55 Years Ago, Godzilla Entered The Psychedelic Era

Part of what makes Godzilla such an enduring franchise is that it’s always changing. That’s true of the big guy’s adversaries, of course — tracing the metamorphosis of a kaiju is one of the fun parts of these movies — but it’s true of the movies, too. Although director Ishiro Honda originally imagined Godzilla as a heady metaphor for the psychic toll the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki placed on the people of Japan, it didn’t take long for Godzilla to become, well, kids’ stuff.

Although Honda returned to steer the series back in a relatively more serious direction with Destroy All Monsters in 1968, late-’60s Godzilla movies like Son of Godzilla and All Monsters Attack were made specifically for young fans. But while Godzilla movies retreated into cash-grab nostalgia, Japan was evolving all around it. As it did in much of the world, the psychedelic revolution hit Tokyo hard in the late ‘60s, as did student protests objecting to Japan’s involvement in Vietnam. And even the kingdom of the monsters couldn’t ignore these changes forever.

It took a new director, Yoshimitsu Banno, to bring Godzilla into the psychedelic age. Banno got his start as an assistant to the legendary Akira Kurosawa, and met series producer Tomoyuki Tanaka while working at the World’s Fair in Osaka in 1970. Although franchise veterans (including Honda) were appointed to monitor Banno while Tanaka recuperated — he was in the hospital for most of principal photography — the young director took the opportunity to sneak in a few scenes he knew wouldn’t make it past Tanaka if he asked permission first. The result is a movie that sometimes feels disjointed — we pivot from kid-friendly cuteness to mass murder more than once — but is utterly unique in the series.

We get one of those jarring moments almost immediately, as Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971) cuts from a James Bond-esque theme song (translated into English as “Save the Earth”) performed in front of a swirling psychedelic backdrop to a scene of the young protagonist playing with Godzilla toys. By this point in the series, Godzilla had evolved into a protector, and early scenes of the big G easily forcing a young Hedorah (at that point, an immature flying kaiju designed to resemble a stingray) back into the ocean is met with awe and cheering from human bystanders.

That turns out to be a fatal mistake, as Hedorah (from the Japanese “hedoro,” meaning “slime” or “sludge”) feeds on the pollution in Tokyo Bay, getting stronger with each batch of industrial chemicals that are dumped into the water. In this way, humanity hastens its own destruction through carelessness towards the natural world, an environmental message that would repeat in later Godzilla films. The English title of the movie was originally Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster, which perfectly sums up what this creature is and why it grows.

Scenes set in a nightclub build on the trippy visuals in the opening credits; the main character’s girlfriend dances in a flesh-colored body stocking painted with scenes of ocean life, and in one particularly surreal scene, the patrons’ heads all turn into fish. Combined with a sequence where a folk singer serenading a group of hip young people is interrupted by the film’s rampaging kaiju villain, the whole film has a freewheeling energy that feels like a time capsule of a fascinating period in Japanese history.

Another of Banno’s innovations is bringing back a sense of weight to the carnage Hedorah inflicts on the poor, tiny humans in its path. The monster in Godzilla vs. Hedorah is among the cruelest and most destructive in the canon: A lot of people perish in this movie, which, again, might seem at odds with the scene where Godzilla uses his atomic breath to lift himself off of the ground and fly in the climactic battle.

For this reason, contemporary reviewers hated the movie, and once Tanaka saw what Banno had done in his absence, he fired him from the series. But Banno truly had the last laugh: Godzilla Vs. Hedorah has become a cult classic among fans like Godzilla Vs. Kong director Adam Wingard, who like the movie for the same reasons that critics back in 1971 hated it. It’s everything we love about Godzilla, from the silly to the shocking, all in the same movie — not to mention that groovy theme song.

Godzilla Vs. Hedorah is now streaming on the Criterion Channel.