Godzilla films often have a subplot involving man's disregard for nature. In fact, Japanese sci-fi in general is all about upsetting the balance of the planet. Funny stuff coming from the one nation that refused to stop slaughtering endangered whales and still likes to buy mass quantities of powdered endangered species for use as aphrodisiacs. DID THEY LEARN NOTHING FROM SPECTREMAN!?!!?

Godzilla Versus Hedorah is the most overtly political of all the Godzilla films, with the possible exception of Godzilla's Revenge. Some movies chose to serve you the ideology in small, subtle ways. Godzilla Versus Hedorah serves it to you as a giant monster kicking over buildings and spewing acid onto hippies. Normally, this would be a good thing, but this must have been some of that brown acid everyone was warned about. I guess a light, subtle touch has never been a staple of the Godzilla franchise.

So what we have here is a monster born of sludge and industrial waste. Hedorah actually looks a lot like that disastrous food item some Japanese company tried to market a few years ago. It was made of reconstituted sewage and was supposed to be full of nutrients. The only problem was that they didn't disguise the origin, and no one wanted to eat a black-green fruit roll-up that was once in someone's ass. Anyway, Hedorah looks liked that.

Hedorah can also transform into three states -- flying Hedorah, stomping Hedorah, and swimming Hedorah. The flying Hedorah spreads deadly acid clouds as it flies. This doesn't sit well with Godzilla, now firmly planted in his superheroic "defender of humanity" personae. So one night he strolls into town to take on the gooey gob of evil.

No one seems to notice the two monsters. I mean, there's no evacuation, no mass hysteria, no sirens or jets or anything. Did they sneak into the city? How can you not notice Godzilla fighting a sludge monster in the middle of town?

In fact, this film dispenses with a number of traditional Godzilla elements -- there is no evacuation scene. No Akira Ifukube soundtrack. No aliens or fairies. Most of the monster action takes place at night. It's a weird feeling Godzilla movie, very different and strange. But you still got the little kid in micro-shorts, though this one isn't so bad. On the Ichiro scale, he only rates a 5, at best.

But Godzilla isn't strong enough! Is it possible that man's carelessness and irresponsibility have created an environmental monstrosity even Godzilla can't handle?

Hedorah splits and takes to eating factory pollution, since pollution is what gives Hedorah it's nourishment. This actually seems like a benefit of having a Hedorah around. But it keeps squirting acid on people, and you just can't do that, not even in the 1970s. Some go-go dancers, Bohemians, and hippy kids decide to have a big dance on Mount Fuji to summon good vibes and make Hedorah disappear. Of course, Hedorah comes by and squirts acidic sludge on everyone. Important lesson there -- you can't combat environmental destruction with good intentions or pointless songs. You've got to take an active role. Art is not enough to make the world right. It takes physical work.

Luckily, Godzilla is there to be the Earth First to their hippy peace circle. He's ready to kick pollution's ass, and this time he has some back-up in the form of the Japanese military and the scientist who discovered the origins of Hedorah. Now, if you've learned one thing from a Godzilla film, it's that he can magically have bestowed upon him powers that help him beat his enemy, like in Godzilla Versus MechaGodzilla when out of nowhere he has the power to magnetize his body.

Well, that's nothing. In this one, he uses his atomic breath to actually propel himself backwards through the sky. Yes, using his breath as a jet engine, he can fly! This is the one and only movie where Godzilla goes airborne in any fashion beyond Rodan picking him up and dropping him on stuff. When you see it, you will know why.

I don't care what the critics say! I love Godzilla Versus Hedorah in all its puzzling, heavy-handed glory. It has tons of monster action, a weird "drunken super Godzilla" theme song, weird animated bits, more monster action, cute beatnik girls in go-go boots and body stockings, and a flying Godzilla! It has that "Save the Earth" theme song. It certainly doesn't have the same tone or look of other Godzilla films. The color is more muted (and Godzilla films would become garish in their use of color as the 1970s progressed). It has funky music. It has a message about taking care of the Earth, and about man's responsibility for cleaning up his own mess. If you expect someone else to do it for you (Godzilla) or just write songs about it and dance, you'll be set upon by a monster. Only when mankind rolls up it's collective sleeves and plunges their hands into the heart of the mess can progress be made.

Nerd note: the Hedorah monster is played by Kenpachiro Satsuma in his first "role." He would go on to be the man in the evil monster suit for many other Godzilla films. He moved on to play Godzilla itself in all the new films, and has even invented a style of karate based on the movements and exercises he must do to properly function in the bulky monster suit. He calls it "Godzilla kempo."

You can catch a letterboxed version of the film on the Sci-Fi Channel from time to time, with different dubbing than the old VHS version and the Japanese language version of the "Save the Earth" song. Watch for it and enjoy!

Godzilla?

Yes, in Godzilla vs. Hedora (aka Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster) the big guy actually takes off and flies under his own power. And as weird as that sounds, that isn't the weirdest thing about Godzilla vs Hedora. Even for a movie about a big anthropomorphic fire breathing reptile fighting a giant pollution eating monster that looks a big pile of blackened teriyaki chicken, Godzilla vs Hedorah is a weird movie.

The main character is a little kid named Ken who loves Godzilla and who is convinced that Godzilla is the enemy of pollution. As is usual with the later Godzilla movies and most Gamera movies, it seems like the kid has a direct line to the big G, because he's absolutely correct. Ken spends his time playing with Godzilla toys, writing ecological poetry, and solving the world's problems with the simple, home-spun advice he gives to his father the scientist. You did know there'd be a scientist, right?

The movie starts with unusual happenings in Sagami Bay. The fish there are dying and little black tadpoles are showing up in their stead. It further turns out that the tadpoles are actually made of minerals, and grow when exposed to pollution. Soon, giant tadpoles are sinking ships, and finally a huge pollution-spawned monster crawls out of the bay and begins sucking on industrial smokestacks. The monster is dubbed Hedora by the Japanese media, which must employ people day and night just to come up with for names for all the monsters that show up in Japan. (This name, of course, comes from the precocious Ken.)

The rest of the movie is devoted to Godzilla and Hedora wrestling around Japan, while the scientist, egged on by Kenny, comes up with a plan to destroy Hedorah. Most of the battles between the two monsters are cautious, with each monster sizing the other one up before launching an attack. It's not the usual wrestling around that goes on in a Godzilla movie. But don't fear, there is plenty of other bizarre stuff going on to keep you occupied.

First of all, there is the music. Forgoing the usual Akira Ifukube score, this movie has a quirky original score that is almost trying to be inappropiate. Gone is any hint of majesty, instead we have a Godzilla entrance theme that sounds like a diesel engine turning over. And who could forget the "Save the Earth!" song that plays over the opening titles and during the movie itself? No really, is there anyone who can forget this song once they've heard it? Because if there is, we want to meet them and find out what their trick is. That darned song has been playing nonstop in our heads (in Japanese, no less) ever since we watched the movie. We have included it as a sound file for anyone who wants a cheap and legal alternative to LSD, but you can't get the full effect unless you see it with the visuals that go along with it: a singer wearing a painted leotard, dancing skeletons that abruptly flip upside down for no reason, and inkblot special effects that look like they are left over from the original Star Trek. And that's before we get to see it through the eyes of hard-drinking hippie hero Yukio, who starts seeing everybody with the head of a fish.

Then there are some really weird, hallucinogenic narrative techniques. Every now and then there are these funky cartoons that serve to educate us about Hedora. There is an unusual sequence that uses multiple TV screens to make some sort of point. A big part of the conclusion has to do with Yukio's plan to have a big love-in on Mt. Fuji while Hedora destroys Japan. We can only think the entire cast and crew were tripping while they made Godzilla vs. Hedora.

Despite the many, obvious, crippling flaws with this movie, there are some good things. There is a lot of monster action. Hedora shows up early and often, and Godzilla gets more screen time than he would in the next couple of his films. And there is a certain level of effort that was obviously put into this film. There is no stock footage, something that can't be said for the couple of films preceding or following this film. And as weird as those cartoons are, they at least show that someone making this film cared.

That person was probably Yoshimitsu Banno, director and screenwriter. It seems he was quite proud of this movie, and he was planning a sequel where Godzilla fought Hedorah in Africa. Legend has it that producer Tomoyuki Tanaka put the kibosh on that, because he was mightily displeased by this film when he saw the finished product. In retrospect, we can't blame him. After this movie, the creative reigns were put back in the hands of Jun Fukuda, who was never the best choice to direct Godzilla movies. And so the decline of the Godzilla movie would continue unabated.