Godzilla vs. Hedorah (rewatch)

This is a trip down memory lane for me.  I watched a lot of Godzilla movies on TV as a kid, and this one (which always aired as “Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster”) always stuck with me the most.  It’s psychedelic and it’s got that environmentalist vibe going, but mostly I remembered it for that groovy theme song, “Save the Earth”.  So imagine my disappointment when the song wasn’t on the DVD, not even on the English dub.  Oh, the song was there, it was just in Japanese… and not subtitled, so I don’t know if they’re singing “Save the Earth” or something else.  But I did finally get to see it in all its widescreen glory, and in the original language (though the English dub is funnier).

The film is even more insane than I remembered.  It’s like a Seijun Suzuki movie.  In addition to the bizarre premise — a monster formed from pollution, flinging toxic sludge around — there’s the wild jazz-rock soundtrack, odd animation inserts, time-lapse photography, split-screen effects, rapid-fire editing, even an abrupt shift from black & white to color.  There’s an out-of-nowhere hallucination where the teenage character thinks all his friends have fish heads!  Later, they (the psychedelic teenagers) go up to Mt. Fuji for one last party before Hedorah kills them all… which is exactly what happens!  And the colors are amazingly vibrant on the DVD.  Godzilla is actually the worst thing in here, and his slo-mo fight scenes with Hedorah are a bit dull.  Rating: 8

IMDb