December 5th: Ghidorah, the Three Headed Monster (1964)

It only took five films for us to get to Godzilla’s most iconic nemesis, and the namesake of the film: Ghidorah, the Three Headed Monster (1964). It is also the start of a trend for the Shwa ere of Godzilla films, that being Godzilla is as the good guy. The film opens with meteor showers appearing all over earth, with one particular meteor crashing into Japan. At the same time, a Princess from a neighbouring small country to Japan is shot down in an attempted assassination while travelling over to Japan. She loses her memory, believes she is from Venus, and becomes a prophet, preaching the end times with the coming of Rodan. As her predictions appear to be correct, Godzilla appears to do battle with Rodan, before Ghidorah appears from the meteor and starts to destroy Tokyo. It is then down to Mothra to convince Godzilla an Rodan to stop fighting and help to defeat Ghidorah.

As you can tell from that synopsis, there is a lot going on in this film and it is also stacked to the brim with several of the top kaiju of this series. This is both a benefit and a hinderance to the film. The hinderance should be fairly obvious. With so much going on there is a lack of focus on any particular element of the film so nothing to particular get your teeth into on a narrative side of things. The main focus of the narrative is on the continuous political assassination of the princess, which his fine but outside of her predicting the coming of Rodan it feels massively disconnected from all the monster stuff that is going on, to a point where I was left wondering why this was even going on. Thankfully, the due to how stacked the film is in terms of monsters the fight scenes are a lot of silly fun. This is especially true when Mothra is trying to convince Godzilla and Rodan to stop fighting and fight Ghidorah. They are genuinely just chatting and their conversation is translated by the tiny twins (remember them). It is so stupid but very funny, especially when one of the lines that is translated is ‘No, Godzilla and Rodan say it is none of their business. They don’t care.’ Hilarious. Also, I love that Godzilla decides that throwing rocks is the best course of action against Ghidorah. Just a lot of silly fun.

From a technical aspect this film is as good as the two previous ones. Ishiro Honda took back the reigns after Godzilla Raids Again (1955) and so there is a consistency in the feel and look of the themes which adds a good amount to the films, especially when watched back-to-back. The creature design is also on point in this film, apart from Rodan who looks really quite cheap and rigid. But Godzilla has been given moveable eyes which both give him a bit more character and make him look goofy in the best way. Mothra is in larvae form which is both cute and disgusting but it is just a carry over from the last film. But the real MVP of this film is King Ghidorah. His design is bloody brilliant, both visually and audially. Again, he can look a bit silly at times, but for the most part he looks awesome and I really have no complaints. I just wish there had been more focus on him than on the silly assassination suff. Also, you may remember I mention that the Princess believes she is from Venus. Well, alongside Godzilla becoming a good guy in this film (at least for the most part, he hasn’t gone full hero mode yet) this is a big bit of foreshadowing on where this series will be going.

Its hard to know whether to recommend this one. On the one hand, the narrative is so loose that you end up drifting away from the film, but on the other all the monster stuff is a ton of fun. I think overall I would recommend it, but only if you have enjoyed previous entries. Otherwise maybe give it a miss.