Franchises: Godzilla. Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster (Ebirah, Horror of the Deep) (1966)

This was not only among the first Godzilla movies I ever saw but also one of the first I owned on home video. I'm not exactly sure where it was in my personal timeline, but I do know it was after I had that traumatizing experience from renting Godzilla vs. Mothra, as when I first saw Mothra was in this one, I was like, "Oh, God, no." (Fortunately, nothing horrible or overly emotional happens to her here, so it was all good.) My step-cousin often wanted to watch this one whenever he would spend the night with me, which he did a lot when we were kids, and while I would usually rather watch another Godzilla movie, to make him happy, I always relented and agreed to watch it again. As a result, this was one I saw quite often, and it also played on TV a fair number of times when I was a kid as well. Though I certainly liked the film, there was always something that kept me from absolutely loving it, and that opinion has persisted over the years. Today, this is one that goes into the "good but not one of my favorites" category. Since the longest version is a mere 86 minutes, and it moves at a very brisk pace, it's quite an easy sit. What's more, even though, like with Godzilla vs. Monster Zero, Godzilla himself doesn't come into the film until quite a while in (at around the fifty-minute mark), also like that film, it's entertaining enough to keep your attention until then, and the setting makes for a nice change of pace. Plus, once Godzilla makes his first appearance, he's a constant presence up to the end, something I can't say for Monster Zero. And yet, I still like Monster Zero much more, and I don't know exactly why. If I would have to guess, I would say it's because this is the film where the franchise's increasing budget cuts become more apparent, with the setting not requiring as many miniatures to be crushed. What's more, Godzilla looks off in a number of scenes, and Ebirah is not a worthy opponent at all (though that latter point could hold to the film's interesting production history, which we'll get into).

Yata, a young fisherman, has been missing at sea for two months, presumed dead after his boat was caught up in a storm. However, both his mother and brother, Ryota, are convinced he's still alive, especially when a psychic says as much, and the latter is determined to find him. After being turned down by the police, and receiving skepticism from some newspaper journalists, he learns of a dance marathon competition where the prize is a sailboat. But when he arrives, he learns he's far too late to compete. Desperate, he has two guys he meets at the competition, Ichino and Nita, take him to the local marina. They board a nice-looking yacht, dubbed the Yahlen, which is filled with food and fresh clothes, ready to sail. That's when the "owner," Yoshimura, turns up with a rifle, but consents to allow them to stay aboard for the night. The next morning, they discover they're now out at sea, with Ryota admitting he did it in order to look for Yata. After sailing for many, many miles, they run into a storm and run into an enormous, crab-like claw, which destroys the boat. The next morning, they find themselves shipwrecked on a tropical island, which they soon learn is actually a base for a terrorist organization called the Red Bamboo, who are secretly developing nuclear missiles. They kidnap natives from Infant Island to use as slaves, and the islanders are unable to escape because of an enormous crustacean called Ebirah that lurks offshore. The shipwrecked party meets up with Daiyo, a female native who managed to slip away from the Red Bamboo, and they hole up inside a cave in the cliffside. Daiyo confirms to Ryota that his brother is alive and well on Infant Island, and that the natives are praying to the slumbering Mothra, hoping she will soon awaken and rescue those enslaved. They also discover that Godzilla is asleep inside the cave. With the Red Bamboo closing in, they ultimately decide to wake him up so he'll deal with the terrorists and Ebirah, while they try to figure out a way to free the slaves and escape the island.

It's well known among the fandom that this film began life as a King Kong vehicle, as Toho suddenly remembered they were given the rights to the character for five years following King Kong vs. Godzilla, and said rights would expire the following year. Thus, they had Shinichi Sekizawa write a screenplay titled Operation Robinson Crusoe: King Kong vs. Ebirah. However, for various reasons, this didn't come to pass. The most common reason given is that this was meant to be a co-production with Rankin/Bass, who was working on The King Kong Show, which would premier that September, and they didn't like how the script had virtually nothing to do with the show. What's more, they also didn't like that, instead of the expected team of Ishiro Honda and Eiji Tsuburaya, Toho was planning on having Jun Fukuda direct and Tsuburaya's protege, Sadamasa Arikawa, take over as special effects director. However, in The Big Book of Japanese Giant Monster Movies Volume 1: 1954-1982, John LeMay said it was RKO who objected to the screenplay and put Toho in contact with Rankin/Bass, which led to King Kong Escapes being produced the following year. In any case, Kong was pulled out and Toho, liking the script and having already built the miniature sets and the Ebirah suit and props, decided to simply put Godzilla in his place. And yet, both Fukuda and effects assistant Teruyoshi Nakano later acted as though this was always meant to be a Godzilla film, with the former saying that was the first draft he was given. Again, as usual, things are a bit murky. 

Possibly sensing his growing disdain for where Godzilla's character was going, or because they'd rather have him direct co-productions with American studios, like The War of the Gargantuas and King Kong Escapes, Toho replaced Ishiro Honda here with Jun Fukuda. Twelve years younger than Honda, Fukuda had actually been his assistant director on Rodan back in 1956, and after becoming a main director in 1959, specialized in action and comedy films. By 1966, he'd directed a series of teen-oriented comedies called the Young Guy movies, which had been very, very profitable for Toho, and the year before Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster, he'd directed 100 Shot, 100 Killed, or Iron Finger, which I hear is a very entertaining James Bond spoof that starred none other than Akira Takarada. However, Fukuda was no stranger to science fiction when it came to his main directing career, as his second film was the 1960 sci-fi flick, The Secret of the Telegian. As Stuart Galbraith IV mentioned in an episode of Kaiju Masterclass on YouTube (major props to the person who directed me to that channel), the fact that Toho entrusted Fukuda with two of their major franchises, Young Guy and then Godzilla, shows that they thought a lot of him. Unfortunately, as Galbraith, who interviewed Fukuda in the 90's, and other historians have said over time, he wasn't happy with any of the movies he made during his career. I knew from David Kalat's book that he was down on his Godzilla movies, as he felt that the original Godzilla should have been a one-off, but after listening to that Masterclass video, because he was working under the studio system, just about everything he was assigned was of subject matter that didn't interest him. He seemed especially disdainful towards this film, as he even argued with Galbraith when the latter tried to compliment him on his direction, and said he had to cut a number of scenes from it. He went as far as to say, "Toho sent me a copy of the VHS tape edition of Godzilla vs The Sea Monster when it was released. It was like opening up an old wound, I didn’t watch the tape." Damn.

Back again for his fourth and final Showa era Godzilla movie is Akira Takarada, this time as Yoshimura, a thief who's just pulled off a large heist and is hiding aboard the Yahlen, when Ryota and his two new buddies come aboard. Initially posing as the boat's owner, pointing a rifle at them and surreptitiously threatening to call the police, he allows them to stay aboard for the night but tells them to get lost at sunrise. However, he ends up along for the ride when Ryota hijacks the boat to go find Yata. At first Yoshimura is antagonistic towards the others. Besides threatening them with the rifle (which you later learn was a harmless toy), he angrily smacks them awake with pillows in the morning when he finds said rifle gone, threatens Ryota to try to make him turn the boat around, and when the others inquire as to whether he's the thief they heard mentioned on the radio, and what he's keeping inside his large briefcase, he tells them to keep their hands off it. At one point, he even attempts to conspire with the others to take control of the boat back from Ryota. Though obviously only thinking of himself during the first act, when they end up shipwrecked on the island and he realizes all of the money got washed away, he decides it wouldn't have done him any good there and concentrates on trying to find a way back to the mainland. He then, slowly but surely, transitions from a selfish criminal to a pretty decent guy, all in all. He not only becomes the group's ostensible leader but his instincts prove to be on the mark, more often than not. When they first see the Red Bamboo's base, he knows there's something not right about it and decides they'd best not expose themselves. Also, once they end up in the Red Bamboo's sights, while Ichino and Nita are willing to wait around for help, Yoshimura has a feeling the terrorists will be after them again before long. Thus he decides they should sneak into the base for a sneak attack. While Nita ultimately gets captured as a result of this plan, it does lead to their learning that the Red Bamboo are developing atomic weapons, and it also inadvertently leads to Ryota being reunited with his brother!

During these types of sequences, Yoshimura shows off an uncanny ability to think on his feet and get them out of tight spots, and his expertise at breaking and entering, specially-made skeleton key, and safe-cracking skills really come in handy; in fact, his skeleton key is ultimately how he's able to rescue both Nita and all the enslaved Infant Islanders. However, he's also sensible enough not to go rushing into hairy situations, like when he has to hold Yata back from rushing down to the Red

Bamboo camp and decides it'd be better to try to rescue everyone once it gets dark (he also proves to be right about not sticking around, as a hidden microphone detects their voices and they're pursued yet again). Also, when Daiyo is cornered by Godzilla at one point, Yoshimura has them move in very slowly in order to help her. Speaking of Godzilla, when Ichino suggests they awaken him to keep the Red Bamboo away, Yoshimura thinks he's nuts, saying Godzilla would destroy the world just like the Red Bamboo, and that he might

come after them as well. It's only when Ichino suggests that the Red Bamboo are unaware of Godzilla's being there that Yoshimura realizes they may have a nice advantage over them. And by the end of the movie, when everyone has escaped the island, Yoshimura, after everything he's been through, decides to give up being a thief. 

Unfortunately, aside from Yoshimura, many of the characters are pretty bland (a problem you often find with Jun Fukuda's Godzilla movies, especially his later ones), like the three younger leads. Ryota's (Toru Watanabe) sole motivation is to find his brother and he's fixated on it to the point where he hijacks a yacht, under the idea that it was a gift from the gods, and drags these other three guys along for the ride, basically saying they have to deal with it since he's the only one who knows how to sail. When they get to the island, he continues going on about wanting to find his brother, especially when he learns that Yata is on Infant Island and then, through pure dumb luck and happenstance, ends up there and reunites with him. From there, the two of them decide to head back to Letchi Island and rescue his friends, as well as the slaves, which they eventually do. That's pretty much all there is to Ryota. A decent enough guy, yes, despite his deliberately shanghaiing the others (when I was a kid, I always thought Ryota knew Ichino and Nita before they meet at the dance competition, and that they entered it to help him win the boat, but the Japanese version makes it clear he first meets them there, making what he does to them come off worse), and it's very obvious he and Yata are quite close, but, again, very bland.

I guess you could say Ichino (Chotaro Togin) is something of the brains of the group, since we learn he was a science major in college (although he admits he was a terrible student), and is the one who comes up with the plan to wake up Godzilla using lightning, but, in reality, he's the blandest, most unmemorable member of the main cast. Other than that plan, I don't remember him saying or doing anything that important or interesting. I was about to say he's rather pacifistic, since he's reluctant to fight the Red Bamboo initially, and later wants to stop them from using their nuclear weapons, but I think I'm just grasping at straws. Nita (Hideo Sunazuka) is probably the most memorable of these three, since he's the cowardly comic relief (they say he's a mountain climber but I don't how he could be, since he's such a chicken), but that's basically his only function, aside from coming up with an, admittedly, smart and effective plan to defeat the Red Bamboo. He's either constantly quaking and cringing in fear, actually screaming in abject terror at one point, or grumbling about something. To be fair, he's not annoying (at least, not in the original Japanese version or the American-International dub), and some of the things he does, like when he gets seasick when they first set sail, do make me chuckle. But, like his friends, there's not much else to him.

Originally Daiyo, the Infant Islander who joins up with the main characters, was meant to be played by another actor. But when she became ill with appendicitis, Kumi Mizuno, Miss Namikawa in Monster Zero and who had also just appeared in The War of the Gargantuas, took her place. While Daiyo is nowhere near as complex as Miss Namikawa and, like Ryota, has only one defining bit of motivation (albeit a very good one), she's still a memorable and likable character. Not only is she, as always, just plain great to look at, but Mizuno portrays Daiyo as someone who wants her people's suffering at the hands of the Red Bamboo to end and often prays to Mothra in hopes that she'll awaken and come to rescue them. She's also a fairly tough woman, as we see early in how she's armed with knife to defend herself and is very gun-ho about Yoshimura's plan to infiltrate the base, wanting to help those who've been enslaved. She isn't above being a girly-girl, though, as in the base, she picks up a large spool of wire she comes across, thinking it'd make a good necklace. Said wire comes in handy later on, as they use it to awaken Godzilla with an electric shock from lightning. Speaking of which, there's a memorable bit of the film where Daiyo is cornered by Godzilla, who takes an interest in her, and sits down and watches her, preventing her from escaping. And yet, while she's initially terrified of him, she warns Godzilla of a large, mutated bird that shows up and heads for him, screaming and pointing to get his attention. And at the end of the movie, when Mothra has rescued everyone and is flying away from the island, which is about to be blown up by a nuclear bomb set by the Red Bamboo, Daiyo says she feels sorry for Godzilla, and this prompts everyone to yell warnings to him. Said warnings do work and Daiyo is as ecstatic as everyone else when they see that Godzilla escaped.

Since Mothra is in this movie, you'd be correct in expecting to see the Shobijin as well. However, this time they're played by another singing duo, called Pair Bambi, whose real names were Yuko and Yoko Okada. They're certainly not bad stand-ins for the Peanuts, although you can tell it's two different women, due to their looks and their portrayal coming off as more serious (in the Japanese version, anyway). However, they're such a small part of the film that there's not much that can be said about them, as they do little more than lead the other islanders in singing and praying to Mothra, have Ryota and Yata inform those who've been captured to construct a large net so Mothra can carry them off, and ride with her when she comes to the rescue. Also, I really don't care for the song they sing throughout the film, which is simply called Awake Mothra. Akira Ifukube didn't do the music here, so you're not going to get any of the nice songs he and his collaborators came up with for past films, and while I do like a lot of the music composed for this one, this song is not a tune I care for. 

Infant Island is also where Ryota finds his brother, Yata (Toru Ibuki), whom we quickly learn has a major hero complex and is always eager to help people who are in trouble. Thus, when he learns of the Red Bamboo and how they've abducted and enslaved many Infant Islanders, he and Ryota return to Letchi to try to free them. However, Yata has such an impulsive, one-track mind when it comes to helping people that he tends to rush into things without thinking, often putting him at odds with the more level-headed and strategic Yoshimura. Case in point: when they're staking out the Red Bamboo's base and, despite how heavily guarded it is, Yata actually tries to get in. Yoshimura immediately yanks him back and says they shouldn't attempt to sail straight into a typhoon (I like his line in the AIP dub more: "Don't be an idiot! I've done a lot of crazy things in my life but... I've never stuck my head into a hornets' nest,"). Later on, when Godzilla's destroying the base, the others suddenly realize Yata has slipped away and is running to go help the slaves, with Yoshimura growling about what an idiot he is and running after him. The two of them make their way to where the slaves and Nita are being held and, through it all, you can see how impulsive and single-minded Yata is, as he's constantly looking around and frantically tries to pull open the door to the slaves' containment center, until Yoshimura tells him to hold on a second and pulls out his skeleton key. Thanks to him, though, the slaves and Nita are rescued before Godzilla's rampage causes their cell's ceiling to cave in, so they might've been crushed had Yata not been so impulsive. And speaking of which, the one time Yata has enough sense not to go running in is when Godzilla corners Daiyo, telling Ryota you have to pick your battles.

Coming off the Xiliens, the non-kaiju antagonists here, the Red Bamboo, are pretty lackluster and one-dimensional. Granted, the unanswered question of what country they're from is an interesting one (their name strongly suggests Red China), with even the original American version briefly mentioning it at the very end, and they obviously have enough resources for an air-force and have devised a way of keeping Ebirah, whom they likely created, under control. What's more,

they serve as one of the possible sources of allegory and commentary. But, in the end, they're ultimately just very basic bad guys, planning to use their nuclear weapons for what is likely a world domination scheme. The revelation that they're secretly building nuclear weapons on the island does spell dire consequences for the world if they're not stopped, and you definitely want to see them get what they deserve, but, regardless, the one-note way in which they're portrayed hurts their effectiveness. Even when they're being rather cruel to those they've enslaved, like when Captain Ryuui fires his gun into their confines to make the Infant Islanders stop their praying to Mothra, they're not as utterly ruthless and despicable as they could be. That's a shame, too, because the higher-ranking officers are played by some great and familiar actors. 

Captain Ryuui (Yamamoto in the original English version), whose name I don't remember ever being said in the Japanese version, is played by Akihiko Hirata who, along with Akira Takarada and a number of the actors here, worked with Jun Fukuda the previous year on 100 Shot, 100 Killed. (From what I've heard, in that film, he also wore an eye-patch, as he does here.) While he doesn't have much depth to him due to the type of movie this is, he does take part in a lot of the action, leading

squads of soldiers in chasing the heroes. He's also the one who cruelly abuses some of the slaves, not only firing on them but also whipping Nita and an elderly slave to make them work faster. Hirata's best acting moment, however, comes during his first appearance, and right before we get our first good look at Ebirah. A couple of slaves manage to escape and reach some canoes, as Ryuui's soldiers attempt to shoot them. But then, he orders them to stop and return to the dock, giving an evil smile as he watches the slaves paddle off, knowing that

they're in for it. After Ebirah kills them and sinks back into the water, Ryuui tells the other slaves, "See that? Even if you escape, Ebirah will get you." Jun Tazaki is also here again as the unnamed commander, but he has very few scenes and does nothing more than bark orders. He does, however, have a great moment when he first appears, asking the eye-patched Ryuui if he's gone blind since he hasn't noticed that Daiyo managed to slip away. And Hideyo Amamoto, or Eisei Amamoto, who went on to have memorable roles in King Kong Escapes and All Monsters Attack, has a brief role here as the Red Bamboo's Naval Captain.

While he may have been constantly saddled with films and subject matter he didn't care for, Jun Fukuda was a director who seemed like he tried to make the most entertaining movie he could, regardless. As a result, Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster is a much more action-packed film than its predecessors, especially on the human front. While some deeper meaning can be found if you want to look for it, it's primarily meant to be little more than a rollicking, James Bond-style adventure that just happens to have Godzilla and some other

monsters along for the ride. Indeed, there are many Bond-like elements, such as action scenes with lots of gunfire, the heroes stumbling across a terrorist group secretly manufacturing atomic bombs, their breaking into and snooping around the headquarters and laboratory, and a climax that involves a ticking time bomb that's going to completely destroy the island, as well as some failed attempts to disarm it. Also, the tropical island setting is very similar to that of Nassau in

Thunderball, released the previous year. Given that Fukuda had been making Bond-like action films, as well as send-ups of them, by this point, it's not surprising that these elements are here, and they would crop up in more Godzilla movies down the road. 

That leads us into Fukuda's directing style, which you can instantly tell is very different from Ishiro Honda's. Unlike his more restrained and stately pacing, Fukuda doesn't take long to get to the action, whether it's monster-oriented or not. While Godzilla doesn't make his first true appearance until almost an hour in here, in Fukuda's other movies, either he or another monster are among the very first things you see when the movies begin. And even here, less than five minutes in, we're getting down at a high-energy dance marathon to

test the stamina of the Japanese youth; just three or so minutes later, we've set sail; and before we've reached the fifteen-minute mark, we've gotten our first glimpse of Ebirah when his claw emerges from the water and attacks and destroys the Yahlen during a storm. Fukuda is also no slouch in his direction of the action scenes, either, especially the many that solely involve the humans. In fact, as Patrick Galvan, Steve Ryfle, and Stuart Galbraith IV mention in the Kaiju Masterclass episode on Fukuda, he was much better in his shooting and

composition of these sequences than Honda. As much as I love Honda and feel that he was, overall, the better filmmaker, whenever there's a human-oriented action setpiece in one of his tokasatsu films, it's often lackluster (those kind of weak shootouts with the assassins in Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster come to mind). But here, the action scenes are very exciting and full of energy, and are also edited in a very skillful manner. Fukuda also makes some nice use of

montages, close-ups, and cutaways, most notably for the Yahlen's journey across the ocean during the first act, where we see the guys doing things to fill the time during the journey, close-up shots of various parts of the boat, followed by distant shots as it travels, and the sun setting in the background to show the passage of time, and an ominous set of dissolves which shows that their food supplies are running low. And there are moments where he nicely captures the feeling of the rocking ocean by slowly rocking the camera back and forth.

Besides being nicely-directed and shot, another thing you come to realize when you see really good prints of Fukuda's Godzilla films is that they've been preserved and remastered better than many of Honda's films. As was the case with Son of Godzilla, when I bought the 2005 Sony DVD release, I was blown away by how good it looked, especially after years of watching that washed out, badly cropped English version since I was a little kid (too bad the English dub track it came with wasn't as good, but we'll get to that). Not only

could I see all the details that I'd missed before, now that it was in widescreen, but I was just amazed at how the picture quality and colors were much livelier than Classic Media's releases of Honda's films; that's also how it is now, with the Criterion Collection Blu-Ray set. Speaking of color, Fukuda's first two films are especially vibrant in this regard. In the case of Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster, the lush, green jungles on Letchi, the blueness of the water far out at sea, and even

the costumes of many of the characters, like the yellow and orange jackets Yoshimura and Ichino wear, Daiyo's multi-colored native outfit, and the dresses that the Shobijin wear, absolutely pop. Even Ebirah looks pretty nice, with his red-orange coloring, as do much of the interiors of the Red Bamboo's base, and the often visible sky in the background always looks lovely, be it when it's at sunset or sunrise, with the deep orange, or nice and blue in the middle of the day. Even the sequences set during bad storms have an appealing look to them, with the lightning casting flashes of blue, and the sky being a dark-blue or full-on black. There is some obvious day-for-night shooting during some of these sequences, but it's brief and easy to ignore.

As someone who loves tropical settings and the beach, I like that the film starts out by the seaside, before briefly becoming a sailing adventure and finally, settling on a tropical island for the duration of the story. It's a notable departure from past Godzilla movies in that we're only on mainland Japan for less than ten minutes, and all we see are this isolated spot, called "Spirit Mountain," where the psychic tells Yata's mother that her son is not dead, a corridor inside a police station, the offices and waiting room for a newspaper, the hall where

the dance marathon is held, and finally the marina, where they come upon the Yahlen. For the rest of the first act, we're in the nice-looking but rather cramped interiors of the Yahlen, which has a very small living and sleeping area down below, and there's nothing outside but the ocean for thousands of miles. But it isn't long before they're shipwrecked on Letchi or "Devil's" Island. At first glance, the island seems barren, with the rocky beaches and coastline, and some similarly unpleasant and harsh spots at the highest points,

but much of the interior is covered with some very nice, fruit-landen jungles, meaning the place would be a lush, tropical paradise were it not for the Red Bamboo and Ebirah. Once the heroes are in the Red Bamboo's sights, they make their temporary home out of a cliffside cave which they find they can reach via jumping down onto a rocky ledge from above. Don't ask me how they manage to come and go the way they do; I'm guessing they just have to climb their way back up top. Said cave

is also where they find Godzilla slumbering, even though there's no clear way he could've gotten in. You see a tiny bit of Infant Island, too, but as limited as it looked the last two times we saw it, here, all we see is this sandy spot, with sections of palm trees and bushes, near a ledge which Mothra sits atop, and a bit of the beach.

According to actor Chotaro Togin, Fukuda had wanted to shot on location in the Philippines, but due to the limited budget, pretty much all of the location work was on the Izu Islands. The actors are also often shot on soundstages or parts of the backlot made up to look like Letchi or Infant Island, and it's pretty obvious which is which, given that the plants in those scenes are clearly artificial. But, in spite of this, I like the atmosphere of the tropics and the seaside that comes with the movie, such as those shots of the setting and rising sun I mentioned before, and the opening credits, which are set over a very peaceful-looking seaside at dawn.

In terms of actual production design, the most notable setting is the Red Bamboo's base near the seaside, which consists of a dock and a large, heavily guarded and fortified installation within a quarry, which is clearly an actual set and not a miniature, like WSA headquarters in Monster Zero. The dock itself is also armed, as there's a large gun-tower attached to it, and the installation, besides guard towers and electrical fences, is equipped with search balloons and hidden microphones installed in trees up around the perimeter in order

to detect intruders. The slaves are kept in a large holding area separate from the installation itself, namely a shallow cavern behind a metal, barred door within a cliffside, which is where they're also forced to create the liquid that the Red Bamboo use to somewhat control Ebirah. When the heroes sneak inside the base and infiltrate one of the buildings, the place starts out looking rather monochromatic, but becomes more and more colorful the farther in they go. There's a weird, circular door at the end of the first small corridor,

which Yoshimura is actually able to open with his skeleton key, and beyond that and around a corner, they see a pair of guys in white lab coats take an elevator down. When the protagonists do the same, they find the door to a kind of storeroom, housing some green, bottle-shaped objects that turn out to be smoke-bombs. We get a couple of glimpses of the Commander's control room, which consists of a desk atop a large podium, yellow-colored walls, and pair of panels behind him that light up in

sections one at a time, each time a different color. But the most noteworthy place we see is this large laboratory that, again, is not only full of the expected humming and flashing machines, but is surprisingly colorful, with the multi-colored pipes that arch around the place, as well as up around the ceiling, the yellow and green-glowing panels on the machines, the red and green buttons, and sections of wall that are, yet again, bright yellow. In one corner of the room, Yoshimura finds a large,

silver, circular door with a combination lock like a safe, which he manages to open, only to discover it's a nuclear reactor. This room also contains the panel housing the bomb that's set to destroy the island at the end of the movie.

Originally, I said that there was no allegory or political or social commentary of any kind in Jun Fukuda's Godzilla films, save for the Red Bamboo possibly standing in for Red China, and the threat of unsanctioned development and use of nuclear weapons, with a last minute summation of the latter from Ichino at the very end. However, a comment on my updated review of Monster Zero led me to DoBlu.com's article on the Criterion Blu-Ray release, by Matt Paprocki. He states that the Red Bamboo's take over of Letchi and their

enslavement of much of the Infant Islanders can be seen as an allegory for when Imperial Japan did the same to Okinawa near the end of World War II, and that in 1966, there were still Japanese who refused to budge from islands outside of the mainland. He also says the Red Bamboo could be viewed as the U.S. military, who have continued to occupy Okinawa since World War II ended. Another reading of the film that I've heard is how it's about the youth culture vs. the older establishment, with

the protagonists representing the former (even though these guys are obviously in their mid-to-late 20's, at least), and the Red Bamboo the latter. There definitely is a focus on the youth of Japan at the beginning of the movie, with the dance marathon to test their stamina, a scene that's very reminiscent of something you'd see young people doing at the time, and how the one reporter at the news office Ryota visits is impressed that a young man like him is listening to a psychic. Also, the music score often comes off like 60's surf music, which was popular at the time.

When I was a kid, I was often confused as to whether Godzilla was a good guy or a bad guy in this film. While the protagonists wake him up to keep the Red Bamboo preoccupied, and he does fight and defeat the truly villainous monster, everyone is still afraid of him and, at the end of the film, he attacks Mothra for no reason. And yet, since he did allow them to escape and never directly threatened them, they feel compelled to warn him to head to the ocean before the island blows up, and are overjoyed when they see he did escape. It's a very gray area, and I've personally decided that, by this point, Godzilla is firmly an antihero: not actively malicious towards mankind anymore but, at the same time, not exactly a friend, either, and it's best to stay out of his way. Yes, he does help the heroes persevere, but it was all very unintentional on his part, a consequence of his attacking the Red Bamboo's base in retaliation for their air force shooting at him. This is how he would stay for pretty much the rest of the Showa series. He also still has that tenacious, brash attitude he was developing in the previous movies. Never one to back down from a challenge, he immediately battles Ebirah when they see each other after he's been awakened. The same goes for their second fight during the climax, where Godzilla approaches Ebirah while making gestures that clearly say he's ready for him to bring it on, and when he tangles with the giant condor and the Red Bamboo's air squadron. He also proves to have quite a mean streak: when he defeats Ebirah in their second fight by ripping his pincers off, as the sea monster retreats out to sea, he taunts him by snapping the larger claw at him.

When Toho, unable to use King Kong for the film like they originally planned, put Godzilla in his place, that was literally the only change made to the script. Thus, Godzilla occasionally feels quite out of character. He's awakened and apparently energized by electric shocks from lightning, a notable aspect of Toho's version of Kong, while Godzilla himself seemed adverse to electricity. The very idea that they find Godzilla sleeping in a cave on the island also feels very Kong-like to me, whereas Godzilla typically spends most of his time

out in the ocean, as this was before the idea of Monster Island came about. Though, you could say he was drawn to Letchi by the Red Bamboo's nuclear reactor. Also, doesn't his playing with Ebirah's claw after he rips it off remind you of when Kong played with the T-Rex's jaw after breaking it (I've heard that was improvised by Haruo Nakajima, though, so I could be reading too much into it)? And while Godzilla has certainly used rocks as weapons before, and would go on to do so in future movies, here he uses them very

frequently while destroying the Red Bamboo base and never employs his atomic blast, another hint that this was originally meant to star Kong. But the most distinctively Kong-like thing Godzilla does is when he corners Daiyo on a rocky area in the island's upper reaches, gawks at her, and actually sits down and continues to watch her, as if he's infatuated and wants to keep her. As a kid, I thought it was very weird for Godzilla to act this way when he never gave two craps about humans,

let alone women, before. But when I read the Godzilla Compendium years later and learned of the original King Kong concept, it made a lot of sense. Some may not like seeing Godzilla act so out of this character in this film but, while I've always thought it was strange, it's never bothered me personally. Plus, look at Daiyo. Can you blame Godzilla?

I'd always read that the Godzilla suit here is the same one that was used in Godzilla vs. Monster Zero, and that nothing about it was changed. But I wondered if that was the case, as Godzilla has always seemed more than a little different than he did in the last film. The color and texture of the skin look changed, and the head especially looks like it's gone through some alterations, with the mouth seeming wider, giving Godzilla, as many have described, a Cookie Monster-like feel. The structure of the face also sometimes looks different

when it's seen head-on. Well, after looking through other sources, I think I've found an explanation. Because this movie features a lot more water action than any up to this point (or for the rest of the Showa era, now that I think about it), the suit often absorbed water and its features became warped and damaged. There are some shots where the damage is very visible, like when Godzilla turns his head to look at Daiyo and his left eye looks contracted and shrunken, and in a shot during the attack on the

Red Bamboo base, where its color is duller than the other one (as a kid, I thought it was a result of Ebirah poking him in the eye during their first fight). What's more, during production, Tsuburaya Productions borrowed the suit's head to create the Ultraman monster, Jirahs, so the suit-makers created a new head and used that for the rest of filming. However, this new head differed sharply from the original, with eyes that weren't nearly as fierce-looking, and it makes Godzilla come off like

he's half asleep (unlike the other head, I think this one was able to blink its eyes). Finally, I was wrong when I said Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster was the last Showa movie where a puppet Godzilla was used, as one appears during his scuffle with the giant condor.

That VHS of Godzilla vs. Monster Zero I often rented as a kid had previews for several other Godzilla movies, one of which was Godzilla's Revenge, and they specifically showed a lot of the stock scenes from this movie used there, which is how I first saw Ebirah. At the time, I didn't know that was from another movie, so imagine my surprise when I saw this one for the first time and instantly recognized Ebirah (in case you're wondering, I didn't know before I actually watched the VHS, as the cover and screenshots on the back didn't really show him that clearly). Played by Hiroshi Sekida, Haruo Nakajima's most constant sparring partner during this period, Ebirah is a pretty basic monster, nothing more than an oversized animal rather than a uniquely designed dinosaur like Godzilla himself or an outrageous fantasy creature like King Ghidorah. People often describe him as a big lobster but the first part of his name, "ebi," is the Japanese word for shrimp. It's never explained how he came to be, but we can guess that the nuclear reactor the Red Bamboo have on the island probably has something to do with it, and I think that's Toho's official explanation as well. Ebirah functions basically as the Red Bamboo's guard dog, attacking anybody who tries to escape or reach the island, and even eating them, and he would kill the terrorists as well, given a chance. Thus, the Red Bamboo use a special liquid made by their slaves which seems to act as a repellent, keeping Ebirah at bay whenever they come and go. This ultimately leads to their undoing, as Nita conspires with the slaves to make a phony batch that's ineffective. 

At first, Ebirah just seems like a mindlessly aggressive monster that attacks and eats anything he senses in the vicinity, but in his two fights with Godzilla, a personality does come through. He clearly challenges Godzilla before both bouts and, during them, claps his claws, a sign that he's really enjoying himself, especially when they're lobbing the big boulder back and forth. He also employs some pretty dirty tactics, often splashing Godzilla in the face, springing out of the water at him, and, during both fights, dragging him underwater and

attempting to drown him, which he does throughout the majority of the second one by not letting him get back to the surface (not that it would work, since Godzilla has no trouble breathing underwater). However, Ebirah's downfall is that he's dumb enough to challenge Godzilla to that second fight even though he gave him a fair amount of punishment during the first time. While he does have the upper hand on Godzilla for most of the battle, Godzilla eventually manages to turn

the tables and rip both of his pincers off, forcing him to retreat! While part of me feels bad for Ebirah, since he's clearly in pain when Godzilla slowly rips the pincers off, and screams in agony after he loses the second one, that other part of me remembers all the crap he put Godzilla through and the people he killed and devoured, and then I decide he deserves it.

While Ebirah isn't the most imaginative monster Godzilla has ever faced, he is well-designed, coming off a lot like an actual crustacean, just blown up to Godzilla's size. There's a lot of interesting detail to him, like those whiskers on his chin and underside, the bumpy and spiny texture of his flesh, a beak-like crest on his face, a mouth that's like a large, sideways slit, the hints of the multiple other limbs that lie hidden beneath the water (you only get one full-body shot of him, when Godzilla flips him over his shoulder), the

antennae on and around his head, and those eye-stalks, which are often moving back and forth. He's also nicely painted, with his skin a very vibrant red, and I've read that the suit was divide into two sections, with the whole thing being joined together when it was used as a prop without an actual actor inside. When I was a kid, it always bothered me that his left claw is rather small and thin, while his right one is absolutely huge, since I thought he was a lobster and lobsters' claws don't look like that (plus, I tended not to like things to be uneven); nowadays, I don't care and think it makes him a bit more unique. Unfortunately, his very shrill shrieking can grate on your nerves, and he basically never shuts up. 

Ebirah may be a pretty generic monster in concept, but he's much better in both design and execution than this ugly, overgrown condor that appears out of nowhere and attacks Godzilla near the beginning of the third act, in one of the most random moments in the series. This oversized bird, or "Okondoru," very stupidly makes a bee-line right for Godzilla's head, does little more than annoy him by pecking his noggin and biting his fingers and tail, and is finally killed when Godzilla blasts it and sends it crashing into the ocean. Like Ebirah,

we can guess the condor was created by a leak from the Red Bamboo's nuclear reactor, but its appearance is so sudden that, after he kills it, Godzilla looks as perplexed as the viewer probably is. (I've heard it could be another holdover from the original King Kong concept, as there was a giant bird in some episodes of The King Kong Show. Also, Shinichi Sekizawa is said to have meant it as a tribute to the Pteranadon in the original King Kong.) It was created by repurposing the Rodan prop used in tehe previous two movies, and which had also been used in an episode of Ultra Q, and it looks like crap when you first see it, appearing downright rotted. It looks okay in other shots, although the sequence is edited so fast and filmed in such major close-ups that you can't get a good look at it. And it makes this annoying, "Rawk, rawk!" sound as it's attacking Godzilla.

Mothra spends most of the movie sleeping, for some reason, while her natives and the Shobijin constantly perform this song and dance to try to wake her up. Daiyo tells her friends they must have faith in Mothra, and so do the Shobijin in the original English version, but I would be like, "I can't have much faith in a deity that spends all her time snoozing while her people are being used as slaves!" Like Nita says, it seems like they need an alarm clock to wake her up whenever there's trouble. And it begs the question, why did the Red Bamboo kidnap people from Infant Island in the first place? Do they not know about Mothra and how she doesn't take kindly to her people being screwed around with? Hell, maybe they knew how lazy she'd gotten recently and decided they would have no trouble in enslaving the islanders. In any case, Mothra's sole role here is to act as a deus ex machina and show up at the end of the movie to get our heroes off the island before it blows up. Even worse, it's a deus ex machina we knew was coming for a long time, especially after, in the Japanese version, the Shobijin tell Ryota and Yata to relay a message to the slaves that they must construct a large net when the time is right. And when Godzilla threatens Mothra after she shows up, she has to provide the movie with one last little monster skirmish. Some would say Mothra's most underwhelming appearance in the Showa series is in Destroy All Monsters, where she's merely one of many monster pawns being controlled by Kilaaks, but because she does so little here, despite being among the three featured monsters (with her name even being part of the original Japanese title), I have to go with this one.

Sadly, Mothra doesn't look much better than the Giant Condor during her brief screentime here. They reused the marionette from Mothra vs. Godzilla, and in some close-up shots, especially in one shot of the side of the head during Mothra's brief scuffle with Godzilla, it looks rather moldy and worn, with faded colors, and it even looks like someone left their cigarette on it! The long shots of Mothra when she's flying look better, and at the very end of the movie, we actually see an animated version of her as she flies back to Infant Island,

which I think is the only time any kaiju were created in this manner before CGI came along (when I was a kid, that visual looked so alien to how Mothra and the monsters had been portrayed in all the movies I'd seen that I wasn't even sure if that was supposed to be her!). However, the prop's overall sad condition is probably why Mothra doesn't do much here, as they likely didn't have the money to create a new one and were probably afraid this one would break if they were too rough with it.

While he's credited as effects director like before, Eiji Tsuburaya was busy with his own production company and only only served as supervisor, although he did have the final say on everything done. The actual effects director was Teizo Arikawa, sometimes called Sadamasa Arikawa, who'd been with Tsuburaya for a long time and had recently becomes his first assistant director. Arikawa later said he felt Toho lowered the budget due to his inexperience as effects director, something they wouldn't have been able to do had

Tsuburaya himself been in charge, due to the clout he had. What's more, the setting for both this film and the next film didn't necessitate the construction of a bunch of miniature buildings, giving them another incentive to keep costs down. Thus, while the miniature Red Bamboo base is certainly quite intricate and well-designed, the sequence where Godzilla attacks and destroys it is the only thing similar to a city-destruction sequence here. But, Arikawa and his team still managed to pull off some really good stuff with the small amount of

money they had. For instance, there are a couple of great sequences involving miniature boats being thrashed around by storms before they're then destroyed by Ebirah. Said miniatures are not only as well executed as the Red Bamboo base, with some tiny dummies simulating the actors that are shot so well, you wouldn't know they're dummies unless you looked at them really close (at least, I didn't), but they built some nice, full-sized models of Ebirah's claws for these scenes, and the overall

effect, especially that of the first sequence involving the Yahlen, is seamless. The same also goes for the sequence where the Red Bamboo air-force attacks Godzilla, with miniature fighter jets that are well-designed and look good when they blow up. Speaking of blowing up, the destruction of Letchi at the end of the movie is truly a spectacle. The optical and matting effects also continue to improve, as there are some well-done shots of Godzilla and the human characters, such

as Daiyo, in the same frame, and you actually see Mothra fly above and then land near the heroes at the end of the movie (although, the weird slow-motion effect used when she flies in is kind of off-putting). And finally, they were able to pull off some extensive underwater monster battles by literally shooting the battle through the glass of a fish tank. It's simple, yet surprisingly effective, and they added in a couple of actual underwater shots of the Godzilla and Ebirah suits for just a bit more authenticity. 

While Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster has a pretty serene opening, like I said before, it doesn't take long for us to get into the action, with the dance marathon and the main characters setting sail on the Yahlen immediately afterward. The first major sequence happens just over twelve minutes in, when Ryota calls everybody on deck, telling them there are bad clouds approaching. Sure enough, when they get up there, there are dark, ominous-looking clouds rolling in, and after a dissolve,

they're caught up in a horrific storm. The Yahlen is tossed around by violent waves, the men are blasted on deck with torrents of water, waves crash over the boat's deck, and there's constant howling wind and flashing lightning (I always loved this scene when I was a kid and would try to replicate it whenever I was taking a bath, which led to me getting water all over the floor and making a mess, much to my parents' annoyance). Down below, Yoshimura's briefcase, containing his stolen

money, gets knocked to the floor and breaks open, the money pouring out. Another wave crashing into the boat floods the living area, with the money now floating in a shallow, standing pool of water. The storm gets more violent, and up on deck, Yoshimura sees that the mast is cracking. He has the others get clear, when it breaks loose and smashes the helm. As if things couldn't get any worse for them, Ebirah's claw suddenly emerges from the water. Without a helm, they have no control over the boat, and it drifts toward the claw,

slamming into its bottom half when it's wide open. Everyone gets flung off the boat, as the claw grabs it by the bow, lifts it up, and tears it apart, before submerging with it. Following that, the violent scene dissolves to our peaceful first shot of Letchi Island, where the characters awaken to find themselves shipwrecked.

The second big setpiece also involves Ebirah, and happens not too long afterward. After the group sees a Red Bamboo freighter arriving, and fail to signal it, they try to follow it, only to see the armed base and the nearby dock. The freighter docks and a group of Infant Islanders is removed from within. But while Captain Ryuui and the Naval Officer finish their transaction, several of the slaves attempt to escape along the shoreline. Three of them are shot down by a nearby turret (we only

actually see two get shot, while the third one just disappears between cuts), but two make it to a canoe and paddle off into the ocean. Ryuui and group of soldiers head down the beach after them, while Daiyo manages to slip away when she sees that everyone's focused on what's happening. The soldiers attempt to shoot the escaping natives but they're too far out. Ryuui, however, knows they won't escape and orders his men to return to the dock. Sure enough, just as it seems like the natives

have gotten away, Ebirah begins to emerge from the water ahead of them. First, his enormous, right claw surfaces, followed his left, as the natives attempt to turn the canoe. As the heroes watch from the shore, Ebirah completely emerges with a loud screech and heads right for the canoe. The natives frantically try to paddle away but they're unable to get anywhere, and as the other islanders watch, Ebirah slams his large right claw into the water and picks the canoe up, dumping out the two men. He then uses his left claw to impale the two

of them (it's very quick and you don't see any blood) and goes to stick them into his mouth, before another quick cut. After having his meal, Ebirah descends back into the depths, and Ryuui, satisfied that the islanders know they can't escape, has them taken away. However, he then learns of Daiyo's escape and prepares to find her.

After that, our heroes meet up with Daiyo, with Ryota nearly getting stabbed by her when she sees them coming through the foliage and thinks they're the Red Bamboo. She runs off, but they manage to catch up with her and convince her that they're her friends. Yoshimura then attempts to explain how they ended up on the island, when a search balloon appears above them, followed by Ryuui and his search teams coming at them from two different reactions. They give chase, firing at them as they

run up the side of a steep, rocky hill, sending a bunch of rocks rolling down behind them as they go, probably hoping it would slow the soldiers down (when they get to the top and scramble, you can see that Yoshimura manages to just barely avoid getting shot several times). Seeing that they don't have a lot of options of where to go, and with the soldiers closing in, they make a rush across the cliff, only to find it ends in a steep drop-off. Yoshimura motions them over to the left side of the

cliff and has them jump down onto a ledge below; he himself goes first before they can protest. After they all make it down, with Nita failing to stick the landing and losing his balance, they carefully side-step their way across the ledge, with their backs to the wall. There are a couple of suspenseful moments here, like when Daiyo nearly trips and sends a rock plummeting down to the ocean, and when Ryuui and his men appear on top of the cliff above them. Seeing the steep drop-off, Ryuui concludes that they can't find them because they've

perished and orders his men to return to base. Once they've gone, Ichino discovers a cave in the cliffside. Yoshimura says he feels a draft, meaning there's another entrance to it somewhere, and then, with a storm passing overhead, they take shelter inside.

While they're making their way through the cave, the lightning hits a small tree on the surface, blasting it in half and causing a landslide that opens a massive hole in the cave's roof. That's when they notice Daiyo make a prayer and learn she's from Infant Island, as well as that Yata is there, too. We get the scene of the slaves praying to Mothra while they work, only for Ryuui to break it up by firing at them, and then our first look at Infant Island itself, as the natives and the Shobijin

attempt to awaken Mothra with their song. That's when Yoshimura decides they must make the first move against the Red Bamboo and coerces the others into sneaking into the base with him. Ichino and Nita are initially reluctant to go, but when Nita throws a rock off the ledge they're on and into the depths of the cave, they then realize they're not alone: Godzilla is in there with them. Godzilla is introduced in a sequence of shots: first a close-up of his hand and then his spines, before we finally see a full body shot of him as he's sleeping. Needless to say, that makes Ichino and Nita quickly change their minds. 

Once night falls, the group make their way towards the base's main gate, using a large piece of shrubbery as camouflage and stopping every few seconds. At one point, Nita trips and falls with a thud, and also lets out a short yell. Hearing this, the guards in one of the base's towers scan the area with their searchlight. The heroes stay very still as the light passes over their bush, and eventually, Daiyo makes use of a bird she's holding by letting it fly out from behind the bush (I don't know why

Daiyo is carrying a bird around, but she is). Thinking it was the source of the noise, the guards switch off the searchlight, and the group move the bush closer to the gate, until they get close enough to where Yoshimura, along with Nita, can run up to and open it with his skeleton key. After he unlocks the latch and slowly eases the gate open, they all sneak inside the base. There are a couple of heart-stopping moments where they sneak down some corridors and have to stop short when a light

suddenly comes on or when a couple of scientists round a corner and enter an elevator up ahead. They then find their way into the storage room, and come upon batches of dark-green bottles on the shelves that, as Nita describes, kind of look like bowling pins. He picks one up and presses the top, causing it to hiss loudly and startle him. He tosses it to the floor and thick, white-yellow smoke spews out, making them realize it's a smoke-bomb. Yoshimura figures they could be useful and tells

everyone to take some with them. As they leave the room, Daiyo finds a large spool of wire and decides to put it around her neck like a piece of jewelry, before rejoining the others. They next find their way into the main laboratory and sneak around the room, using the machinery as cover, when Yoshimura sees an enormous door with a combination lock. He starts using his safe-cracking skills, while the others are forced to take cover when a couple of scientists appear on a nearby walkway. After messing with the lock for a little

bit, and never getting spotted despite being right out in the open, Yoshimura hears it click and opens the door. Everyone attempts to go inside, with Ichino going first, only for him to rush back out and tell them it's a nuclear reactor. Yoshimura closes the door and all of them hide in the corner until the two scientists walk off. Now knowing it's a heavy-water factory, they decide to sneak out by crawling on the floor and around the machinery. However, they don't get far before Yoshimura, who's in front, rounds a corner and finds himself

looking at a couple of black boots. Looking up, he sees Captain Ryuui and some rifle-wielding guards standing over him. Ryuui orders Yoshimura to get up, which he slowly does, and tells the others to do the same. Once everyone is on their feet, they throw their smoke-bombs right at the soldiers and use them as cover to escape.

Disguised as scientists, Yoshimura and Nita make their way out of the base's entrance and towards the gate, holding two large, silver panels which the others are crouched in-between. When they get close to the gate, they lose their grip on the heavy panels and drop them, scrambling to quickly pick them back up. They get to the gate and Yoshimura has them hold onto the panels, while he gets it open. Just as he's about to unlock the latch, the alarm sounds, almost as if triggered by his

touching it. Some soldiers come rushing out of the base and he manages to unlock and open the gate lightning fast. Both the soldiers and guards in the tower fire upon them, hitting the panels, startling Ryota and Nita, and leading to their being separated from the others. Yoshimura, Daiyo, and Ichino manage to run off to safety, but Ryota and Nita aren't so lucky, as they scramble about the base itself. In his haste, Ryota ends up getting his feet tangled in the line of a large balloon that gets

shot loose and drifts upwards. Nita grabs onto the line below him but Ryuui shoots it and Nita falls to the ground, where he's immediately captured by the guards. Ryota, meanwhile, manages to secure himself to the drifting balloon's line and decides to just wait and see where it's taking him. By sunrise, the others, back in the cave, realize what's happened, and are forced to duck out of sight when they see Ryuui leading a search party down by the shoreline. Back inside, Ichino steps on some loose rocks by the edge and sends one tumbling down

towards the sleeping Godzilla (because of how he blends in with the rocks, and due to that badly cropped VHS I had as a kid, I never realized that the rock hits the side of his head). However, he doesn't stir, and they clearly wonder if he's even alive. That's when they hear his heart beating and see him slightly stirring (again, never realized I was looking at a shot of his head). Meanwhile, Nita is thrown in with the other slaves and Ryota ends up on Infant Island and reunites with Yata.

The Red Bamboo are now extensively searching the island, trying to draw the heroes out with gunfire, and that's when Ichino comes up with the idea to awaken Godzilla. Once he and Yoshimura agree that it's the only viable option they have, Ichino decides that lightning might be the best way to go about it. They set a native sword that Nita had found on the island's highest point, with the blade sticking upward, and lead a trail of Daiyo's wire from the hilt down through the hole in the cave's ceiling and onto Godzilla's body. While they

wait for a storm to hit the island, Nita convinces the slaves to come up with a phony batch of the yellow liquid, and Ryota and Yata leave Infant Island and set out for Letchi on a canoe. It takes three days but a storm finally does reach the island, driving away another Red Bamboo search party; unfortunately, it hits right when Ryota and Yata are attempting to go ashore. The violent waves first cause Ryota to lose his oar, and then wash away the barrels containing the yellow liquid, leaving them helpless if Ebirah appears. And sure enough, he

soon emerges and approaches them. Meanwhile, the sword takes two direct hits from the lightning, carrying the electric current down to Godzilla. Seeing his dorsal plates beginning to glow with each strike, Yoshimura figures they'd better get to safety and they leave the cave. The sword is then hit by the most powerful lightning bolt yet, energizing Godzilla's body even more, with both his dorsal plates and claws glowing with electrical energy, and the latter quivering as well. One more

jolt, and his eyes snap open. Ryota and Yata are forced to abandon their boat and swim for shore, with Ebiran almost on top of them, while the sides of the island's cliff begin to rumble and loosen, until Godzilla breaks his way through the rock with a roar. Emerging completely, and looking around curiously, he makes his way down to the shoreline

He then sees Ebirah in the water, and the giant shrimp gestures towards him in a challenging manner, a challenge he accepts. He walks to the water's edge and roars back at Ebirah, before kicking a rock at him. Ebirah smacks the rock back to Godzilla, who catches it and throws it back at him. Ebirah swipes the rock again and this time, it flies past Godzilla and almost hits Ryota and Yata, who finally make it to shore and run for cover. Godzilla picks up another large rock and throws it at Ebirah and, after a little more back and forth

between the two of them, with Godzilla using his head to bounce the rock back, Ebirah catches it in his right claw and throws it. Godzilla, however, smacks it out of thin air and causes it fly off and smash the top of one of the towers at the Red Bamboo base; a guard alerts Ryuui about this and he asks if the slaves are in revolt. Deciding he's had enough of this game of volleyball, Godzilla makes his way into water. Ebirah uses his right claw to splash some water in Godzilla's face but he isn't fazed by it and gives Ebirah a taste of his atomic

blast, causing him to fly back in a cloud of steam. Ebirah appears to sink below the surface, fried to a crisp, but when Godzilla leans forward to make sure, Ebirah suddenly lunges out of the water and gets him right in the face with his pincer. The two of them engage in a little bit of hand-to-hand combat, with Godzilla punching Ebirah while the crustacean tries to whack him with his claws, and even manages to grab his hand with the larger claw. During this skirmish, the Red Bamboo see 

what's happening and the Commander tells Ryuui to contact headquarters. Godzilla grabs Ebirah and flips him over his shoulder. With the shrimp floating helplessly on his back, Godzilla gives him some more punches to the underbelly. Ebirah manages to slip away beneath the waves and Godzilla, again, scans the surface to make sure he's gone. He then suddenly lets out a pained screech (the first time in the series he makes this particular sound) as Ebirah drags him beneath the

water. Despite this nasty little surprise, he shoves Ebirah away, picks up a rock, and bashes him on the head a couple of times, encouraging him to retreat. Godzilla heads to the surface with a roar and, seeing Ebirah swimming away in defeat, roars again in victory, before turning and heading back to the island.

The next day, Yoshimura, Daiyo, and Ichino set up a number of traps for the Red Bamboo (Ichino stupidly asks if these are meant to capture Godzilla), when they hear a pair of snares they set up activate. However, when they push through the foliage, they find that they caught Ryota and Yata. After Yoshimura helps them down, they go and spy on the Red Bamboo base from a hill, trying to come up with a plan to rescue the slaves. Unbeknownst to them, there's a microphone in a small tree to their right, and down below, Ryuui is

informed it's picking up voices. Just as Yoshimura says he knows when he's being hunted, his instinct is proven right when a shot hits one of the rocks they're hiding behind. They quickly run back into the jungle, with a group of soldiers on their trail. when Daiyo spots another group up ahead. The five of them are forced to split up: Yoshimura and Ichino go one way, Ryota and Yata head off in another direction, and Dayo heads up into the rocky hills, with the group being led by Ryuui chasing after her. But they immediately their

pursuit when they see Godzilla looming over the ridge up ahead. The soldiers retreat in a panic, futilely shooting at him, and Daiyo also tries to escape, but ends up cornered when Godzilla approaches her. She cries for help and the others come running, but when they see Godzilla standing over her, they realize they can't do anything at the moment. Yoshimura suggests they wait for an opening and, as Godzilla starts to become more relaxed, they move in slowly. Some time passes

and Godzilla sits down, while continuing to keep an eye on Daiyo whenever she moves. However, he appears to be dozing off and leans to his left, onto the side of the cliff, ready to take a nap. When Daiyo looks up at him again, she sees he has fallen asleep and attempts to slip away, while the men take the opportunity to run in and get her to safety.

However, just when the men are about to rescue Daiyo, the giant condor shows up out of nowhere and heads straight for the sleeping Godzilla. Seeing this, Daiyo screams to wake Godzilla up and points at the giant bird. Godzilla's eyes snap open and he turns to face the condor, which flies right at his head. This battle is very chaotically edited and consists of a bunch of extreme close-ups, but you can tell that the bird is pecking and smacking Godzilla on the head with its wing, before moving down and biting his fingers. Godzilla manages to

fling the bird against the ground, where it bounces, and then he proceeds to pummel it a little more. The editing then gets really confusing, as you see the bird bite the tip of his tail, but as he struggles with it, the shots switch back and forth between it biting his tail and back to his fingers. The bird flies away, only to stupidly come back around to attack again. Godzilla hits it with his atomic blast and its sizzling, smoking body flops against the ground and falls into the ocean, while Godzilla roars in triumph. He then scratches the right side of his

nose with his right index finger (meant as a nod to popular actor, Yuzo Kayama, though I always thought it was because the bird bit his nose) and sits back down. But he doesn't get to relax for long, as a squadron of planes from the Red Bamboo's headquarters fly in to deal with him. Seeing them coming, Godzilla gets back to his feet and walks forward, waiting for them to attack. When they get above his head, the planes separate and circle around before coming back and firing at him. The

pilots prove to be lousy shots, as they just hit the ground around Godzilla, and a couple of them actually fly right at his chest, allowing him to smash them. During this pandemonium, the men manage to reach Daiyo and rescue her, while Godzilla deals with another round of planes that fire their missiles... and miss again! After a lot of explosions and planes buzzing around him like annoying insects, Godzilla manages to catch one and throw the wreckage into the ocean, while two

more fly right by his head and he hits them with a quick blast from his mouth, causing them to crash into the side of the mountain behind him. Godzilla smashes another with his tail and blows two more up with his atomic blast before the last one appears to just fly right by him and crash into the side of the mountain. Again, the Red Bamboo pilots suck.

Thoroughly enraged by that plane attack, Godzilla advances on the Red Bamboo base. Every turret and guard-tower in the complex begins firing on him, as he makes his way to the center of the base. He wades through all of that firepower and walks through some electrical wires that have been energized with 100,000 volts, which doesn't really do much to him, except make him pause and slightly recoil. He moves onward, buckling from the onslaught, and his knee hits one of the high-tension towers, which does seem to hurt him a

little, as the commander had the current turned up. Instead of just frying that troublesome tower with his atomic blast, Godzilla picks up a rock and smashes it. He then kicks a little bit at the ground, which weakens the ceiling of the slaves' holding area, forcing Nita and the Infant Islanders to take cover in an alcove to avoid the large rocks that rain down. Godzilla enters the heart of the base and throws another rock at an overloading, combusting transformer, causing some equipment in the main laboratory to short out. He then smashes a gate

with his feet and a bunker with his tail, before turning his attention towards a flat building with a large dome on top of it; as he makes his way towards it, Yoshimura and Yata slip into the slaves' holding area. Godzilla steps up onto the building's flat roof and stomps at the dome with the balls of his feet (you get a look at the tanned underside of his tail as it flops around), before ultimately turning his foot and using his heel to smash through it and separate it from the roof. Realizing there's no way they can stop him, Captain Ryuui orders the base evacuated and the nuclear self-destruct mechanism armed. 

A group of soldiers come down to take the barrels containing the yellow liquid from the slaves' enclosure (poor Nita gets knocked to the floor when he simply asks what's going on), then they leave the slaves to be crushed by the falling rocks. Fortunately, Yoshimura and Yata find them and Yoshimura prepares to use his good-old skeleton key to unlock the barred door. They all make their way back through the main laboratory, where a scientist has just set the time bomb and keeps them at bay by threatening to detonate it manually. At

that exact moment, Godzilla passes overhead, and when he stomps a small building up above, a big chunk of the laboratory's roof caves in, destroying a lot of the equipment and fatally wounding the scientist, who's pinned beneath pieces of the roof. He manages to tell them that the island will be destroyed in two hours before he dies. Yoshimura and the others see the button, but it's buried underneath some heavy pieces of roof and they're unable to reach it through what small opening there is. The button gradually descends as well,

compounding things all the more. As the Red Bamboo use their freighter to escape, Godzilla finishes off the base, while Yoshimura, Yata, Nita, and the slaves make it back outside. Yata instructs the natives to begin building the large net, just as the Shobijin said, while Nita tells Ichino that the island is going to blow up. Ichino tells him that the Red Bamboo escaped and then, Nita remembers he had the natives make up a phony batch of the yellow liquid, meaning the Red Bamboo are

defenseless against Ebirah. Sure enough, as the Red Bamboo make their way out to sea, Ebirah emerges and they, in turn, begin spraying the liquid, which now has no effect. Ebirah immediately smashes the freighter with his right claw, picks it up, and slams it back down into the water, killing everyone aboard. Godzilla appears near the shoreline and, after he gets Ebirah's attention, the giant crustacean challenges him to another fight. Godzilla accepts and makes his way into the water, as Ebirah swims towards him.

The two of them square off by splashing water and flailing their limbs before finally starting their fight, with Ebirah whacking Godzilla up the side of the head with his right claw. Meanwhile, Yoshimura, Yata, and Ryota continue trying to deactivate the bomb but they're unable to reach the continuously dropping button. Just when Ryota almost gets it, it drops completely out of reach, and now, there's less than half an hour left. Back at the fight, Godzilla blasts Ebirah, sending him beneath the water, but, once again, he pulls Godzilla under

the surface. This time, he doesn't make it so easy for him to escape, as he struggles with him and holds his head in place with his claws. Back on the island, the natives finish constructing the basis for the large net, while on Infant Island, the remaining natives and the Shobijin continue trying to awaken Mothra. But time is running out, as the button continues to drop. Back in the ocean, Ebirah grabs both Godzilla's hand and foot, while Godzilla bashes him on the head to make him let go. After a lot of struggling, he manages to pry his limbs free

and make it to the surface. But he just barely gets his head out of the water before Ebirah smacks him back under. That proves to have been a mistake, as Godzilla grabs a hold of Ebirah's left claw with his mouth and refuses to let go. Then, on Infant Island, the singing and praying suddenly stop, and after a bit of silence, Mothra finally awakens and flies off. Back at the fight, Godzilla and Ebirah surface, with Godzilla's mouth still clamped on Ebirah's left claw. Ebirah squeals in pain as Godzilla slowly rips

the base of the claw away from the arm, before finally giving one big yank to tear it loose completely. He then grabs the other claw with his hands and it doesn't take much effort for him to rip that one off. As Ebirah squeals and retreats off into the sea, Godzilla spits the small claw out of his mouth and then cruelly taunts his defeated opponent by snapping the bigger one at him. That's when Mothra arrives and Godzilla catches sight of her as she comes in to land on the island.

Mothra lands in the barren field near where everybody is constructing the net, and the Shobijin, who are sitting on her head, tell everyone to get inside it. While everyone's doing so, Godzilla gets back on the island and approaches Mothra. He roars and gestures towards her in a threatening manner, but Mothra, initially, appears to refuse to fight him. However, he leaves her no choice when, after stomping his foot and slamming his tail, he atomic blasts the ground in front of her. Mothra takes to the air and flies towards Godzilla, who,

like in their original battle, is having trouble keeping his balance from her powerful winds. Once he's completely off-balance, Mothra flies right at him and hits him with her left wing, knocking him over and onto his back. She flies over him and towards the large net, picking it up with her front set of feet and carrying it and everyone off. Godzilla gets back to his feet and turns and roars as he watches Mothra fly away. As they depart, everyone in the net, feeling bad that he

has no idea that the island is about to explode, begins yelling at him to run for it. Whether or not he actually heard them or even understood, as he walks across a ridge, it's clear he slowly but surely senses that something isn't right. As the bomb reaches only a few seconds before detonation, he lets out a couple of roars and then jumps off into the water and swims away. He does so just in the nick of time, as the bomb explodes and completely wipes the island from the face of the Earth, tearing

open its crust, dumping what remains into the ocean, and finally engulfing it in a massive cloud of fire and smoke. The movie then ends with everyone seeing that Godzilla did manage to escape and, as what's left of the island is incinerated, Mothra heads back for Infant Island (though, in the final shot, she's no longer carrying the net!).

Instead of hiring Akira Ifukube, Jun Fukuda, wanting his film to have a different sound from the Ishiro Honda ones, opted to bring in another composer he'd worked with before. That composer happened to be Masaru Sato, who'd stood in for Ifukube on Godzilla Raids Again eleven years earlier. However, by this point, Sato had become as much of a master composer as Ifukube, having worked with Akira Kurosawa for a decade and recently with Fukuda on 100 Shot, 100 Killed. As a result of the distinct style Sato had developed for himself, Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster sounds like no other Godzilla film that came before it. This score is often very energetic, lush, and downright jazzy, almost sounding like a Bond movie, appropriate given the Bondian elements here. There's a very jazzy, surf movie sort of piece that plays during the dance competition at the beginning, the theme used for Ebirah during his first two appearances opens with an especially Bond-style sound, before transitioning into a series of blaring horns when he attacks, the music for the chase scenes is energetic but comes off as more light-hearted and adventurous rather than thrilling or tense, and there's some truly ridiculous music that plays during the first part of Godzilla's battle with the planes (a piece of Sato's score for Kurosawa's High and Low in 1963). Not wanting to copy Ifukube, Sato never used any of his established themes in his own Godzilla scores; thus, Godzilla and Mothra have different leitmotifs here. Godzilla's theme is a bit similar to his classic one but its sound keeps with the overall jazzy nature of the score, with an ominous build-up leading into a rolling flourish. Mothra has a typical, beautiful-sounding theme that I don't mind, despite how generic it kind of is. And while I don't like the song the natives are constantly singing to her throughout the film, the instrumental version of the Shobijin's section, which plays over the opening credits, sounds rather nice and fits with the visuals of the sun rising over a peaceful seashore. 

The score has some other nicely peaceful tunes, like during the montage sequence when the Yahlen is sailing across the ocean, when we first see them shipwrecked on the island, and when Daiyo silently prays to Mothra in the cave. There are also some fairly tense and even downbeat pieces, such as one that starts out fairly silent but then grows and becomes more threatening when they first see Godzilla in the cave; a forlorn and droning theme during the first part of Godzilla's attack on the Red Bamboo base, used later to signify that everyone's running out of time, as the bomb gets closer to exploding; and the frantic bit at the end when Godzilla senses something is wrong and jumps off into the ocean right before the island explodes. But, ultimately, my favorite thing about the score is how well it fits with the tropical island motif. You listen to a lot of this music by itself and it's unlikely you won't think about the tropics, especially when they're first exploring the island. And I do like the music the film ends on, starting with a little bit of Godzilla's theme and transitioning to more beautiful music, as we see what's left of the island exploding, and then ending on a very upbeat note as Mothra heads for home. It's the perfect way to conclude a nice South Seas adventure.

This was the first Godzilla movie to bypass American theaters; instead, the rights were acquired by the Walter Reade Organization and it was released directly to television in 1968. While not drastically changed, this version, the one I and everyone else over here had on VHS for years, was altered a bit from the original Japanese cut. It completely removes the opening titles, instead starting off with a black title card that says Godzilla Versus The Sea Monster, and then smash-cuts to 30 seconds of Ebirah's attack on the Yahlen, meant to show how Yata was lost at sea (you can clearly see the boat's name on its side). They also took out some other small scenes and moments, like when Ryota goes to the Maritime Safety office and then to the newspaper offices, Ryota showing Yoshimura, Ichino, and Nita a newspaper article about his brother's disappearance while they're eating lunch on the boat, Yoshimura trying to convince Ichino and Nita to help him take the Yahlen back from Ryota, the surf music that plays during the first part of Godzilla's battle with the fighter jets, and some shots of the Infant Islanders singing and praying to Mothra during the climax, which, in hindsight, I'm glad they removed. In addition, like I mentioned earlier, Captain Ryuui's name is changed to Yamamoto here, and both the Red Bamboo and Ebirah are never given names (I only knew Ebirah's name thanks to the back of the VHS box). The dubbing was done by Titra Studios, which dubbed Godzilla vs. The Thing and would work on a few more Godzilla movies. As with that film, the dubbing here, which featured Peter Fernandez, the English voice of Speed Racer, both directing and providing the voice for Ryota, Corinne Orr, who provided all the female voices for Speed Racer, voicing Daiyo and the Shobijin, and Hal Linden voicing Yoshimura, was really quite good and sounded natural, with the voices fitting their respective characters well.

In 2005, TriStar gave Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster, and several other Showa-era Godzilla films, its first ever DVD release. There were some major pros and cons to this. On the plus side, the original uncut version could now be seen over here, nicely remastered and looking and sounding awesome, as was the case for the other films TriStar released. The downside was that it dispensed with the dub by Titra and, in its place, was Toho's "international dub," a practice Toho had been doing with their films since the early 60's. Done first by Frontier Enterprises in Tokyo and then by studios in Hong Kong, these dubs were made available much quicker and were cheaper than those actually produced in America. They also made it easier for Toho to sell their films to other countries, like France, Germany, and Spain, since dubbing into those languages wwas quicker and simpler to do with an already existing English language print. Unfortunately, as economically beneficial as they may have been, their actual quality was something else entirely. The international dubs of later films, like Godzilla vs. Gigan, Godzilla vs. Megalon, and Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, have always been their only English versions, but I'd never heard the international dub of Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster until that DVD release, and I think I understand why: it sucks! While international dubs for those other films have always worked well enough for me, the voices here are either flat and unimpressive or, in Nita's case, absolutely irritating. The dubbed voice for Nita is so high-pitched and overly cowardly that it makes you hate the actor, even though it's not his voice! Think about how annoying the English dub voice for the kid Bob in Lucio Fulci's The House By The Cemetery is, and how much it makes you hate the kid himself, and you'll get what I mean. What's even more of a shame is that the international versions for this and other Godzilla movies released by AIP and Walter Reade have replaced the original English versions that were available on VHS for years, as they're the ones Toho prefers (although, only this film's Japanese version is on the Criterion set). That's really too bad because, even though I haven't heard it in years, I remember it enough to where I can say that dub was much better.

While Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster, or Ebirah, Horror of the Deep (the Criterion set was the first time I ever saw that international title used), isn't one of my absolute favorite Godzilla films and not one I go back to that often, it's definitely worth watching. It's quite fast-paced, has another likable cast of characters, there are plenty of entertaining and exciting action scenes, the special effects are well-executed once again, Godzilla, while he doesn't come into the film until almost an hour in, has more screentime and does more here than in Godzilla vs. Monster Zero, Ebirah is well-designed and has some fun fights with Godzilla, and the music score is very lively and fits the picture well. But, on the other hand, a lot of the main characters, while still likeable, don't have much distinctive about them, the non-monster bad guys are pretty one-note, some may find parts of Godzilla's portrayal to be bizarre and out of character, the song the Infant Islanders sing to Mothra isn't the best, and Mothra herself serves as nothing more than a deus ex machina. In the end, though, the film's good points do outweigh the bad and for his first foray into Godzilla, Jun Fukuda, despite whatever misgivings he may have had, I think did a more than capable job.