Rodan
(really Radon as in "short for pteranodon")
1956
A day may come when I remember that this movie came out BEFORE Mothra...
But this is not that day.
This film reunites the Five Fathers of Godzilla:
Director- Honda, Producer- Tanaka, Music- Ifukube, Effects- Tsuburaya, Suit- Nakajima.
Plus Godzilla favorite actors Kenji Sahara as Traumatized Engineer
and
Akihiko Hirata (sans eye patch this time) as Concerned Paleontologist.
The overall story and action is really well done and we get a Predator like genre shift.
(Granted its more of a subtle shift from normal horror to Kaiju, but still, a shift.)
Some miners vanish in a mine and one is found all hacked up by Traumatized Engineer. Several other people get the same unfortunately lethal treatment looking for the other one and any evidence.
That night, Traumatized Engineer and his (now Equally Traumatized) Fiancée learn what is responsible for the hacking. A giant (eight meters!!!!) wormy bug thing attacks them. There is a merry chase with Trauamatized Engineer joining police and soldiers to chase it into the mine. The other dead miner is found, and the wormy bug thing is crushed with mine carts. Another wormy bug thing shows up to collapse the tunnel burying Traumatized Engineer and piling on to his trauma...
And also piling on rocks.
Concerned Paleontologist is called in and identifies the wormy bug thing as an extinct, hugenormouns dragonfly nymph, Meganulon. Those will be back in both the Heisei (briefly) and Millennium (in a starring role) eras. Hey, Traumatized Engineer is alive!
And is wandering aimlessly with amnesia, as the traumas continue to grow.
While Traumatized Engineer remains traumatized, reports of supersonic UFO attacks pour in from around the globe. People vanish, planes are downed, and general messiness. A photo in an abandoned camera looks like a wing! A wing of a long extinct pteranodon! GASP!
Thank you Concerned Paleontologist.
Traumatized Engineer continues to not recover...until his more than Equally Traumatized Fiancee (the second dead miner was her brother) brings him their pet bird eggs. One hatches, and Traumatized Engineer's trauma cranks into over drive. There is much screaming.
He remembers (giving us a delightful flashback) to being stuck in a cave full of the giant wormy bug things, and having a massive egg hatch out and even more massive reptilian bird thingy in front of him and start eating the wormy bug things.
Traumatized Engineer is sufficiently detraumed as to lead the police and some scientists into the cave of his flashback. They find giant eggshells. GASP! Traumatized he may be, but he's not nuts.
Concerned Paleontologist assembles all the evidence, such as it is, and names the creature Radon. (Then, on the US release, the studio changes it because they think Americans are stupid and will confuse the giant flying monster with a radioactive gas. BOO! HISS!) He believes nuclear testing (once again, BOO! HISS!) was responsible for waking up Radon.
Radon bursts impressively from the mountain over the mine, and flies around causing insane amounts of structural damage due to damaging winds, sonic booms and random close proximity explosions for no visible reason.
HOLY CRAP THERE'S ANOTHER ONE. The one that popped out of the mounting gets injured by jets but the one that's been apparently flying all over the world this whole time returns!
Now the whole city is gone, so the Radon couple returns to their mountain.
Well done jet people.
The jet people and tank people team up to shoot at the mountain and bury the Radons.
This triggers a volcanic eruption next to the previously flattened city.
Well done jet and tank people.
REALLY Traumatized Engineer and his Equally REALLY Traumatized Fiancée run like crazy to get a safe distance...
From a volcano.
Good luck with that kids.
The eruption damages one Radon, meaning it can't fly to safety.
What started as a simple breaking of a string on set leads to an epically tragic finale where the second Radon refuses to live alone and drops itself into the lava along side their mate.
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