RODAN
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| Unrated
| | Copyright 1956 Toho
| | Reviewed by Andrew Borntreger on 31 January 2001
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- Shigeru - Safety officer working at the coal mine and a very resourceful fellow. I don't imagine he likes omelettes anymore.
- Kiyo - Engaged to Shigeru, I want to know what sort of laundry detergent she uses to keep that kimono so clean and bright.
- Dr. Kashiwagi - Expert on prehistoric reptiles.
- Gorro - Brother to Kiyo and known for his short temper, he is killed by a cave-in.
- The Japanese Military - Ineffective as ever. (Sneaking up on people on a Sunday doesn't count.)
- The Meganurons - Huge prehistoric insects. Here would be a valid reason for the Orkin man to wear power armor, a flamethrower and rocket launcher wouldn't hurt either.
- Rodan and Rodanette - A mated pair of enormous Pterosauria that can fly at supersonic speeds. The species became extinct due to an unfortunate natural habit of nesting in active volcanoes. That would include both of these.
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Stock nuclear bomb test footage starts us off, with the narrator dryly intoning about the massive blows mankind is dealing to our planet. It's filler really, just to give the movie a running time of over eighty minutes. Not entirely without merits as filler though, for our narrator friend warns about the blasts cracking the crust and doing irreparable damage. We may cause ourselves and the biosphere some grief, but rest assured that the Earth could care less about nuclear weapons.
With that out of the way you should buckle your seat belt, because this movie takes off like a race car and never slows down. In the mining town of Kitamatsu, on the island of Kyushu, the safety engineers are worried about a problem known as "creeping floor." Evidently caused when support (in this case a coal vein) between strata is removed, it worries the mine managers. Their concern turns out to be well founded, for a partial collapse occurs and a section of the tunnel is flooded. When a rescue team arrives they find the body of a man Gorro argued with; since the latter is missing somewhere inside the mine they decide he has become a homicidal maniac.
Authorities always choose the easy answers, don't they? The real problem is a vicious species of giant insect, released into the mine when the tunnel connected with an ancient cavern. I wanted to say voracious vice vicious, but the bugs refuse to eat anyone. Maybe they are herbivores, subsisting on cave fungus, that evolution equipped with a nasty temper and sharp claws.
The police insist on searching for Gorro and I'm all for that. One of the movie's chilling scenes (to a much younger version of myself) was watching two men pulled underwater by an unseen terror, while a third frantically saws the rope from his own waist. When the bugs finally arrive they are obviously cumbersome contraptions built much like the Chinese Dragons used in street fairs, only much heavier. Pay no attention to the man's legs under that arthropod of death!
Shigeru accompanies soldiers into the mines to hunt for bugs and even saves the day with quick thinking when machine guns prove ineffective. What sort of insect shrugs off .30 caliber bullets like they were stones anyway? The weakened tunnels respond to the ruckus by collapsing, trapping our hero in the prehistoric warrens.
Earthquakes rock the mountains near Kitamatsu and a huge area sinks into the Earth. Shigeru is found wandering in the newly created depression in a state of shock, he is also suffering from amnesia. Concurrent with these events, a strange UFO begins appearing and causing random acts of destruction. When pursued it proves able to maneuver better and accelerate faster than any fighter aircraft, plus it has a bad tendency of destroying the chase plane.
Just in case you didn't notice, the movie shifted gears and the giant bugs are nowhere in sight (for a good reason). Two enormous eggs hatched in that underground cavern, it was seeing the creatures awakening and eating the Meganurons that drove Shigeru almost insane. His darling fiancee' is kind enough to jog those memories loose by showing him her songbird's eggs, right as they begin to hatch. She also probably dragged him to see the Japanese premiere of "Cool Hand Luke" years later, rendering him comatose for the rest of his life. George Kennedy claims another innocent soul...
Pacing can make or break a movie and I love the speed here. The title monsters may show up in force for only one scene, but they have a solid part. There is not a whole lot to do with a rubber chicken on wires anyway. Rodans do not appear to require wing movement once they get off the ground and it probably caused some scientists to have nervous breakdowns figuring out how a one hundred ton creature could fly in the first place. They should have payed better attention, because one of the things used a little too often is the same footage; shots pop up a couple of times that caused me serious déjà vu.
Darwin would pull his hair in frustration upon seeing the nesting site the monsters pick, but in the end the Rodans are done in by their love for each other. Isn't that the way it always happens? Wait millions of years to be together and a volcano roasts the girl of your dreams, somebody should write a country western song about it.
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| Things I Learned From This Movie: | |
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- There is one thing more comforting than a mother's womb: seeing the names "Honda" and "Ifukube" in the credits of a Japanese monster movie.
- Being tied to someone who is being eaten by a monster is "not good."
- Sleeping on rubble is bad for your back.
- It is possible to cast shadows against the sky.
- Military command bunkers are located underground or in hardened buildings for a very practical reason.
- Shooting at an active volcano with heavy artillery is not the brightest thing in the world.
- Swans are descended from Rodan.
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- 9 mins - You don't want to see him lady, go and reserve a closed casket funeral.
- 17 mins - I've been thinking, these people are remarkably clean for working in a coal mine.
- 27 mins - Obviously the song "Unforgettable" was not written about Kiyo.
- 36 mins - Why did the claw show up in the photograph when it was not on the negative?
- 39 mins - There! Right there is when his mind snapped.
- 44 mins - Unless you knew what part of the egg that came from and its usual shape this test would never work.
- 50 mins - RANDOM ACT OF VIOLENCE AGAINST A VOLCANO!
- 83 mins - And I complained about all the leftover turkey we had from Thanksgiving...
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| | Audio clips in wav format | SOUNDS | Starving actors speak out | |
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| File | Dialog |  | rodan1.wav
| Narrator: "Can the human race continue to deliver these staggering blows without arousing, somewhere in the depths of Earth, a reaction, a counterattack, a horror still undreamed of?"
| | rodan2.wav
| Shigeru: "Yoshi was dead when they carried him from the mine, but he didn't die from drowning. He had been killed, more than killed, he had been slaughtered like an animal. Even in death there was a look of horror on his face, as if in those last moments he had seen something dreadful and terrible beyond words."
| | rodan3.wav
| Military Officer: "If this thing you call Rodan is extinct, how come it is still alive?"
| | rodan4.wav
| Rodan roaring.
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| | Click for a larger image | IMAGES | Scenes from the movie | |
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| | Watch a scene | VIDEO | MPEG video files | |
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 | rodan1.mpg
- 3.0m
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| Rodan takes part in a little urban renewal project. This thing makes a tornado look like a picnic. Of course, now that I think about it, tornados don't eat people...
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| | Leave a comment | EXTRAS | Buy the movie | |
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