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The American cut at once states the atomic element while the original prefers a gradual reveal, so that a leisurely portrait of a small mining community yields to an oversized grub tearing through shoji screens. Laborers digging for ore are found face down in subterranean sludge covered with lacerations, "murders unlike any in Japan," Douglas' Them! is a definite point of departure. The culprit is a swollen caterpillar with deadly pincers, the engineer (Kenji Sahara) quells it with a minecart but loses his memory in a cave-in. Turns out the huge crawlers are mere nourishment for a huger creature, the primordial pterosaur roused by nuclear tests. "Yes, it's a splendid bird," first glimpsed as spirals of sky smoke that slice through a fighter jet, then as a shadow swooping over sightseeing newlyweds. Ishiro Honda saves his stroke of poetry for the amnesiac's recovery triggered by the tiny nest of household parakeets, "je assiste à l'éclosion de ma pensée," as Rimbaud would have it. (The gargantuan egg is likened to something out of Arabian Nights by a scientist, its cracking goes into Kurosawa's Kagemusha as a samurai's saturated nightmare.) Rodan with the pulverizing sonic boom, flipping jeeps and flattening buildings with a flap of its wings, calling for reinforcements when needed. "There is another! We have sighted a second Rodan!" Demolition sequences showcase the loving detail of Eiji Tsuburaya's miniature work, crowned with a choice shot of neon signs flashing over the burning cityscape. "Is the Earth a target?" The denouement locates the tragedy of the tale amid the stroganoff lava of a maquette volcano, with Walsh's White Heat brought to bear on a kaiju reenactment of a Chikamatsu shinju. With Yumi Shirakawa, Akihiko Hirata, Akio Kobori, Yasuko Nakata, Minosuke Yamada, and Yoshifumi Tajima.
--- Fernando F. Croce |