Godzilla Vs. The Smog Monster (1972)

In the Seventies, everything was about the environment.

Pollution was the hot button topic, a prevalent problem for everybody and everywhere you looked, people trying to do something about it:

Don't throw your garbage out the window of your moving car or that Indian will look at you with the tear running down one cheek.

Don't litter in Sparkle City or that Peter Max-designed superhero in a business suit will pop up to remind you to "put litter in its place".

Don't misuse your natural resources or Dr. Seuss will send The Lorax after you and depress you for days.

And when it came to water and air pollution, Toho Studios (in association with American International Pictures) was ready to sic Godzilla on your sorry butt.

Yep; Big Green got into the act in 1972 and fought the embodiment of pollution in the form of Hedorah - whom we Anglos know better as The Smog Monster.

Makes better sense for the title, that way.

Director Yoshimitsu Banno and co-writer Takeshi Kimura seem to have had their fingers on the pulse of the world when they realized they were running out of big beasties for the Big G to fight - and seeing that he was the symbol of the destructive powers of radiation and the atom bomb and other such dangers foisted on mankind since the Fifties, maybe 'Zilla was running out of social relevance with audiences in general (and the youth in particular).

What to do? Why, hunker down and take a look at what the kids are concerned with...and what were they most concerned with? The environment.

You see how it all ties together?

Kids were all about protecting this planet from the ravages of man's own trash and polluting. And so what better: make an embodiment of all this topical social ruin for Godzilla to fight (Hedorah in this case) and set them up to battle each other. What could be easier?

It's not like we need a plot by this time, but: Doctor Yano (Akira Yamauchi) is presented with a dried-up tadpole-like creature from a bay where fishing is no longer plentiful. The doctor, his wife (Toshie Kimura), his older nephew Yukio (Toshio Shiba) and youngest son Kenny (Hiroyuki Kawase) see a TV report about a gigantic beast made of sludge and floating garbage destroying an oil tanker, ascertain that it's the same kind of beast they have a smaller version of and try to discover just what it is and its purpose of being.

After much chemical burning, sludge attacks at sea and on land, psychedelic dancing by Yukio's girlfriend Miki (Keiko Mari), hallucinations with fish heads, dream sequences where sleeping boys are set afire, many cartoon segments, sludge-covered kitty cats, a Japanese Woodstock, a tour of the constellations, a quick lesson on which constellation is which and many examples of little Kenny's powers of reasoning, scientific deduction, his strong ESP connection with Godzilla and taste in short-shorts, it all comes to a head when Smog Monster vs. Radiation Monster atop Mount Fuji.

I'll say this much for Godzilla Vs. The Smog Monster: it's certainly got topicality going for it. Scripters Banno and Kimura at least appreciate the fact that pollution was (and is) a problem in the world and should be dealt with head-on. Either by youth getting together and staging a big folk rock dance or a big green irradiated lizard flying backwards through the air and ripping out big yellow balls from his opponent's dried-our carcass, at least someone's doing something about it. As always, the scientists and kids know what's going on and it's they who will have to tell the world what needs done and get it implemented. At least by this point in the series, the government and military is more prone to listen.

The cast is about as good as you should expect in a Godzilla film without as much of the outlandish aliens, villains and spaceships floatin' around. You realize halfway through this that - even with the cartoons showing Hedorah sucking billows of smoke out of factories and skeletons dancing around - this is probably one of the more subdued Godzilla movies you've seen, in character terms, at least.

As far as direction, though GVTSM is all over the map, Banno provides so much wild imagery throughout that you can't help but sit transfixed at the screen, amazed by what you see and in wonderment as to what you will see next. After all, this is a man who was an assistant director on such classic films as Throne of Blood, The Hidden Fortress and The Bad Sleep Well, so he shouldn't be thought of as a one-hit wonder, necessarily.

True enough that the producer of the Godzilla films, Tomoyuki Tanaka, accused him of "ruining" the franchise and immediately had a brand-spanking new movie made right after (that one being Godzilla Vs. Gigan). But seriously - how many Godzilla movies do you know that literally begin with a woman singing a theme that puts you in the mind of a James Bond film? Seriously: the song is sung by Keiko Mari and the Moon Drops and is called "Return! The Sun"...or at least that's what the original JAPANESE song is. In the AIP dub that I have (dubbed by New York City's Titra Productions), the song was re-written and re-sung (by Adryan Russ) as the tune we all know and love: "Save the Earth". It's catchy, has a good beat and you can save the Earth to it, and what other Godzilla theme song mentions mercury, cobalt and the moon?

This being the dubbed version, its dialogue gives the casual viewer plenty of opportunity to laugh. Kenny's calling of "Pa-PAAAAA!", breathless scientific explanations in keeping with the lip-synching, lots of "huh"s and "eh"s and "right"s tossed at the end of sentences to make it all match up right with the mouth movements of the film, even if it doesn't make all that much sense, grammatically-speaking....

Godzilla Vs. The Smog Monster is about as fun a movie as you can watch that deals with themes of ecology and pollution. It's a Godzilla movie after all - bow could it not be fun? There's context to spare, to be sure, but the way it's all presented is so entertaining and so colorful that it not only makes for a memorable expedition to old Tokyo, but is also good in a way that it's so bad that criticism falters in favor of good vibes.

Sure, there's darkness in Hedorah's attacks; disintegrating faces, bodies collapsing en masse and rooms full of people smothered in square cubic feet of toxic sludge with only an occasional hand, foot or head showing. But this is all counter-balanced by some of the wackiest, goofiest, most nonsensical nonsense ever to come from a movie about a giant monster whom children just love.

Even if it is kind of simplistic to pit a pop culture icon against a serious social ill. It's kind of like using William Shatner to fight childhood obesity...or maybe that's not the best example.

And while it's true that this was neither the best (The original 1954 Godzilla) nor the worst (Godzilla's Revenge) of the series, it certainly was the most kiddie-friendly* and Earth-friendly Godzilla movie ever made. If you want to smile and feel you're lessening your carbon footprint by doing so, catch it.

* = at least until Godzilla Vs. Megalon comes along.