a.k.a. Sandai Kaiju Chikyu Saidai no Kessan,
Monster of Monsters Ghidorah!
company: Toho Company, LTD.
year: 1964
runtime: 93?
country: Japan
director: Ishiro Honda
cast: Yosuke Natsuki, Yuriko Hoshi,
Akiko Wakabayashi, Hiroshi Koizumi,
Emi & Yumi Ito
writer: Shinichi Sekizawa
cinematography: Hajime Koizumi
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1964 turned out to be a prolific year for Toho Studios and their kaiju eiga output. The studio’s Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964) had reaped massive success at the box office and Dogora the Space Monster (1964) wasn’t the box office disappoint one might assume. And next year’s Godzilla movie was on the horizon… But there was one hitch for Toho that year—the shooting of Akira Kurosawa’s current film Red Beard (1965) was running over schedule and was not going to meet its December 1964 release date. Toho was in a pickle. They needed a big New Year’s release and Kurosawa’s new film was out of the question. So much like the characters in the resultant film, they turned to Godzilla to bail them out, and the movie that would have been released in 1965 wound up being pushed into production to replace Kurosawa. If there’s one force on earth that could accomplish such a task, it’s the King of the Monsters and did he ever deliver…

As we begin our story, an intrepid reporter named Naoko Shindo (Hoshi) is investigating a group of scientist/stargazers who are hoping to find some evidence of the “saucer people” in hopes that they may explain the great heat wave Japan is suffering in the middle of January. No saucers (or for that matter, saucer people) are spotted, but a meteorite shower does bring an unwanted cargo to the earth. One such meteor strikes the earth near the famous Kurobe Dam.

That same night, young Princess Selina Salno (Wakabayashi) is on a flight to Japan to avoid assassins in her home country of Selgina who hope to end the monarch rule and bring about communism. Before going to bed, Princess Salno’s unconscious mind tells her that she must leave the plane, and she summarily jumps out the escape hatch. Seconds later, the plane explodes.

Professor Murai (Koizumi) and a team of geologists hoof it into Kurobe Gorge to study the fallen meteorite. They nearly get lost when their compasses begin pointing the wrong direction and are flabbergasted to find that the meteorite has a strong magnetic pull.

Back in Tokyo, Salno’s would-be chaperone and Naoko’s brother, Detective Shindo (Natsuki) discovers that a mysterious vagabond woman who claims to be from Venus (Mars in the U.S. version) that has popped up warning people of future dangers bears a strong resemblance to the princess he was supposed to protect. Naoko is assigned to follow the mystery woman, who appears at Mt. Aso warning of the reappearance of Rodan (Masaki Shinohara). The Venusian is met with jeers but almost immediately, Rodan breaks forth from the crater of the volcano and wings it into the air.

The conspirators in Selgina have since discovered the story of the Venusian and believe her to be Princess Salno, but aren’t 100% sure. The lead man (who, along with his fellow Selginians, is dressed like a harlequin) orders his top assassin, Malness (Hisayo Ito) to travel to Japan to finish the job. Malness and his gang (which includes a thin-mustached Susumu Kurobe—Hayata from Ultraman) arrive on the island nation and begin plans to find the Venusian and discover whether she’s truly Princess Salno or not.

The doll-sized Shobijin (the Ito sisters) of Infant Island have been visiting Japan and doing television broadcasts (why is never explained) but are planning to return to their home via cruise ship. The Venusian appears out of nowhere and warns that the ship mustn’t set sail. Covering the Shobijin’s egress, Naoko takes the Venusian away to do a story about her.

Once in a Yokohama hotel room (but unfortunately, exactly across the hall from the assassins) and after discovering the Shobijin listened to the warning, the Venusian again explains that the ship shouldn’t have set sail. Out at sea near the ship, a pod of whales surface and fearfully swim away. Just behind them is Godzilla (Haruo Nakajima), having returned to activity after his defeat in the previous film. In a magnificent optical effect, Godzilla’s back lights up and he incinerates the cruise ship with his heat ray.

Back at Yokohama, Shindo has tracked his sister and the Venusian to their motel room. Shindo asks for a meeting with Naoko and they argue back and forth whether or not she’s the princess. While this is going on in the lobby, Malness and his gang infiltrate the room and determine that the Venusian is in fact Princess Salno. Despite his threats to murder her with the same knife he killed her father with, the icy princess spews defiance at Malness, calling him “a wretched, pitiful man.” As Malness makes his move, the Shobijin turn out the lights. Shindo and his sister return and a brief gunfight forces the killers to leave Salno behind and flee.

And not a moment too soon because Godzilla has made his way to Japan. Coming ashore he begins smashing through Yokohama’s port, but stops when he senses something in the air; Rodan is sailing high in the night sky and for reasons known only to himself, Godzilla doesn’t like it. Citizens flee in terror, blocking Malness’ gang’s hasty retreat. Godzilla blindly follows Rodan out of the city.

The next morning, Shindo and his sister take Princess Salno to Dr. Tsukamoto (Takashi Shimura), whose field of specialty is never really mentioned. Tsukamoto runs tests on Princess Salno, but is unable to find anything wrong with her. Salno once more prophesizes, this time that the entire earth will be destroyed by an evil space monster named King Ghidrah (Ghidorah), who had previously wiped out the civilization on Venus 3,000 years ago.

That night, the meteorite, which has been showcasing bizarre activity for a rock, begins acting even more suspicious. It displays its magnetic pull once more and eventually cracks open. Sparks fly out of the hole like a fourth of July firecracker. Finally, a gust of flames shoot into the skies over Kurobe Gorge. The flames condense and form into the terrifying three-headed dragon King Ghidrah (Shoichi Hirose) and he immediately begins a campaign of destruction against the earth. Whereas Godzilla has only one head to spit destructive rays, Ghidrah has three. And whereas Rodan can cause sonic booms with a speed of mach 1.5, Ghidrah can fly at mach 3. What’s worse, Ghidrah is able to destroy whole cities within a matter of minutes, in comparison to an entire night in which it takes Godzilla to level Tokyo.

The Japanese parliament calls an emergency meeting at the Diet to decide what to do about the invading monsters. Godzilla and Rodan are busy feuding with each other in the Mt. Fuji area, terrorizing citizens in the surrounding region, and Ghidrah is flying over Japan leaving destruction in his wake. Left with no real military solutions other than to pitch atomic bombs at the monsters, Professor Murai comments that Mothra had previously defeated Godzilla and that she might be able to do the same with the new menace. The Shobijin explain that Mothra is only a caterpillar and would not be able to beat Ghidrah in a fight. However, they do suggest a particularly radical alternate plan: that they call Mothra to get Godzilla and Rodan to stop fighting and band together with her to repel Ghidrah’s attack. With nothing better on the table, the military agrees to it and the Shobijin summon Mothra from Infant Island.

Back at the Fuji area, Malness’ gang have caught up to Shindo and Princess Salno. Dr. Tsukamoto suggests they try shock treatment to zap Salno back to reality. Malness takes advantage of the situation, using Tsukamoto’s electrical generator to do the job for him. However, Godzilla and Rodan’s dust-up kills the power in the area and saves the prophetess at the last moment. Malness and his gang engage in another shootout with Shindo, but he and Professor Murai drive them off. Tsukamoto and Princess Salno join them to flee the area from the fighting monsters.

Godzilla and Rodan continue to fight one another, seemingly without any sense of earnestness. Rodan pecks the dinosaur’s head and Godzilla body slams the flying monster around but neither seem to be gaining an advantage. Mothra suddenly arrives as the two monsters engage in a game of volleyball with a boulder. Mothra ends the game with a spray of her silken webbing, resulting in the two fighting monsters laughing at each other’s misery.

The three monsters then engage in a pow-wow of sorts, apparently speaking a monster Esperanto, which the Shobijin gleefully translate for the spectating humans. Godzilla and Rodan have no interest in helping man, especially Godzilla, who claims that man is always “bullying him around” which Rodan actually agrees with. King Ghidrah suddenly arrives in the nearby area and begins laying waste to everything in sight. Mothra lays down a bunch of platitudes, none of which Godzilla and Rodan buy, and eventually she decides to face Ghidrah alone. The two former enemies are shamed into joining Mothra’s fight.

Rather than watch the Greatest Battle on Earth (the movie’s Japanese title) or put her faith in three giant monsters, Princess Salno breaks away from the spectators to pray to God for the earth’s well-being. Malness, his gang having been wiped out by Ghidrah, has tracked her down and succeeds in strafing her on the side of the head with a bullet. Shindo arrives to protect her, but loses his gun and gets shot in the arm for his trouble. A stray blast from Ghidrah causes a rock slide which finishes off Malness. Princess Salno’s memory returns to her, apparently having no clue what she had been doing all this time.

After taking on Ghidrah one at a time with no success, the earth monsters get down to business and gang up on the invader at once. While Godzilla fights Ghidrah head to head to head, Rodan airlifts Mothra into the sky and she sprays her silken webbing over the space monster’s heads. When Ghidrah is properly straight jacketed, Godzilla then dumps him over the side of a cliff and hurls boulders at him until the evil monster flies away, presumably back into the reaches of space.

Princess Salno holds a press conference before her flight back to Selgina (presumably—though it’s not mentioned—the heat has died down) where Dr. Tsukamoto tries to explain what exactly happened to her. She also thanks Shindo for his valiant efforts to guard her. Shindo, who by this point has become smitten with the princess, watches forlornly as her plane jets off to parts unknown. Similarly, former baddies Godzilla and Rodan watch on a coastline as their newfound friend Mothra, with the Shobijin in tow, desparts for Infant Island. The twins say goodbye to the monsters and wish happiness for everyone. The end.

Ghidrah, the Three Headed Monster is a high water mark for the illustrious Godzilla series. In fact, the Toho monster makers were completely on top of its game in 1964. The first film of the year, Mothra vs. Godzilla is considered by many to be the greatest film of the series, despite its rather lacking human characters. Dogora the Space Monster, while lacking in the monster department, has some great human scenes and is peppered with a fine sense of humor. Ghidrah—while the effects crew appears a bit taxed—is where it all came together again.

Godzilla creator Ishiro Honda was back in the director’s chair and for the third film in a single year, shows no signs of fatigue. His direction of the film is at times both laid-back and frantic when it needs to be. He keeps things rolling along at a brisk pace and, other than two sequences of the Shobijin singing to Mothra (one of which was removed for the U.S. version), the viewer never really has a chance to become bored because so much is going on at once.

And that is a credit to writer Shinichi Sekizawa, who with exceptions here and there, was pretty much cranking out the scripts for every tokusatsu film Toho had done since Varan the Unbelievable in 1958. And the few places where Sekizawa does falter (his hero, Shindo, is not an especially interesting character), Honda picks up the slack with his direction of the material and actors. Also, Sekizawa’s script for Ghidrah would basically become the blue print for many Godzilla films to come (space monster arrives to destroy the earth. Godzilla and another monster team up to stop it) but it would never be done again as well as it was here (and that includes the next year’s fan favorite Monster Zero).

Yosuke Natsuki does what he can with his lead role of Detective Shindo, but there’s just not much there about the character to latch onto. His character in Dogora was far more memorable. Luckily, Natsuki is surrounded with a wealth of supporting actors and characters to make him look better. Yuriko Hoshi is much better here than as her basically identical character in Mothra vs. Godzilla. Her plucky Naoko helps move the story forward whenever possible rather than just sitting on the sidelines like most tokusatsu heroines. The always regal-looking but still sexy Akiko Wakabayashi is great as the Venusian princess, although it was a part in which she complained of in recent years. She is at once lovely, frightening, and mysterious all in the same scene. Fellow Godzilla alum (and Kurosawa regular) Takashi Shimura comes in late in the game to lend the movie his customary professionalism. We even find him watching from the hill, worried as Mothra is blasted to the skies by Ghidrah’s gravity beams and Shimura sells that for all it’s worth. The only real weak link in the supporting cast is Hiroshi Koizumi as Professor Murai. Like Hoshi, he is almost the same character as in the previous movie (with a similar name to boot!) and he’s just as uninteresting as he was there. Murai is supposed to be Naoko’s boyfriend, but their relationship (or at least the chemistry between Hoshi and Koizumi) goes nowhere.

And for what makes these movies so memorable are the monsters, and what a cast we have lined up here. We’ve got Godzilla returning for his fifth movie. The costume is the same “Mosugoji” costume from the previous film, but the head has been reworked and rebuilt to appear less menacing. Also, for the first time ever, the suit has been outfitted with mobile eyes to emote with during his conversation with the costars. Haruo Nakajima brings his usual excellence to the part imbuing Godzilla with an energy not really seen—or at best hinted at—in previous films. However the trade off for that is that Godzilla is filmed in normal speed rather than the undercranked film he’s usually shot with and for that, the monster is lacking a sense of power he had in previous films.

We have Mothra returning for her third go-around. Originally, it was planned for the adult Mothra to aid in the big battle with Ghidrah, but due to budgetary constraints, she was downgraded back to larva and it is the same (or one of the same) marionettes from the prior film which appears here. It is explained by the Shobijin that one of the twin larvae died in between films (likely the one that got beat around by Godzilla’s tail). She isn’t any different here than in the previous film, but is instilled with more of a “protector” personality than ever before.

We’ve got Rodan returning for his second engagement. The monster has been radically changed from its debut appearance. The red-brown colorings have been removed for a more standard brown, all evidence of bird characteristics have been removed from this incarnation (except for brief shots of Rodan’s legs bending like a bird’s as he perches atop King Ghidrah’s back), the wings have become more streamlined (and expansive), and the spikes on his torso have become more pronounced. Oddly enough, the new comical Rodan face is both goofy and creepy looking. Freeze frame on the shot of Rodan turned to the camera as Mothra climbs up his wing—the pteranodon looks at home overlooking Notre Dame! Masaki Shinohara provides the character with a sense of nobility missing from Nakajima’s incarnation. Shinohara would make a return engagement in the sequel, then fully in the part of Godzilla’s sidekick.

Making his debut is what is debatably Godzilla’s greatest opponent, the three headed dragon from space, King Ghid(o)rah. Whether you spell his name with the “o” or not, he’s still an awesome creation, requiring not only Shoichi Hirose to walk around in the suit, but also 22 wires from overhead to operate (24 when in flight) it. Originally conceived to be a crimson red with red, white and blue wings (subtle, anyone?), effects director Eiji Tsuburaya wisely changed his mind to the glorious golden color we know him as today. However, Ghidrah is a rare case in which the God of Special Effects was mistaken—after seeing the rushes of the monster, Tsuburaya felt he had made a serious mistake with this monster (Ishiro Honda’s visiting son was unimpressed with the creation as well). However, upon release, audiences loved him, which cemented that he would almost certainly return for a follow up… a follow up in which Tsuburaya would actually improve upon himself with a rebuilt version of the same costume.

As with Honda, this was his third tokusatsu film in a single year and Tsuburaya showed no signs of fatigue. Whereas his frequent use of almost suit-sized puppets for close-ups of Godzilla and Rodan (which despite popular opinion, Tsuburaya used merely because he liked them) are jarring and generally poor-looking, everything else is up to his legacy, particularly the miniatures. The exquisite miniatures created for the film show why Tsuburaya was a master of his craft. Unfortunately, the wonderful miniature created for Godzilla’s rampage in Yokohama as seen in the film doesn’t come close to showing off how great it actually is (outtakes exist from a seemingly Rodan’s-eye point of view which do, however).

Godzilla composer Akira Ifukube is back in the maestro chair, and while the music is still powerful, it’s lacking a bit of originality (though that’s to be expected with the number of films he worked on that year) that Dogora showcased. The main title, while superior, appears to be a tweaked retread of Mothra vs. Godzilla’s main theme. The Rodan theme is introduced here for the first time, to great effect, and is seamlessly interweaved into Godzilla’s theme music. Curiously missing though is Mothra’s theme music. There is a song called “Let’s Summon Happiness” that the Shobijin sing twice, but none of the previous Mothra motifs make an appearance here. Unfortunately, Ifukube would pretty much rehash this score for the next movie of the series (in which budget restraints would also see Mothra dropped from the planning stages altogether). The U.S. version of Ghidrah would replace much of Ifukube’s background music and surprisingly enough, much of it works. Good as it is (some taken from the Arch Hall Jr. opus, The Sadist), it’s no match for the maestro’s work.

This is a Godzilla movie that’s got a little something for everybody. It’s a monster movie, it’s an action film, it’s an adventure film, it’s a spy film, it’s a movie about coming togetherness. And no matter how you like your Godzilla—mean and serious or funny and heroic—he’s here for you. If you haven’t seen this one, what are you doing reading this? Go out there and grab it!

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