Movie Review – Gojira / Godzilla (1954)

When it comes to monster movies, it’s hard to top Godzilla, the towering, dinosaur-like lizard with an atomic breath who likes to destroy Tokyo, Japan.

The 1954 science-fiction / horror film Gojira tells the story of how a monster known as Godzilla rises from the sea and goes on a destruction rampage, destroying much of Tokyo, Japan, and killing an untold number of innocent people.  This is a monster that was born from the testing of nuclear weapons.  Godzilla is partially radioactive himself.  How do you stop or defeat a monster more powerful than an atomic weapon?

It’s up to the scientists to find a way to defeat Godzilla before he destroys the rest of Japan.

Directed by Ishiro Honda, Gojira was produced and distributed by Toho, a film and production company that would later go on and release over twenty-five sequels to the original film.

Gojira begins near Ohto Island off the coast of Japan.  The fishing vessel Eiko Maru is out sailing when it suddenly encounters an underwater explosion and a tremendous flash of bright light.  The ship manages to send out an emergency S-O-S message before it sinks beneath the water.  A second ship, the Bingo Maru, is sent to help the Eiko Maru, but it also disappears.

Not everybody on the Eiko Maru was killed.  Three survivors are found and are taken to nearby Ohto Island for emergency treatment.  The survivors don’t know what happened except for the tremendous explosion.  Coincidentally, the survivors also have radiation burns.

On Ohto Island, the villagers watch as another survive drifts to shore on a makeshift raft.  Like the other survivors, this one has radiation burns, is badly wounded, and has no idea what happened in the water.  One of the village elders knows the cause —– Godzilla!  He claims that the old tales of the sea monster known as Godzilla are true.  In the old days, when the fishing was poor, the villagers would offer a native girl as a sacrifice to appease the sea monster.

Perhaps it’s time to make another offering to the ancient monster . . .

A helicopter carrying several reporters arrives on Ohto Island to see if they can make any light of what’s happening to the ships at sea.  That night the villagers perform a ceremony to appease the monster, but it’s not mentioned if anybody was offered as a sacrifice.

Later that night a terrible storm strikes Ohto Island.  Nine people are killed from it.  Many buildings are destroyed along with farms and their livestock.  The government believes that it was simply a bad storm, but the villagers are convinced that something far more terrifying was responsible for the widespread damage.

The next day, survivors of the “storm” on Ohto Island are taken to Tokyo to testify and tell their story of what really happened.  Archaeologist Dr. Kyohei Yamane (Takashi Shimura) listens to the reports and suggests that the government send a team of researchers to the island.  The government agrees and a ship quickly leaves for Ohto island.

On Ohto Island, the researchers quickly discover a massive footprint by one of the destroyed buildings.  As if the size of the footprint wasn’t alarming enough, the scientists also discover that it’s radioactive.  The radiation is only contained in that local area and not across the entire island, so the scientists know that it’s not radioactive fallout from a nuclear bomb.  Something else was responsible for contaminating these hot spots.

Also discovered in the footprint is a trilobite, a supposedly extinct marine creature, the last of which went extinct about 250 million years ago.  Yet here it is inside of the gigantic footprint.

Suddenly an alarm sounds and the villagers rush to arm themselves with whatever weapons they can find.  It won’t do them any good though as they’re about to experience the wrath of Godzilla, a towering dinosaur-like reptile with an atomic breath.  Standing about 150 feet tall, the fierce monster walks across Ohto Island and terrifies the villagers and scientists alike.

Dr. Yamane returns to Tokyo and presents his findings to the government.  He believes that Godzilla survived by eating deep-sea organisms in a particular spot in the Pacific Ocean.  The recent nuclear weapons testing may have drastically altered Godzilla’s natural habitat, forcing the sea monster to seek alternate sources of food.  Dr. Yamane goes on to explain the trilobite found in Godzilla’s footprint, and the sand found in the trilobite’s shell, sand that dates back to the Jurassic geologic time period.  That sand from Godzilla absorbed a massive dose of radiation, the amount equivalent to that of an atomic bomb.

It’s now a debate as to whether or not make the information public about Godzilla.  This is a rather sensitive issue as the creature was the result of the testing of nuclear weapons.  People fighting for the truth prevail, and the government releases its information about Godzilla.

The government then sends out an anti-Godzilla fleet of frigate ships in an effort to kill the creature.  The ships drop hundreds of depth-charges, but there’s no indication if they’re successful.  The people will just have to wait and see.

All seems well until Godzilla emerges near a party boat out at sea.  The passengers are frightened by the monster, but they live to tell their tale as he does not attack their ship.  The government appeals to Dr. Yamane’s help in destroying the monster, but he’s more interested in studying it and figuring out how it exists.

Meanwhile, Emiko Yamane (Momoko Kochi), Dr. Yamane’s daughter, is currently engaged to Daisuke Serizawa (Akihiko Hirata), a scientist who prefers to keep his research and experiments a secret.  The problem is that Emiko is really in love with Hideto Ogata (Akira Takarada), a salvage ship captain, instead.  Before she can finally break her relationship with the scientist, Serizawa takes Emiko into his laboratory and shows her his secret experiment, something that he is confident can kill Godzilla.  When Emiko sees a small demonstration of his experiment, she screams in fright.  Later, Serizawa makes Emiko swear to secrecy about what she saw in his laboratory, and she doesn’t get a chance to break their relationship.

That night, Godzilla emerges from Tokyo Bay and enters the city.  The army tries to fire machine guns at the monster and stop him, but their efforts are useless.  There’s a trail of destruction in Tokyo as Godzilla roams the city, destroying everything in his path from passenger trains to power lines to buildings.  The residents of the city can only hide in bomb shelters and watch as the monster wrecks havoc.

The government meets after the attack, and the officials decide to construct a towering electrical fence along the coast of Tokyo.  If the monster touches the wires he’ll be zapped with 50,000 volts of electricity.  Is it enough to electrocute Godzilla?  Who knows?  Perhaps it’ll at least convince the monster to go somewhere else.  The army will also take positions along the fence as well.  Civilians in the area will have to be relocated to underground bomb shelters.

That night, Godzilla emerges once again.  The electrical wires are merely a distraction to the monster along with the machine gun and artillery fire from the army.  Godzilla easily destroys the barricade with his tremendous strength and powerful atomic breath.  He then marches through Tokyo, destroying everything that he sees.  In a last-ditch effort, the Japanese government sends a squadron of attack fighters against the monster.  The fighters’ air-to-surface missiles are merely distractions, but it does encourage Godzilla to return to the sea.

Tokyo is now in ruins.

Hundreds of buildings have been destroyed.  Thousands of people have been killed or injured.  Lots of children have been left without parents.  How are the people of Tokyo going to respond if Godzilla returns again?

Emiko cannot handle it any longer.  She breaks her vow of secrecy and tells Ogata about Serizawa’s secret experiment.  It turns out that the scientist has created something known as Oxygen Destroyer, a scientific process that disintegrates oxygen atoms in water and also releases a tremendous amount of energy.  It kills and liquifies any sea life in the area.  Emiko hopes that she and Ogata can convince Serizawa to come forward with his Oxygen Destroyer and use it to kill Godzilla.

The problem is that the Oxygen Destroyer releases so much energy during the process of disintegrating the oxygen atoms that the energy itself could be used in the form of a weapon.  Such a weapon would easily be as or more powerful than the current nuclear weapons.  Knowing how devastating the atomic bomb attacks were against Japan, Serizawa is extremely secretive about the potential power of the Oxygen Destroyer.

Emiko and Ogata return to Serizawa’s home and confront him about the Oxygen Destroyer.  He needs to make it public and to use the weapon to destroy Godzilla.  Serizawa is angry that Emiko betrayed his trust, and he refuses to make the Oxygen Destroyer public.  When Ogata pursues him into his laboratory, the two of them get into a minor fight.  After the scuffle, Serizawa tells Ogata that even if he destroys his notes about the Oxygen Destroyer, the blueprints will still be in his head.  As long as he’s alive, then somebody will try to extract the information from him.

Serizawa knows that using the Oxygen Destroyer is a no-win situation for him.  As he ponders what to do, him, Emiko and Ogata see televised footage of children in Tokyo singing and praying for help.  This changes Serizawa’s mind.  He takes his research notes and burns them.  Everybody knows what this ultimately means.

In Tokyo Bay, Geiger counters are used to try to pinpoint Godzilla’s location under the water.  Both Serizawa and Ogata don diving suits and then take the Oxygen Destroyer underwater.  At the bottom of the bay they find Godzilla resting.  As they make their way towards them, suddenly Godzilla awakens and sees the divers.  They both retreat and then Ogata is pulled to the surface by the crew on the navy ship.

Godzilla continues to make his way to Serizawa.  Just as the sea monster gets to the scientist, Serizawa activates the Oxygen Destroyer.  A tremendous amount of bubbles surge upwards and Godzilla is mortally wounded.  He pops his head above the surface and lets out one last roar before sinking beneath the waves and finally dying.

Serizawa watches as Godzilla dies.  He then speaks over the radio and tells Emiko to live with Ogata and to be happy together.  He then cuts his oxygen line and dies, taking the secrets of the Oxygen Destroyer with him.

Gojira ends with Dr. Yamane warning people about the dangers of nuclear weapons and the threat of unexpected consequences of using them.

So is Gojira, the first Godzilla film, a good movie?

Absolutely.

This is a fantastic monster film and concrete proof that Godzilla really is the king of the monsters.

To best enjoy this film you need to look past some of the incredibly cheesy special effects.  It’s very obvious that models were used throughout the film, from the power lines and buildings being destroyed to some of the aircraft and ships as well.  We also know that Godzilla was really an actor in a costume versus being something brought to life through an animation process like stop-motion animation (like how Hollywood brought King Kong to life in the classic 1933 film).

It’s understood that the Gojira film itself had to be created within a short time frame.  The producers had to work quickly and get a completed film on screen.  That’s one of the reasons why many of the special effects look so fake and somewhat corny.

When you look beyond the special effects, what you have in Gojira is a relatively simple film that tells a great story of the dark side of nature and nature’s wrath against humanity for the usage of nuclear weapons.  Since humanity destroyed parts of nature with atomic weapons, “nature” struck back by unleashing the creature Godzilla, a nearly unstoppable killing machine.

It’s awesome and it works in this film.  Godzilla is a massive wrecking machine that terrorizes humanity and destroys whatever it wants to at will.

It’s fairly interesting that a film of this magnitude came from Japan, a country that was attacked with atomic weapons twice nine years before this film was released to the public.  Here you have a country that had two of its cities obliterated by nuclear weapons, and people from that country create one of the greatest monsters in the history of filmography, a monster that was unleashed by nuclear weapons.

To me, the worst part of Gojira was the Oxygen Destroyer.  I’m aware that Gojira was created during the renaissance of classic science-fiction films, but the Oxygen Destroyer was just cheesy as hell.  It’s neither frightening or awe-inspiring.  The weapon is actually an insult to an otherwise fantastic science-fiction film.

Gojira (1954) – movie trailer (Japanese version)

Gojira is an absolute must-see for lovers of science-fiction, monster movies, and disaster films.  The cheesy special effects just add to this film’s charm.  Simply put, Gojira is awesome!