More tragic than “Romeo and Juliet”
Kitamatsu is a Japanese mining village. Lately there have been some problems in shaft number 8. People have gone missing. The men sent to investigate are killed except one. He tells a story about a giant insect. Whatever happened, people believe it made him insane. Until they come above ground and attack the village. But that is only the first round.
An egg deep down in the Earth begins to crack.. The creature that hatches looks almost bird-like, almost reptile. It begins eating the insects. It grows. It flies away. Traveling faster than the speed of sound the creature leaves a wake of destruction. The creature is called Rodan. It is huge and fast and seemingly invincible.
"Rodan" was released in 1956 and was directed by Ishiro Honda. It’s strange how you can be critical of a movie judging its acting, dialogue, special effects or what have you and yet love a movie like “Rodan”. It’s got everything a crappy low-budget “B” movie should have. It’s a guilty pleasure and we all need some of those. It also has mystery and a story line that keeps us watching. It goes to show you that all you need is a good story and a classic monster to have a good hit.
And we actually get more than one kind of monster. The caterpillar bugs that run around eating people are food for Rodan. Wow. Two types of monster for the price of one. And then when we think we are done with monster we get another Rodan. What? Not only are we not at the top of the food chain, we aren’t even second in line.
I liked the way the movie unfolded. Some people may have thought it was a little slow at first but I disagree. There was enough mystery and destruction to entertain me. The mining accident that started everything. The caterpillars, the egg that Shigeru encountered in the cave, the hatchling. There was more to the movie than just a monster beating up on a military establishment.
Although technically a Pteranodon, the look of Rodan is the closest TOHO studios could do at the time but for a low budget movie it wasn’t bad. Other special effects were done well and they did a good job of showing the terror unfolding in the cave. Originally named Radon which is reported as a contraction of the word pteRAnoDON it was changed for the English market so as not to confuse people with the element radon.
The ending was a little strange when one Rodan died in a fire and the other one threw itself in the fire as well. The narrator speaking as if what we just watched was more a tragic love story than a monster movie. Still it’s on my list of must haves.
One of the cave paintings in the ending credits of “Kong Skull Island” is of Rodan. Rodan is a combination of puppet and guy in a rubber suit. George Takei and Keye Luke did voice over in the English dubbed version.
English dubbed