go on a bit long. But I'm not even sure,
that's a an appropriate criticism for me to make of
a giant monster movie. But I do just want to
reiterate one more time. You are correct. This movie passes
the fake garbage test. It's not like in Frogs, like
where you're seeing discarded beer cans that look like somebody
just strank them. Yeah. But from here we go straight
into the action, and it is what we mentioned before,
(33:57):
a young boy playing with Godzilla dolls. There's actually pretty
interesting framing in this scene. As we've said many times,
this is a visually interesting movie. It's got a well, uh,
you know, it's got a good sense of mis on
send to be pretentious about it. Interesting photography, interesting framing.
So this boy is playing with Godzilla dolls on an idyllic,
(34:18):
grassy hillside that overlooks a vast urban landscape that's just
covered with smoke stacks, like a valley of thorns. But
he's got this Godzilla shrine and is surrounded by flowers
and and it's beautiful. Uh. And and here we get
to meet the main human characters, the members of the
boy's family. The boy, of course, is Ken, and we
(34:39):
meet his father, Dr. Tooru Yano, who's a marine biologist,
his mother, Toshi, his his uncle or friend Yukio, I
think his uncle and uh and and Ken and Yukio
are talking at the beginning of Yukio is like, hey,
is Godzilla your favorite? And Kin says, yes, he's a superman.
Is he a man? I don't know. I mean, I
(35:01):
guess you could certainly say he is super compared to man. Yeah.
But anyway, they're hanging around when their unusual fish guy
shows up. There's this guy named Mr go Hey and
as soon as he arrives there, they're like, oh, hello,
have you brought us another unusual fish? So I think
it's because the father is a marine biologist that they've
got to go to guy for unusual fish. Yeah, and
(35:22):
and uh and and indeed the father what he has
various um jars of strange specimens that he's collected lining
the wall. Great set. Yeah, And so Mr go Hey
brings in the specimen, which looks like a gigantic tadpole.
It's like a fist sized tadpole. But they conclude that
it cannot be a tadpole because Mr go Hey caught
(35:43):
it at the prime spot for shrimp fishing in Saruga
Bay and do tadpoles live in the ocean? Uh? The
father says no, they do not, and Mr go Hey notes,
you know, Saruga Bay is getting really really bad, Like
he didn't catch a single shrimp there this time, and
it's almost as if the world is sort of is failing,
(36:04):
is giving out on them. And then meanwhile, once again,
this movie does not make you wait on developing things.
The family starts watching reports on TV about a giant
creature that's breaking up ships in in Saruga Bay, Like
oil tankers are coming into the bay and they're crashing
into each other and then getting snapped in half, almost
as if something is wanting to like drink the oil
(36:24):
out of the boats. Yeah. The pacing in the film
is excellent leading up to full monster reveal. Yeah, and
so of course it's investigation time. The scientist and the
scientist father and Ken have to go into the bay
and and see what's going on. So Ken hangs out
on the rocks by the shore while Dr Yano goes
into the water to see what's up, and we get
(36:45):
to see some underwater sequences. They're one of the things
I loved. I didn't know what to make of this
there's a piece of trash sunk to the bottom of
Saruga Bay that looks like an artificial swan. Okay, it's
just there. I Meanwhile, Ken up on the rocks is
like prying up muscles and he discovers that they're empty
and the crabs are bleached and dead. So it's just
(37:07):
this place has been ruined by pollution. Everything is dead.
It almost reminded me of the recent uh episodes we
did about marine mucilage. Yeah, but here I think we
get our first vision of Hetera. In fact, well it's
a it's a combination scene because Hetera actually does appear
in one form, but also Ken is having visions of
(37:28):
Hetera that seemed to go beyond what Hetera is actually
doing in this scene. Did you understand it the same way? Um? Well,
there was a lot coming at me at this point.
I think I was just like generally geeking out at
at how terrific this was visually. But the yeah, like
the father that the doctor is having his own encounter
under underwater, and then Kim is encountering all this stuff
(37:51):
above the water. Um, yeah, it's it's and is this
when we start getting the cartoons? No, that's not yet,
not yet. This finishes with like Ken being confronted by Hetera,
and Hetera like flies over him and he reaches up
with a knife, and and like, yes, part of it. Yes,
it is the Free Willie moment. It's like the moment
in Free Willy, except imagine that instead of it being
(38:13):
an orca, it was a sludge monster. And instead of
touching the creature, you were driving a knife up into
a sledge belly. That's literally what happens, and it's terrific.
Ken does a really great sledge belly slicing and uh.
And meanwhile Dr Yano down in the water is severely
burned and when so we go back to the house
(38:33):
and he's got bandages all over his face. He has
been attacked, and we learned a number of things. We
learned that Hetera he's already got a name. Now he's
named after a type of sludge called Hetero. I don't
know what hetero means, but yes. Soon after this we
we get our first cartoon sequence, which these cartoons are
absolutely wonderful. This one was labeled Happy Hetera uh, and
(38:55):
it very much reminds me of the animation style of
the Blue Meanies and the Yellow Submarine movie. Yeah, there's
a real sense of weirdness and whimsy to them. Uh
and and it's it's just fab I wish there were
actually more animated sequences in this film because they just
do a great job of breaking up the pacing um
and uh and and just you know, upping the visual
(39:16):
pizzazz of the whole feature. Now, like the last episode,
I don't think from here I'm going to do a complete,
like scene by scene breakdown of the whole movie, but
just maybe wanted to focus on some things that caught
our attention as we as we went through, because you know,
(39:38):
this is a Kaiju movie. You can probably guess basically
the structure it takes. The head remonster becomes increasingly menacing,
attacks the city until eventually Godzilla appears to fight it off,
and then it comes back even stronger, and now it
looks like Godzilla and the people are in trouble. But
then Godzilla and the people come up with ways of
fighting back, and you know, it's pretty standard. Yeah, there's
(40:00):
gonna be some buildings screwed up, there's gonna be some
sort of large scale technological approach to fighting the monster,
with mixed results. All that stuff is in play, you
will not be surprised by anything that actually happens from
a plot standpoint for the most part. But some of
the specific choices they make are still amazing. One of
(40:21):
the main ones I would say is in the first
big hetera attack scene where he comes out of the
water and he attacks the lane. He comes out of
the water to huff smoke stacks. But the way they
set that scene up is that, uh, we see I
think U k O is there at the nightclub scene,
isn't he Yes, he is, He's he seems to be
having I don't know he is the scene where he's
(40:42):
drinking like he's just down some sort of cocktail or
some sort of alcohol in the rocks and then he
kind of looks at the glass like he's he's having
mixed thoughts about what he just drank. He has a
love hate relationship with this cocktail, and he's he's dressed
in this really cool outfit. He's got his wonderful Um
colorful Um shirt on and this weird tie that absolutely love.
(41:02):
And meanwhile the nightclub itself is just amazing. You've got
more Joshua light show stuff going on behind them. You've
got this. You've got Kikiomari doing some sort of a
performance and she's wearing this weird Naiad costume with like
a nautical details on it. It's it's very psychedelic. I
(41:23):
it's it's just a really cool nightclub sequence. You watch
it and you want to be there. Yeah, love, love,
love the sequence. It's it's so strange and it's so good.
And uh, and I think there in a way we're
prising the song from the opening, or at least playing
on variations of it, because both of them have that
phrase they keep saying, give it back. I think means
(41:44):
like give give the natural resources back to the earth. Um.
But it's so strange because from there we go from
the song and the nightclub to, first of all, a
header up prank call to the police station. Did you
understand this? Um? I don't. I don't think I quite
got to say. This was a section with film where
I started watching it with my son too, so I
(42:04):
might have been slightly distracted as we we talked about
what was going on on screen. And then so you
see a police officer answered the phone and say like hello,
who is it? And then he's like, uh, that's ridiculous.
Hetera is a sea monster. So somebody's calling and saying
their Heatera maybe or maybe they're just reporting. They're like, hey,
Hero is attacking the city, and they're like, no, no,
(42:26):
it can't be. That could be to the sea, because
one of the themes here is that Hero is going
through a transformation. He's going from um an aquatic form
to a quadrupedal form. Ultimately he goes through a flying
phase and then into a bipedal form for the final fight,
though he also backtracks to a flying form a little
(42:46):
bit at will. I think you're right that that must
be how to understand it, because my version didn't make
any sense. I was like, what's with this prank call?
But yeah, no, I think he's saying, somebody reports Heatera
being on land and he's like, no, no, that can't
be because Heatera is in the law her. But what
does Hetera do once Hetera comes on land? Just slips
its mouth right over the top of the smoke stack
(43:07):
and starts huffing the gas yeah and um and of
course in all of this, Hetera is also emitting like
sulfuric acid clouds and um. Either at this point or
very Shortly afterwards, we start seeing scenes of it just
like obliterating crowds, like turning people to skeletons in the street. Yes, yes,
(43:28):
like people literally just turned into piles of bones. Yeah.
But we also watch Hetera, like Heatera has these tumor
looking things, these bumps all over its body. Should we
describe can we describe Hetera? I don't even know how
to say what Hetera looks like. Hetera looks like a
big ball of garbage with with like trailing slime tentacles
(43:51):
that has these vertically oriented red eyes. Yeah, and he's
kind of glistening, kind of sparkling, and it's it's really
quite a vicious and effective monster costume, because if you
see enough Kaiju films, you realize there are only so
many things you can really do with a with a
human in a suit. Uh. For or and or the
use of puppetry and their their limitations on in both areas, uh.
(44:15):
And I feel like they did a great job with
this costume and that it's clearly built around a bipedal
human performer. Uh, And yet it does have that feel
of some sort of amorphous sludge monster. Yeah. So this
horrible thing is attacking the city. What's going to happen?
Is Godzilla going to come and save the day. Well,
we had a hint earlier that he would because I
think was it that Ken was writing an essay for
(44:37):
school when when he said, like, I think this is
what it is. Ken is writing an essay for the
second grade for a second grade class, and it says
something like, you know, the water is polluted with with
cadmium and mercury and all this, and then it ends
with saying, I bet Godzilla would be mad if he
saw this. Yes, And then eventually he has like a
a visual hallucination, like a vision a prop to see
(45:00):
and he's like, Godzilla is coming, Godzilla is coming to
clear this up. That's right? And then what's that? It is? Godzilla?
Godzilla coming over the horizon and Godzilla and and hetera
throw down. They have a great fight, a great fight
with very weird energy, unlike any other fight I can
think of from a from a Godzilla movie that I
(45:22):
recall because it's a fight with basically no music and
very little sound effects. The fight later in the movie
has a lot more of the Godzilla squealing sound this one.
There are long stretches where it's very quiet, this kind
of low anticipatory rumble as the two monsters just kind
of regard one another and stand there swaying in the darkness.
(45:45):
It's it's very unusual, very effective. Yeah. I also like
how some of these five, maybe all of the fight scenes,
but some of the key fight scenes take place in
like a great field like it. It feels like a
like a battle field, um, instead of it being in
I don't know, a lot. A lot of Kaiju movies
they end up taking place on a model city or
around a model city, and I don't know, this one
(46:06):
just just had a different feel to it. Yeah, two monsters,
they're like like engines, idoling almost. Yeah, And I should say,
all this is going on the fight is is sizing
up between them while they're while Yuko is still in
the nightclub, and he's starting to have hallucinations of all
the dancers in the club wearing fish masks, which was
just so it's one of multiple parts of this movie
(46:29):
that reminded me of The wicker Man. So they're they're
fish masks here. But then later on in the movie,
all the young people they decided like, well, Heatera is here,
and you know, the earth is so polluted. We're basically
near the end of human civilization anyway, So let's just
go have a big Wickerman party on Mount Fuji, which
is exactly what they do. They go up and that
they do a summer ile kind of thing. Yeah, it's
(46:51):
a it's a it's kind of a somber affair. They're
kind of I guess morning, but also ultimately bringing the
fight to Hedra that the military has has mostly failed, UH,
and it's up to the youth to to raise their
voices in song and then ultimately like throwing torches at
Hetera as he advances. It's it's pretty stirring because it
(47:13):
you know, it's it's it's about the youth culture. And
then there's this other UH and their role in perhaps
fighting these important battles of the future, you know, certainly
and environmentally, but it but also you have these sequences
in this whole sequence, you see these kind of ghostly
looking old people watching on from the shadows with kind
of somber looks on their faces. Oh yeah, that was
(47:35):
one of the strangest things to me. I didn't know
what to make of that. I thought maybe I had
missed a scene explaining what was going on there or something.
But while there is this Mount Fuji young people Wickerman
party and they're out playing guitars and dancing in the field,
there are these like ghastly people of the wheat who
are just standing behind these tall grassy stalks with these gray,
(47:55):
impassive faces and just watching. Yeah. I it reminded me
a lot. This movie reminded me a lot in general
of some of the works of Miyazaki um because he
has a lot of environmental themes in his work, but
also there are he does deal with these kind of
generational um conflicts as well. Uh. And I feel like,
(48:17):
and I could be could be wrong in this, but
I feel like that's the territory that that this director
was getting into with Godzilla versus hetera, at least just
a flash of it. There's this this idea of generational conflict, uh,
concerning the confrontation of in this case, environmental issues. So
maybe it's like the gray people of the weed are
(48:39):
kind of like, uh, the adults and spirited away who
can't see the magic and are just sitting at the
food stall, stuffing their faces until they turn into pigs. Yeah. Yeah, perhaps,
but of course eventually it's it's all about Godzilla and
had a battling each other. And boy did they battle.
They battle. They battle a lot. They've had a hard there.
Godzillas on the ropes they or comebacks. And then uh
(49:01):
and and there's a sequence where where there's also flying
like Heatera goes into a flying form, drops Godzilla onto
the side of a mountain, and then Godzilla falls into
a hole. And then then then Hetera is going to
like sludge flood the hole. It gets it gets really
intense there. Yeah, horrible. Is so that it's a part
(49:22):
where you think Godzilla is maybe gonna die, like Heatera
throws him into an open grave of toxic sewage. Yeah. Oh,
and then but the flying heater is not the only
one to fly. Godzilla flies in this And I don't
think i'd seen this before. I started shouting when I
saw it. Godzilla like balls up basically like I was
gonna say, he tucks his tail. That makes it sound
(49:42):
like he's ashamed. He's not. He like balls up into
an almost kind of fetal position and then kind of
hurt like blows out the radiation breath like a jet pack.
Exhaust trail and flies. Yeah. I I thought I'd seen
all Godzilla's tricks before, but this is my first time
seeing this. I'm curious if this ever came him up
again in another Godzilla film, or if they decided not to.
(50:03):
I mean, I thought it would look it fit perfectly
in this film. I'm not sure if other Godzilla directors
would have liked it. Yeah, I mean, if Godzilla can fly,
that kind of changes the whole equation. I'm sure there
have been other movies where he flies. I have a
vague tingling recollection that that happens in something else, but
it's certainly not all of them now Ultimately there it's
(50:24):
one of those sequences where it involves the human characters
trying to set some kind of technological trap for the monster.
They're trying to electrocute Hetera because the scientists character figures
out that electricity drives out the sludge and this is
the only way it can be defeated. And if they're
not able to defeat it with these big electrodes, uh,
(50:45):
then it will get too big for even Godzilla to handle,
and then it will just take over the world. Right also, oxygen,
so they bombit with oxygen from helicopters a little bit.
Oh yeah, yeah, I remember that. But like we were saying, ultimately,
the military is not very good at uphold they're part
of the deal, and Godzilla kind of has to do
everything for them, and Godzilla like size and shrugs his shoulders,
(51:06):
like really, guys. But but eventually Godzilla pairs his radiation
radiation breath with the giant electrodes, and of course you
know who wins in the end, but you know, it's
not hard to guess. But uh, there's a lot of
great stuff along the way. One of my favorite parts
was when Godzilla it almost seems like the good guys
(51:26):
think they have defeated the monster like twice already, but
it keeps coming back, and so Godzilla, having defeated it
another time, starts sort of reaching into the sludge corpse
body and just like ripping out guts and throwing them
all over the place, like you know, you get some guts,
and you get some guts, and all the bits of
guts all dry out in the electric field, and and
(51:49):
I thought that part was great. Yeah, just breath blast
the whole field afterwards, and then it's done. So I
don't know, if you notice the same thing I did.
It's possible I'm mistaken about this. But did the movie
show a very brief flash of that that famous woodblock
the great Wave off Kinagaua for a second at the end?
It did? And then I think it had it added
(52:12):
the text like will it happen again? Yeah, So I wondered,
did you know what to make of that? Like why
the great wave? In particular? I believe this is a
This is a piece of art we've discussed in the
show before. We think we talked about it on a
stuff to Well your Mind episode about rogue waves, because
but I believe to depict a rogue wave right right? Um?
And uh I was. I was looking up for like
(52:33):
a nice concise description of what this what this picture is,
and what it perhaps means. And I found one at
the Yale University Art Gallery. Um, and this is this
is what they they have written there. Quote. At first glance,
snow capped Mount Fuji looks calm in the background of
this print, far from the boats and towering waves, But
the mountain is slightly obscured by a boat whose sharp,
(52:55):
sickle like tip threatens to lop off Mount Fujie's peak,
and recent scholars suggests that this print has political implications.
Mount Fuji, a symbol of Japan, is menaced by boats
and overpowering waves, both of which may imply a fear
of foreign powers encroaching on Japanese shores. Indeed, in eighteen
fifty three, roughly twenty years after this print was made,
(53:17):
the American commodore Matthew Perry led a United States Navy
fleet into the Tokyo Harbor and forcibly open Japan to trade.
So I think we might interpret this as as is,
meaning like pollution is the next great wave, or it
is the current great wave, and it is threatening Japan,
and and you know, can we stop it? Can we
(53:40):
rise up against? Like what is our what what is
our resolve against this threat? And god Zilla himself embodies
that resolve. Yeah, I believe so. By the way, there
are multiple versions. You know, this is a very popular
piece of art, so there's been various reinterpretations and parodies
of it over time. If you just do a quick
goal image search for the Great Wave off kind of
(54:02):
Gawa Godzilla, you will find depictions of Godzilla battling the wave. Literally,
um depictions of Godzilla as the Wave. It's pretty fun.
That's good, all right? Well should we wrap it up there? Yeah,
let's go ahead and close the book on this one. Now.
If you're wondering, though, where can I watch Godzilla Versus Hetera? Uh?
(54:23):
If you if you subscribe to HBO Max, you can
find it in the TCM collection there, which is where
we watched it in really just glorious quality. But you
can also pick it up in various other formats including
Blu ray and if you want to go for something special, uh,
pick up pick it up as part of the Criterion
Collection box set Godzilla the Showa era Films through. So yes,
(54:47):
I think this marks the first weird house cinema film
that is also in the Criterion Collection. Oh, I'm not
so sure about that. Didn't there a criterion of Split Second? What?
What about Robot Shocks? Not yet? Used to believe? I
think that I could be right. I think this is
their first Criterion colley because I don't think Mad Love
(55:08):
is in the Criterion Collection and transfers to Return of
Jack Death not yet, not yet? All right, Well, I
gotta say honestly, this is one of the most enjoyable
Godzilla movies I've ever seen. It's it's kind of notorious. Actually,
if you look at you know, lists of people ranking
the best Godzilla films, it does not usually make the
top tier, but I disagree. I would put it right
(55:30):
up there with the best. Yeah, it's pleasant to watch,
So if you if you're looking for a Godzilla film,
give this one your consideration. Alright, so we're wrapping it
up here. As always, you can catch Weird House Cinema
every Friday, and the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. Uh,
you can find that feed wherever you get your podcast,
but if you want to get to it quickly, you
can go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com
(55:51):
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You can finally get Weird House Cinemas logo or a
version of its logo on T shirts and stickers and
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(56:13):
all sorts of stuff. So that's there. If you want.
It's just you know, just for fun um. But the
best thing you can do to support our show is
just simply to rate, review and subscribe wherever you have
the power to do so huge things as always to
our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would
like to get in touch with us with feedback on
this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for
the future, or just to say hello, you can email
(56:34):
us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Stuff to Blow Your Mind's production of I Heart Radio.
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Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is
Rob Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Godzilla time
on the podcast. But maybe a Godzilla you're a little
bit less familiar with one that was new to me
(00:23):
as of this week. Today we are doing the Godzilla
picture that was too hot for Toho, the Godzilla film
that is too radical, it's too dangerous, it must be stopped.
It's Godzilla versus headera. Yes, Godzilla versus Headera. One I
had never seen before. And I think you know, I've
seen a fair number of Godzilla films over time, and
(00:45):
I think I tend to have I tend to have
watched the ones that were either on TBS back in
the day they would show them in like the Afternoon
when I was a kid, or ones that were featured
on Mystery Science Theater three thousand later on. But there, there,
of course have been at tons of Godzilla films over
the years, and this is one that simply fell through
the cracks for me. I did not I did not
know it existed until this week when you said, Hey,
(01:07):
why don't we do a Kaiju movie. Why don't we
do either this one or that one? And I looked
and I saw, well, it looks like Godzilla versus Hetera
is available on HBO Max as part of the Turner
Classic Films selection. There. Well, let's do that one. It's
the easiest one for me to to see. And I'm
so glad I did the other option we were looking at.
It's funny because the two movies have a kind of
(01:28):
similar premise. The other one we were looking at was
The Space Amiba, which does not have Godzilla in it.
It's a kaiju movie about an alien microbe that lands
on an island in the South Pacific and there it
transforms uh some examples of local wildlife into giant monsters.
I think it makes a big squid and a big
crab and one other thing I don't recall. Um. But
(01:50):
in this movie we also have an alien microbe I think,
coming from a gaseous nebula or a speculated by one
character later on, from a planet covered in sludge sludge
like planet, dark sludgy planet, dark sludgy planet that has
come to Earth. And whereas many aliens would say take
me to your leader, this one says take me to
your smoke stacks. I need to get high. Take me
(02:11):
to your pollution. Yes, And then the one character even says,
wasn't this good? It can eat up all our pollution,
Like no, it's just too destructive, that's right. Yeah, So
this is a pollution monster that huffs airborne particulates straight
out of smoke stacks. He is a brimstone beast from
space that exudes sulfurous gas and acid and poison and
(02:33):
uh and and his bad news all around. Yeah. So
one thing about this film is this, first of all,
this film is very much a Kaiju versus film. So
he is going to largely hit the same plot points
you're familiar with. Some new creature presents a threat to
humanity and established veteran in this case, Godzilla shows up
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to battle it. Human characters watch on his battle proceeds. Um,
you know that you're you're guy. Monster is gonna be
on the ropes for a little bit, but it's gonna
have a big comeback and eventually win the day. So
God Deliversus Hetera is going to give you all of
those points. But there's so much additional weirdness here. There's
so much visual flare in this film, I feel like
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it really stands apart from pretty much all the other
Kaiju films that I've seen. I'm actually I seriously entertained
putting it above Shin Godzilla is my favorite Godzilla movie.
I was thinking about the same thing. This is a
new favorite for me, definitely my top three now um
and much like you, I also have Shinn Godzilla near
the top of the heap. But mainly it's the reason
(03:37):
I was so enthralled by this movie was its novelty.
Having seen many Kaiju movies, it has a lot of
the familiar elements, and in fact, I would say the
familiar elements are actually the weakest part of this movie
as far as the big monster meet Slam goes. I mean,
there is a you know, extended thirty minute beat down
at the end of the movie that is Okay, it's
(03:58):
not one of the best, but it's also not one
of the worst. But it is the other elements of
this movie that really make it an absolute standout, without
a doubt, the most bizarre Godzilla movie I've ever seen.
Uh in that this movie believes it is art, yes, absolutely, no, no, yeah,
no question about this. It thinks it's art and it's
(04:18):
making a statement and maybe it's going to change the world. Yeah,
it's it's probably the best example of an avant garde
Godzilla film, and that's one of the reasons that why
it's so watchable. It's also one of the reasons that
uh that that it's director was criticized back in the day,
and indeed never directed another Godzilla film. You'll see his
directorial credit I and IMDb for some other Godzilla films
(04:42):
with us because they utilized a footage from previous films
in those those pictures. That's right. So the director was
Yoshimitsu Bano and uh and you will frequently see references
to this as the movie that ended his Godzilla career.
You know, he could have gone on to do all
kinds of Godzilla stuff, but like I said to the beginning,
this was just too hot for Toho. It was too weird,
(05:03):
it was too radical, it was rock in the boat.
You can't make movies like this, man, Yeah, exactly. There
are a lot of stories about how producer Tomoyuki Tanaka
responded to this. There's at least one story in which
he said, you've ruined Godzilla. Uh, And there was a
lot of anger, and I was there's a lot of
There's a great blog post about this from Patrick Galvin
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at Toho Kingdom dot com. You can look it up.
He has a Yoshimitsu Bano in Memorium post that goes
through a lot of this and talks about his his achievements,
his uh you know what he gave the Godzilla UM franchise,
but then also how it was received at the time.
UH So, yeah, this is this is a movie that
was maybe ahead of its time, and I think stands
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the test of time because it is doing things differently.
So what is it doing differently? I could list a
number of things. One thing I will say is the
esthetic differences. It's much more free form than any other
Godzilla movie I've ever seen in that it uh it
inserts things that are outside the normal stream of plot development.
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So it has musical numbers. It has animated segments there.
They're short, but there's several of them throughout the movie,
and there they were some of my favorite parts because
they're beautiful animation. It's almost like a Godzilla movie with
elements of like the Yellow Submarine movie and uh and
other sort of late sixties psychedelic films that involved a
lot of uh, exciting visuals with abstract colors and dancing
(06:31):
in a club. Yeah. And also yeah, there's also a
huge cultural element to this as well. There's a there's
a sense of the youth movement and the youth culture
and and and and and their rise and their importance
and and their part in the fight. Generally, in a
kaiju movie, who do you see fighting the kaiju? Who's
raising arms against the kaiju? It is the military, right,
(06:52):
the authorities? Yeah? Yeah, and in this we see the
authorities playing a part but also failing in ways, and
it's the youth who are who are leading the charge
at one point. Yes, in this movie. Ultimately, I think
the authorities are portrayed as almost entirely incompetent, that like,
they are not the ones preserving order. Ultimately, it's Godzilla
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who's the one who is preserving order and Godzilla. Um.
I was trying to think about what Godzilla represents in
this movie, because I think you can make a case
that a lot of the Godzilla films have a um
I mean, you know, it's it's hard to say they
have a very clear message, but to the extent that
there is a message in them, it's a kind of
(07:34):
vague environmental one. It's, you know that we have done
things to the earth, and in doing things to the earth,
through maybe weapons testing or industry, we have upset the
natural order and we have unleashed forces that are beyond
our control. But like I said, uh, I think that
that critique is in most Godzilla movies very buried under
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the surface, very vague. In this movie it's the opposite.
It it's not only overt, it's extremely over there, screaming
in your face with an environmental message. Yeah. Yeah, they
definitely lean into the idea that Godzilla is is not
only it's not just a big monster for kids, so
they acknowledge that, but he is also something of an
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embodiment of the nation's or a cultures will you know,
Like like Godzilla represents, uh in a sense, humanity struggle
against pollution, against destructive elements of of the world, and
the question of can Godzilla defeat this enemy is ultimately
a question of whether we can, whether we have the
public will to confront it. That's another transition I would say. Originally,
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Godzilla is sort of the manifestation of of us having
unleashed forces beyond our control by our upsetting of the
natural order. In this movie, he is the thing that
fights back against the monster created by industrial pollution. Yeah,
not a question. I don't know if you know the
answer to this. One of the fun things we see
with the Godzilla arc is that in the very first
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Toho Godzilla movie, Godzilla is the antagonist of the film, like,
you know, this is a dangerous, scary, dark monster that
that that brings great destruction. But by the later films,
Godzilla is often sort of the hero of the film,
is portrayed as a force who is inherently dangerous, but
which ultimately fights against a force that is even more
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threatening or even more malevolent. And that's the case in
this movie. So I wonder, like, how exactly does that
arc develop? And is that the case for other movies,
Like I've watched some of the Gammera movies where you know,
Gammera is doing the same thing Godzilla is doing in
the In the later movies, Gammera is good and he's
fighting against the bad monsters. Was that always the case
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with Gammera or did Gamera start as bad like Godzilla did?
If memory serves Gammera follow the exact same track Gammera
in the first film as a threat that has to
be overcome and launched into space. I think ultimately and
this would be This would be for a more in
depth discussion later, perhaps drawing on the work of people
who have maybe thought longer and harder about this than
(10:05):
we have. But I imagine there is there are a
lot of comparisons to be made with the way deities
change over time. Uh, you know, we can. I don't
know if it would be the exact same trajectory or
would be kind of an inverse trajectory in some cases.
But uh, I wonder how you know, in a loose
sense anyway, Godzilla is a deity. He exists not in
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the the the mythic realm of you know, like the
ancient world or even modern religion. But he's in the
film myth world and and is therefore not quite the
same as our traditional ideas of deity, but perhaps subject
to some of the same changes in the way we
perceive him. Well, maybe before we go on any further,
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we should hit some trailer audio. All right, let's have it.
This I believe is from the English trailer for Godzilla
Versus to Become the most fearful mennace that ever threatened mankind,
growing ever more deadly un smug. Only one pos dares
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stand up lords overpowering evil. Nothing men can do can
stop the smug Monster and Godzilla save the earth from
this mastodon of destruction. All right? Sounds good to me
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and and we we should, of course, note that in
the US, this I think, was originally released as Godzilla
Versus the Smog Monster. Yeah, that's right, though from what
I understand in the movie, the monster is not made
of smog. The monster is made mostly of why are
born pollutants and then comes out onto land to huff
(12:03):
the smog. Yeah, he's made out of like sludge and
minerals and all. Um A quick quick bit of trivia. Uh.
In Germany, this film was released as Frankenstein's Battle against
the Devil's Monster. That doesn't make any sense? Um. I
was this was new to me, but apparently uh. In
the German release of Godzilla films, it was often explained
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that Dr Victor Frankenstein created the monsters that Godzilla fights, uh,
and it just had to do with with how they
were releasing them at the time. So he had multiple
Toho films Tohoe did some Frankenstein films about Jenking Giant
Frankenstein's and uh, and I checked, It's okay if I
called them Frankenstein's. I checked with the Frankenstein's monster on this.
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But but this sort of set the precedent for how
you would release a big monster movie in Germany. Yeah.
I remember reading a few weeks ago about a movie
I've never heard of before. That is it is directly
a Frankenstein Kaischen, not just called Frankenstein. It's like about
now that I'm about to say this, this really sounds wrong,
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but I think what it is is a Nazi scientist
takes Frankenstein's brain to Japan for study and there it
gets uh it somehow gets turned into a giant monster. Yep.
I believe that's right, Okay, strange or maybe we'll come
back to it. We're talking about doing some Frankenstein films eventually.
(13:26):
All right, I guess we should come back to talk
about the director of Godzilla versus Hetera, who was again
Yoshi Mitsu Bano. Yes, um director, also co writer. He
lived one through two thousand and seventeen. This was his
first and only Godzilla movie. Um again you'll see him
credited on the Gigan and the Megalon movies, but that's
just because they utilize older footage. He previously served as
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assistant director and second assistant director on some really notable
A Kira Kurosawa pictures, including Throne of Blood in nineteen
fifty seven. That's that wonderful Samurai Macbeth movie, and also
The Hidden Fortress, in which I think is often cited
as one of George Lucas's influences in UM the creation
of the original Star Wars picture, both great films. Yes,
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I've also read that Banno was was very much a
part of the Toho film system. So he came up
in Toho and he stowed it under several notable Toho directors.
I believe his grip on this film is strong, because
unlike some other Kaiju films, this is one in which
I detect not just a Toho House style, but I
feel a really strong, bold, individual director's vision guiding the
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whole thing. Yes, that absolutely, and I think it's why
at the time there seems to have been tensioned with
producer Tanaka over this UM. It seems like he he
fell out of good graces with Toho and ultimately went
on to be more of a producer. He was but
was EP on the two thousand fourteen American Godzilla movie,
and I believe he's credited even though he's occurred after
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his death. I think he's credited on Godzilla, King of
the Monsters from and Godzilla Versus Kong. But yeah, I
think this is the reason why he was controversial at
the time but is memorable today. You know, there have
been so many Godzilla films, how many of them are
really worth looking up and seeing if you're not a completist,
I would say this is one that's worth going back
(15:20):
and seeing. Yes, totally. Uh. And it's different than a
lot of the other best ones because I would say
a lot of the other best Godzilla movies, apart from
the first one, the first one is very dark and gloomy.
A lot of the other best ones are very bright
and lively and sort of fast moving and fun. This
one is also overall dark and gloomy, but it's excellently
(15:41):
dark and gloomy. Yeah, yeah, alright. So there was another
writer on this, u Takeishi Kimura, who lived through a
studio writer for Toho. He was involved in more than
thirty films, including some really notable ones including Rodan the Mysteriens.
Oh he was he was the fer of Matango. Allegedly
(16:02):
he believed this was his finest work, and it is
a fine work. We may have to come back to Mettango.
This is about an island where where a fungal infection
turns humans into um my conned uh mutations. It's it's
pretty fabulous, so yes, Metango is worth checking out. Kimura
also worked on Frankenstein Versus Beragon. This was a giant
(16:23):
Frankenstein movie from from Toto, The War of the Gargantuans,
King Kong Escapes Destroy All Monsters and uh. And of
course this wonderful Godzilla film Takeshi Kimura. Is interesting because
I was finding a lot of very tantalizing biographical details
about him online, but not in very solid looking sources.
(16:43):
That and I couldn't find them backed up anywhere that
looked more solid. So so frustratingly, I can't report a
lot about him with confidence. But if, for example, some
of the like user submitted biographies I found of him
on various sites have any truth to them, uh, he
was a strange and interesting figure. He was allegedly known
for writing Tohoe monster movies with a more gloomy outlook
(17:05):
and and serious political themes, as opposed to the happy
golokie beat downs of other you know repeat Kaiju screenwriters. Well,
and as we turned to the cast here, let's go
right to the beat down. We're gonna talk about the
human characters played by human actors, but let's start with
the monsters. Oh yeah, So here's something about this movie.
Despite the fact that it has a much darker tone,
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the Godzilla in this movie is kind of sassy. I
really detect a sense of humor in Godzilla's gestures and
expressions in this film. There's even a really funny moment
later on where the military is trying to do something
to defeat the opposing monster and fails, and Godzilla does
almost kind of a shrug, like, oh boy, do I
have to do everything myself? Yeah? Yeah, there's a little
(17:50):
bit of sass. He's a he's a bit of a
showboat at times. I mean, he's on the ropes a
lot in this but he but he does. He shows
he's a little bit of a showboat in a few scenes.
And he also takes some really inventive bumps, like he'll
get shot with a laser and do a complete front flip.
So there are times like that where I was really
admiring the performance. And indeed the performer here is Haruo
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Nakajima who lived nineteen sev He is uh is kind
of an all star of the of the Godzilla franchise.
He played Godzilla in twelve consecutive films. He was also
in Mathra and the War of the Gargantua's uh as
as All, as well as Akira Kua SAWA's Seven Samurai
uh Most people forget that in the original cut of
(18:31):
that the Seven Samurai Battle the Giant Monster. No, not
not really, but he played a non monster in that.
But generally he's considered a legend of the rubber Monster suit,
the rubber Suit actor par excellence. I haven't seen Mosra
in a long time, but I remember that one. This
is known for being one of the best of the
meat slams. It's like a really great monster throwdown. Now,
(18:55):
the enemy in this cetera is played by uh Kimpachiro Satsuma,
who was born in seven and as of this recording
is is still alive. Um And while he plays Godzilla's
enemy in this picture. Satsuma would go on to play
the King of Monsters himself after Nakajima retired, so Satsuma
served as Godzilla um from through. Seeing those dates though,
(19:19):
did make me a little bit sag with sadness as
I imagine the transition from Godzilla and and his monster
enemies being a person in a suit to being a
c G. I creation, M. Yeah, I mean, you gotta
love love the suit and you know there there. I
think there's been a whole documentaries about about what was
required of these gentlemen because these were very physical performances.
(19:43):
They involve suits that were often not very well ventilated,
and you're, you know, you're you're sweating profusely inside them.
And as we mentioned, like with Godzilla, there's a certain
it's not just a stammer around and smash a building.
There's a certain physicality to the performance that really shines through. Uh.
You have to betray more than just brute lizard strength
(20:04):
or anything like that. There is a character there that
the actor is portraying. All right, well, let's get into
the human characters. Now. Most most of these characters are
going to be members of the Yanno family, the Yano
family being the key family of humans. And um, let's
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start with the child the boy. Uh. This is um
Hiroyuki Kawasi playing Kenyano and he was This actor was
born in nineteen sixty four. Child actor was also uh.
I think he showed up in ninety three's Godzilla versus
Megalon as well, and he wasn't in much, but he
was in a TV series called Sorrow Sorrow Nu Guandan,
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which I believe is Army of the Apes uh if
you translated. Uh. This was eventually cut and released as
a film in the US by Sandy Frank as Time
of the APESCE Theater three thousand. Viewers will be familiar
with this film, um, which is a lot of fun.
But i've i've I have never had the chance to
watch the original TV series, but there's a lot of
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it and it has huge fans in Japan. Uh people
still follow it, and it seems like there's a lot
more like well, what you see in Time of the
Apes is very much a compressed uh plot line. There's
apparently a lot more going on. There's a robot in it. Uh.
I would love to know more and I'd love to
hear from anyone who's watched it in full. I don't
think it's been really widely available on DVD or Blu
(21:34):
ray or even uh like you know, streaming services outside
of Japan. Now, Rob, I have a Kaiju question. Maybe
you can shed some light on this for me. In
Godzilla versus Hetera, this young boy Ken has a kind
of psychic connection with the monsters. He has apocalyptic visions
of the small creature Hetera, and he has uh and
(21:56):
he he sort of has omens about when Godzilla will
pere to save the day. So and and this is
not the only film where there is some kind of
psychic or at least emotional bond between the Kaiju monster
and a young child. It's often true in like the
Gammera movies. And do you know, is there a reason
for this recurring theme. I don't know. It's it's one
(22:19):
of those things that is often with Gammer's Like Gammer
is a friend of children, you know, there there is
this innate connection. I don't think I have personally seen
a Kaiju film other than this one where it's described
as an overt you know, psychic link, a telepathic link
between monster and child, like there's some sort of sacred
bond there. I feel like it's something, And I could
be wrong on this, because I'm not a Kaiju movie
(22:41):
expert or a Godzilla expert or anything, but I feel
like this. In this case, our screenwriters said, well, obviously
there's this link is here. Let's actually explain what it
is a bit to a certain extent while still retaining
its mystery. Okay, okay, I mean, maybe it could just
be that you need to have some kind of demonstration
of an emotional connection between the monster and the human characters.
(23:04):
And maybe it's just natural to assume that only a
child has the moral purity to to have that connection
with the big beast. Now, if we do go back
to that idea of Godzilla's an actual deity, it is
interesting the use of in this film. I don't know
if you notice some of these details, but first of all,
the boy Ken he has toy Godzilla's and he has
(23:26):
something like a Godzilla shrine set up, and this is
kind of lightly juxtaposed with the casual use of of
tiny um amulets and uh and you know, visions of
I think like the like the Buddha that are arranged
around the television sets and other scenes. Yes, yes, so
I don't know how much what they're how much they're
really trying to say with that, but I feel like
(23:48):
if one wants to really chew on the matter, you
can definitely start making those connections. I love the fact
that Ken is playing with Godzilla dolls in this movie
because it's like that scene in Halloween three where Tom
Atkins is sitting at the bar and he's watching the
first Halloween movie on a TV. That's pretty good. All right,
Let's move on to some of these other human characters.
Um So, the matriarch of the Yano family is um
(24:13):
Is Toshi Yano, played by Toshi Kimura. She acted in
such pictures as sort of The Beast, Revenge and The
Three Outlaws Samurai and then Akira Yamauchi plays Dr Toru Yano,
the patriarch of the family. He lived through nine. This
seems to be his biggest role, but he was He
also had had a part in Lone Wolf and cub
(24:35):
Baby cart in the Land of Demons from one um
This This is of course a classic of the genre
and was also a major inspiration on the Mandalorian TV series.
So he plays the scientist character. Usually in these movies
you need at least one scientist character who's there to
to figure out the nature of of the new threat.
And so he's some kind of biologist who has an
(24:56):
early encounter with the head or a beast in the
water and ends up like with a big sulfuric acid
burn on his face. And there's a very funny scene
later on where he's, you know, he's trying to solve
the problem and uh, he's lying awake and his wife
comes in and says something like she's like, stop thinking
about hetera and go to bed. Yeah. He spends a
(25:16):
lot of the picture kind of bedridden and recovering from
his injuries. Yeah, all right there. Well, also have a
couple of characters who are not members of the Yano
family but are very close with them. The first of
all is the character Yukio Kuchi played by uh Toshio Shiba,
and this is the the the youth with the really
(25:38):
captivating eyes. I think Yukio is supposed to be Toshi's brother,
the okay Kin's mother's brother, so ken Ken's uncle. Okay,
all right, that was that was kind of lost on me,
I guess, But otherwise he's He's just like a young
guy who hangs out with the family and then later
goes to a psychedelic nightclub. Uh. So Shiba had a
(26:01):
long TV and film career, including the nineteen seventy one
Kaiju movie Mirror Man. Uh and I think he's still active.
He was born in n he has amazingly distinctive eyes.
He's one of those people who, uh, You've probably had
this experience before where I saw him and I was like, oh,
he looks so familiar. What have I seen him in before?
(26:21):
And I looked and I couldn't find anything. So I
think maybe I've never seen him in anything before. He
just has such a distinctive look that that he seemed familiar. Yeah, same,
all right. And then we also have a character by
the name of Miki Fuji no Miya uh this uh
play played by the singer Kiki Omari. This is I
(26:43):
think her only film role, but she does seem to
have had a much richer career as a singer. Um
and it looks like she's still active, at least on
Japanese language social media. She seems to have a following
as being I mean, it's kind of like I guess cinematically,
it's kind of like having been a Bond girl if
you were a Godzilla girl. I think there's actually a
documentary about like Godzilla Girls, and she's featured in it.
(27:06):
She has a fabulous musical number in this There are
multiple musical numbers in this movie. Actually, yeah, but she
has a lot of style. She brings a style and
hit nous to the film that that certainly stands the
test of time. And finally, I'm going to mention the
composer is Richiro Manabi who he has a hundred and
fourteen score credits on IMDb. I'm not I'm not sure
(27:28):
if he's responsible though for the opening music. I guess
he is. Well, we'll get to that in a minute.
But has really really nice opening music, a really nice
theme song they keep really returning to. It's really nice.
It's just great. I did read that Guy Henrick did
the lyrics for the English version. I have not heard
that because the version we watched is the one on
(27:50):
HBO Max that's up there with the TCM collection um
and it is. It is in the original Japanese with subtitles.
But I guess there was an English language version of it,
like they dubbed it for releasing the States, and Himrik
is the guy who did a lot of lyrics for
beach movies back in the day, stuff like Beach Blanket
Bingo and Muscle Beach Party. So I'm just gonna guess here,
(28:12):
but I'm I'm guessing that his lyrics did not retain
the strong and dire environmental message that we find in
the the actual Japanese lyrics. Maybe not the beach movies,
the bikini movie that the peak of human artistic achievement.
All right, well, let's let's get into the plot a
bit here. All right. Well, one thing this movie really
(28:34):
does is it sticks to its themes. It hits you
right with them at the outset, and then it does
not give up. So you start with, of course, as always,
the classic glorious Toho logo, and then very first thing
you see smokestacks, billowing clouds of soot, rushing water slicked
with oil and green foam. The message is clear, the
(28:56):
earth is disgusting, the earth is just ruined. And then
and then you see water and what's this? What's coming
out of the water? Is it a slimy, cancerous garbage
bag with red crocodile eyes boiling up to the surface.
That's right, you see Hetera poking up out of the
water right at the top. Just no waiting at all.
(29:19):
Now you don't see all of them, no, no, much
like a crocodile like looking up over the top of
the water. You just see a kind of the pebbled
surface of the top of his head and the eyes
looking out there. And he has these vertically oriented red
eyes that are very very prominently featured throughout this movie
in fact, and eyes somehow seemed to be a theme
(29:40):
of the film because remember, like his eyes or his power,
Godzilla partially defeats him by pulling his eyes out and
electrocuting them. But as soon as you see Hetera title card,
Godzilla versus Hetera, and then bam straight to a James
Bond style musical introduction. Amazing. And and when I say
(30:01):
James Bond style, I really mean it, as in, there's
like a glamorous singer doing a theme song for the
movie over over colorful abstract backgrounds, just like in a
in a James Bond title sequence. Yeah. This this track,
by the way, is called give Back the Sun exclamation point,
and you can find this on whatever you're you're streaming music,
(30:21):
side of choice happens to be. I'll also try to
include this embedded on the blog post for this episode
at Samuda music dot Com. I had one of those
moments where I was watching this by myself, but I
just wanted to be looking around to find somebody else
in the room, like are you seeing this? Are you
seeing the same thing I'm seeing? The song is is tremendous.
I loved it, Yeah, but I mean because the lyrics
(30:43):
are are so solid and gloomy and and it's and
it's it's an interesting juxtaposition between the tone of the
lyrics and the the style of the song. But then yeah,
that we have this um you know this fabulous uh
you know splash of color behind her um as she's
singing of this is this bond sense of of of
(31:03):
wonder and it's kind of I guess the stuff behind
her too with a kind of like oil lights. It's
like the the Joshua Light Show, that stuff you've see
in a lot of like psychedelic performances. Uh So it's
we have a strong opening with with psychedelia and um
in music and fashion, but then also scenes of sludge
and pollution. And and I have to say we in
(31:25):
in the movie Frog. When we talked about Frogs in
a previous episode of Weird House, we talked about the
problem of creating fake looking garbage, fake looking pollution. Uh.
And I feel like this movie nails its pollution. The
pollution looks real and yet has a surreal quality to
it that feels like it is it is art. It's disgusting. Yeah.
(31:45):
And the oh, the lyrics of the song, it's all
like the birds and the fish they are all dead. Uh.
It's the you know, the gold Finger song, but it's
about pollution. And there's a great part where in the
verse she's just listing off names of chemicals. She's singing mercury, cobalt, cadmium,
All life is gone. The fields and the mountains are silent. Uh.
(32:08):
And there's like green bubbles in the background and uh.
And then and then when she gets to the line,
there's no one left on earth. This also ties back
to our discussion from frogs, because what is the single
piece of garbage or litter that conveys squalor better than
anything else. It is a discarded doll And what do
(32:28):
you see here? Floating in the oil in the trash.
It is a filthy discarded doll, or maybe it's a mannequin,
but it's a it's a doll mannequin humanoid shape. Yeah,
it's perfectly the plastic likeness of the human form discarded
in the plastic strewn, polluted mess. Uh. The the this
this this patina that encompasses our culture. Oh and there's
(32:52):
a grandfather clock floating in the muck. That's pretty great.
So good. So this movie really comes out strong. A
lot of Kaiju movies are just about like it doesn't
even like you just want to skip to the big
battle at the end, like the big battle in the
destruction and the monster beat down, that's all the matters.
Usually in this film, everything else is done to such
(33:13):
a high level. Uh. I feel like you'd be hard
pressed to find a Godzilla movie or any Kaiju movie
that is more interesting in its scenes that are not
about monsters battling. I totally agree. In fact, it was
inverted for me. The only time in this movie that
I did start to get a little board was during
the big monster fight towards the end, which which does
(33:34):
go on a bit long. But I'm not even sure,
that's a an appropriate criticism for me to make of
a giant monster movie. But I do just want to
reiterate one more time. You are correct. This movie passes
the fake garbage test. It's not like in Frogs, like
where you're seeing discarded beer cans that look like somebody
just strank them. Yeah. But from here we go straight
into the action, and it is what we mentioned before,
(33:57):
a young boy playing with Godzilla dolls. There's actually pretty
interesting framing in this scene. As we've said many times,
this is a visually interesting movie. It's got a well, uh,
you know, it's got a good sense of mis on
send to be pretentious about it. Interesting photography, interesting framing.
So this boy is playing with Godzilla dolls on an idyllic,
(34:18):
grassy hillside that overlooks a vast urban landscape that's just
covered with smoke stacks, like a valley of thorns. But
he's got this Godzilla shrine and is surrounded by flowers
and and it's beautiful. Uh. And and here we get
to meet the main human characters, the members of the
boy's family. The boy, of course, is Ken, and we
(34:39):
meet his father, Dr. Tooru Yano, who's a marine biologist,
his mother, Toshi, his his uncle or friend Yukio, I
think his uncle and uh and and Ken and Yukio
are talking at the beginning of Yukio is like, hey,
is Godzilla your favorite? And Kin says, yes, he's a superman.
Is he a man? I don't know. I mean, I
(35:01):
guess you could certainly say he is super compared to man. Yeah.
But anyway, they're hanging around when their unusual fish guy
shows up. There's this guy named Mr go Hey and
as soon as he arrives there, they're like, oh, hello,
have you brought us another unusual fish? So I think
it's because the father is a marine biologist that they've
got to go to guy for unusual fish. Yeah, and
(35:22):
and uh and and indeed the father what he has
various um jars of strange specimens that he's collected lining
the wall. Great set. Yeah, And so Mr go Hey
brings in the specimen, which looks like a gigantic tadpole.
It's like a fist sized tadpole. But they conclude that
it cannot be a tadpole because Mr go Hey caught
(35:43):
it at the prime spot for shrimp fishing in Saruga
Bay and do tadpoles live in the ocean? Uh? The
father says no, they do not, and Mr go Hey notes,
you know, Saruga Bay is getting really really bad, Like
he didn't catch a single shrimp there this time, and
it's almost as if the world is sort of is failing,
(36:04):
is giving out on them. And then meanwhile, once again,
this movie does not make you wait on developing things.
The family starts watching reports on TV about a giant
creature that's breaking up ships in in Saruga Bay, Like
oil tankers are coming into the bay and they're crashing
into each other and then getting snapped in half, almost
as if something is wanting to like drink the oil
(36:24):
out of the boats. Yeah. The pacing in the film
is excellent leading up to full monster reveal. Yeah, and
so of course it's investigation time. The scientist and the
scientist father and Ken have to go into the bay
and and see what's going on. So Ken hangs out
on the rocks by the shore while Dr Yano goes
into the water to see what's up, and we get
(36:45):
to see some underwater sequences. They're one of the things
I loved. I didn't know what to make of this
there's a piece of trash sunk to the bottom of
Saruga Bay that looks like an artificial swan. Okay, it's
just there. I Meanwhile, Ken up on the rocks is
like prying up muscles and he discovers that they're empty
and the crabs are bleached and dead. So it's just
(37:07):
this place has been ruined by pollution. Everything is dead.
It almost reminded me of the recent uh episodes we
did about marine mucilage. Yeah, but here I think we
get our first vision of Hetera. In fact, well it's
a it's a combination scene because Hetera actually does appear
in one form, but also Ken is having visions of
(37:28):
Hetera that seemed to go beyond what Hetera is actually
doing in this scene. Did you understand it the same way? Um? Well,
there was a lot coming at me at this point.
I think I was just like generally geeking out at
at how terrific this was visually. But the yeah, like
the father that the doctor is having his own encounter
under underwater, and then Kim is encountering all this stuff
(37:51):
above the water. Um, yeah, it's it's and is this
when we start getting the cartoons? No, that's not yet,
not yet. This finishes with like Ken being confronted by Hetera,
and Hetera like flies over him and he reaches up
with a knife, and and like, yes, part of it. Yes,
it is the Free Willie moment. It's like the moment
in Free Willy, except imagine that instead of it being
(38:13):
an orca, it was a sludge monster. And instead of
touching the creature, you were driving a knife up into
a sledge belly. That's literally what happens, and it's terrific.
Ken does a really great sledge belly slicing and uh.
And meanwhile Dr Yano down in the water is severely
burned and when so we go back to the house
(38:33):
and he's got bandages all over his face. He has
been attacked, and we learned a number of things. We
learned that Hetera he's already got a name. Now he's
named after a type of sludge called Hetero. I don't
know what hetero means, but yes. Soon after this we
we get our first cartoon sequence, which these cartoons are
absolutely wonderful. This one was labeled Happy Hetera uh, and
(38:55):
it very much reminds me of the animation style of
the Blue Meanies and the Yellow Submarine movie. Yeah, there's
a real sense of weirdness and whimsy to them. Uh
and and it's it's just fab I wish there were
actually more animated sequences in this film because they just
do a great job of breaking up the pacing um
and uh and and just you know, upping the visual
(39:16):
pizzazz of the whole feature. Now, like the last episode,
I don't think from here I'm going to do a complete,
like scene by scene breakdown of the whole movie, but
just maybe wanted to focus on some things that caught
our attention as we as we went through, because you know,
(39:38):
this is a Kaiju movie. You can probably guess basically
the structure it takes. The head remonster becomes increasingly menacing,
attacks the city until eventually Godzilla appears to fight it off,
and then it comes back even stronger, and now it
looks like Godzilla and the people are in trouble. But
then Godzilla and the people come up with ways of
fighting back, and you know, it's pretty standard. Yeah, there's
(40:00):
gonna be some buildings screwed up, there's gonna be some
sort of large scale technological approach to fighting the monster,
with mixed results. All that stuff is in play, you
will not be surprised by anything that actually happens from
a plot standpoint for the most part. But some of
the specific choices they make are still amazing. One of
(40:21):
the main ones I would say is in the first
big hetera attack scene where he comes out of the
water and he attacks the lane. He comes out of
the water to huff smoke stacks. But the way they
set that scene up is that, uh, we see I
think U k O is there at the nightclub scene,
isn't he Yes, he is, He's he seems to be
having I don't know he is the scene where he's
(40:42):
drinking like he's just down some sort of cocktail or
some sort of alcohol in the rocks and then he
kind of looks at the glass like he's he's having
mixed thoughts about what he just drank. He has a
love hate relationship with this cocktail, and he's he's dressed
in this really cool outfit. He's got his wonderful Um
colorful Um shirt on and this weird tie that absolutely love.
(41:02):
And meanwhile the nightclub itself is just amazing. You've got
more Joshua light show stuff going on behind them. You've
got this. You've got Kikiomari doing some sort of a
performance and she's wearing this weird Naiad costume with like
a nautical details on it. It's it's very psychedelic. I
(41:23):
it's it's just a really cool nightclub sequence. You watch
it and you want to be there. Yeah, love, love,
love the sequence. It's it's so strange and it's so good.
And uh, and I think there in a way we're
prising the song from the opening, or at least playing
on variations of it, because both of them have that
phrase they keep saying, give it back. I think means
(41:44):
like give give the natural resources back to the earth. Um.
But it's so strange because from there we go from
the song and the nightclub to, first of all, a
header up prank call to the police station. Did you
understand this? Um? I don't. I don't think I quite
got to say. This was a section with film where
I started watching it with my son too, so I
(42:04):
might have been slightly distracted as we we talked about
what was going on on screen. And then so you
see a police officer answered the phone and say like hello,
who is it? And then he's like, uh, that's ridiculous.
Hetera is a sea monster. So somebody's calling and saying
their Heatera maybe or maybe they're just reporting. They're like, hey,
Hero is attacking the city, and they're like, no, no,
(42:26):
it can't be. That could be to the sea, because
one of the themes here is that Hero is going
through a transformation. He's going from um an aquatic form
to a quadrupedal form. Ultimately he goes through a flying
phase and then into a bipedal form for the final fight,
though he also backtracks to a flying form a little
(42:46):
bit at will. I think you're right that that must
be how to understand it, because my version didn't make
any sense. I was like, what's with this prank call?
But yeah, no, I think he's saying, somebody reports Heatera
being on land and he's like, no, no, that can't
be because Heatera is in the law her. But what
does Hetera do once Hetera comes on land? Just slips
its mouth right over the top of the smoke stack
(43:07):
and starts huffing the gas yeah and um and of
course in all of this, Hetera is also emitting like
sulfuric acid clouds and um. Either at this point or
very Shortly afterwards, we start seeing scenes of it just
like obliterating crowds, like turning people to skeletons in the street. Yes, yes,
(43:28):
like people literally just turned into piles of bones. Yeah.
But we also watch Hetera, like Heatera has these tumor
looking things, these bumps all over its body. Should we
describe can we describe Hetera? I don't even know how
to say what Hetera looks like. Hetera looks like a
big ball of garbage with with like trailing slime tentacles
(43:51):
that has these vertically oriented red eyes. Yeah, and he's
kind of glistening, kind of sparkling, and it's it's really
quite a vicious and effective monster costume, because if you
see enough Kaiju films, you realize there are only so
many things you can really do with a with a
human in a suit. Uh. For or and or the
use of puppetry and their their limitations on in both areas, uh.
(44:15):
And I feel like they did a great job with
this costume and that it's clearly built around a bipedal
human performer. Uh, And yet it does have that feel
of some sort of amorphous sludge monster. Yeah. So this
horrible thing is attacking the city. What's going to happen?
Is Godzilla going to come and save the day. Well,
we had a hint earlier that he would because I
think was it that Ken was writing an essay for
(44:37):
school when when he said, like, I think this is
what it is. Ken is writing an essay for the
second grade for a second grade class, and it says
something like, you know, the water is polluted with with
cadmium and mercury and all this, and then it ends
with saying, I bet Godzilla would be mad if he
saw this. Yes, And then eventually he has like a
a visual hallucination, like a vision a prop to see
(45:00):
and he's like, Godzilla is coming, Godzilla is coming to
clear this up. That's right? And then what's that? It is? Godzilla?
Godzilla coming over the horizon and Godzilla and and hetera
throw down. They have a great fight, a great fight
with very weird energy, unlike any other fight I can
think of from a from a Godzilla movie that I
(45:22):
recall because it's a fight with basically no music and
very little sound effects. The fight later in the movie
has a lot more of the Godzilla squealing sound this one.
There are long stretches where it's very quiet, this kind
of low anticipatory rumble as the two monsters just kind
of regard one another and stand there swaying in the darkness.
(45:45):
It's it's very unusual, very effective. Yeah. I also like
how some of these five, maybe all of the fight scenes,
but some of the key fight scenes take place in
like a great field like it. It feels like a
like a battle field, um, instead of it being in
I don't know, a lot. A lot of Kaiju movies
they end up taking place on a model city or
around a model city, and I don't know, this one
(46:06):
just just had a different feel to it. Yeah, two monsters,
they're like like engines, idoling almost. Yeah, And I should say,
all this is going on the fight is is sizing
up between them while they're while Yuko is still in
the nightclub, and he's starting to have hallucinations of all
the dancers in the club wearing fish masks, which was
just so it's one of multiple parts of this movie
(46:29):
that reminded me of The wicker Man. So they're they're
fish masks here. But then later on in the movie,
all the young people they decided like, well, Heatera is here,
and you know, the earth is so polluted. We're basically
near the end of human civilization anyway, So let's just
go have a big Wickerman party on Mount Fuji, which
is exactly what they do. They go up and that
they do a summer ile kind of thing. Yeah, it's
(46:51):
a it's a it's kind of a somber affair. They're
kind of I guess morning, but also ultimately bringing the
fight to Hedra that the military has has mostly failed, UH,
and it's up to the youth to to raise their
voices in song and then ultimately like throwing torches at
Hetera as he advances. It's it's pretty stirring because it
(47:13):
you know, it's it's it's about the youth culture. And
then there's this other UH and their role in perhaps
fighting these important battles of the future, you know, certainly
and environmentally, but it but also you have these sequences
in this whole sequence, you see these kind of ghostly
looking old people watching on from the shadows with kind
of somber looks on their faces. Oh yeah, that was
(47:35):
one of the strangest things to me. I didn't know
what to make of that. I thought maybe I had
missed a scene explaining what was going on there or something.
But while there is this Mount Fuji young people Wickerman
party and they're out playing guitars and dancing in the field,
there are these like ghastly people of the wheat who
are just standing behind these tall grassy stalks with these gray,
(47:55):
impassive faces and just watching. Yeah. I it reminded me
a lot. This movie reminded me a lot in general
of some of the works of Miyazaki um because he
has a lot of environmental themes in his work, but
also there are he does deal with these kind of
generational um conflicts as well. Uh. And I feel like,
(48:17):
and I could be could be wrong in this, but
I feel like that's the territory that that this director
was getting into with Godzilla versus hetera, at least just
a flash of it. There's this this idea of generational conflict, uh,
concerning the confrontation of in this case, environmental issues. So
maybe it's like the gray people of the weed are
(48:39):
kind of like, uh, the adults and spirited away who
can't see the magic and are just sitting at the
food stall, stuffing their faces until they turn into pigs. Yeah. Yeah, perhaps,
but of course eventually it's it's all about Godzilla and
had a battling each other. And boy did they battle.
They battle. They battle a lot. They've had a hard there.
Godzillas on the ropes they or comebacks. And then uh
(49:01):
and and there's a sequence where where there's also flying
like Heatera goes into a flying form, drops Godzilla onto
the side of a mountain, and then Godzilla falls into
a hole. And then then then Hetera is going to
like sludge flood the hole. It gets it gets really
intense there. Yeah, horrible. Is so that it's a part
(49:22):
where you think Godzilla is maybe gonna die, like Heatera
throws him into an open grave of toxic sewage. Yeah. Oh,
and then but the flying heater is not the only
one to fly. Godzilla flies in this And I don't
think i'd seen this before. I started shouting when I
saw it. Godzilla like balls up basically like I was
gonna say, he tucks his tail. That makes it sound
(49:42):
like he's ashamed. He's not. He like balls up into
an almost kind of fetal position and then kind of
hurt like blows out the radiation breath like a jet pack.
Exhaust trail and flies. Yeah. I I thought I'd seen
all Godzilla's tricks before, but this is my first time
seeing this. I'm curious if this ever came him up
again in another Godzilla film, or if they decided not to.
(50:03):
I mean, I thought it would look it fit perfectly
in this film. I'm not sure if other Godzilla directors
would have liked it. Yeah, I mean, if Godzilla can fly,
that kind of changes the whole equation. I'm sure there
have been other movies where he flies. I have a
vague tingling recollection that that happens in something else, but
it's certainly not all of them now Ultimately there it's
(50:24):
one of those sequences where it involves the human characters
trying to set some kind of technological trap for the monster.
They're trying to electrocute Hetera because the scientists character figures
out that electricity drives out the sludge and this is
the only way it can be defeated. And if they're
not able to defeat it with these big electrodes, uh,
(50:45):
then it will get too big for even Godzilla to handle,
and then it will just take over the world. Right also, oxygen,
so they bombit with oxygen from helicopters a little bit.
Oh yeah, yeah, I remember that. But like we were saying, ultimately,
the military is not very good at uphold they're part
of the deal, and Godzilla kind of has to do
everything for them, and Godzilla like size and shrugs his shoulders,
(51:06):
like really, guys. But but eventually Godzilla pairs his radiation
radiation breath with the giant electrodes, and of course you
know who wins in the end, but you know, it's
not hard to guess. But uh, there's a lot of
great stuff along the way. One of my favorite parts
was when Godzilla it almost seems like the good guys
(51:26):
think they have defeated the monster like twice already, but
it keeps coming back, and so Godzilla, having defeated it
another time, starts sort of reaching into the sludge corpse
body and just like ripping out guts and throwing them
all over the place, like you know, you get some guts,
and you get some guts, and all the bits of
guts all dry out in the electric field, and and
(51:49):
I thought that part was great. Yeah, just breath blast
the whole field afterwards, and then it's done. So I
don't know, if you notice the same thing I did.
It's possible I'm mistaken about this. But did the movie
show a very brief flash of that that famous woodblock
the great Wave off Kinagaua for a second at the end?
It did? And then I think it had it added
(52:12):
the text like will it happen again? Yeah, So I wondered,
did you know what to make of that? Like why
the great wave? In particular? I believe this is a
This is a piece of art we've discussed in the
show before. We think we talked about it on a
stuff to Well your Mind episode about rogue waves, because
but I believe to depict a rogue wave right right? Um?
And uh I was. I was looking up for like
(52:33):
a nice concise description of what this what this picture is,
and what it perhaps means. And I found one at
the Yale University Art Gallery. Um, and this is this
is what they they have written there. Quote. At first glance,
snow capped Mount Fuji looks calm in the background of
this print, far from the boats and towering waves, But
the mountain is slightly obscured by a boat whose sharp,
(52:55):
sickle like tip threatens to lop off Mount Fujie's peak,
and recent scholars suggests that this print has political implications.
Mount Fuji, a symbol of Japan, is menaced by boats
and overpowering waves, both of which may imply a fear
of foreign powers encroaching on Japanese shores. Indeed, in eighteen
fifty three, roughly twenty years after this print was made,
(53:17):
the American commodore Matthew Perry led a United States Navy
fleet into the Tokyo Harbor and forcibly open Japan to trade.
So I think we might interpret this as as is,
meaning like pollution is the next great wave, or it
is the current great wave, and it is threatening Japan,
and and you know, can we stop it? Can we
(53:40):
rise up against? Like what is our what what is
our resolve against this threat? And god Zilla himself embodies
that resolve. Yeah, I believe so. By the way, there
are multiple versions. You know, this is a very popular
piece of art, so there's been various reinterpretations and parodies
of it over time. If you just do a quick
goal image search for the Great Wave off kind of
(54:02):
Gawa Godzilla, you will find depictions of Godzilla battling the wave. Literally,
um depictions of Godzilla as the Wave. It's pretty fun.
That's good, all right? Well should we wrap it up there? Yeah,
let's go ahead and close the book on this one. Now.
If you're wondering, though, where can I watch Godzilla Versus Hetera? Uh?
(54:23):
If you if you subscribe to HBO Max, you can
find it in the TCM collection there, which is where
we watched it in really just glorious quality. But you
can also pick it up in various other formats including
Blu ray and if you want to go for something special, uh,
pick up pick it up as part of the Criterion
Collection box set Godzilla the Showa era Films through. So yes,
(54:47):
I think this marks the first weird house cinema film
that is also in the Criterion Collection. Oh, I'm not
so sure about that. Didn't there a criterion of Split Second? What?
What about Robot Shocks? Not yet? Used to believe? I
think that I could be right. I think this is
their first Criterion colley because I don't think Mad Love
(55:08):
is in the Criterion Collection and transfers to Return of
Jack Death not yet, not yet? All right, Well, I
gotta say honestly, this is one of the most enjoyable
Godzilla movies I've ever seen. It's it's kind of notorious. Actually,
if you look at you know, lists of people ranking
the best Godzilla films, it does not usually make the
top tier, but I disagree. I would put it right
(55:30):
up there with the best. Yeah, it's pleasant to watch,
So if you if you're looking for a Godzilla film,
give this one your consideration. Alright, so we're wrapping it
up here. As always, you can catch Weird House Cinema
every Friday, and the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. Uh,
you can find that feed wherever you get your podcast,
but if you want to get to it quickly, you
can go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com
(55:51):
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(56:13):
all sorts of stuff. So that's there. If you want.
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best thing you can do to support our show is
just simply to rate, review and subscribe wherever you have
the power to do so huge things as always to
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(56:34):
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