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A series of sinking ships leaves
the coast guard baffled, & though the natives of the nearby island
Oda soon come up with an explanation of their own based on fishermen's
superstition - it's the angry sea-god Godzilla - the authorities of
course put little belief in it at first. But when soon afterwards large
parts of the island are thrashed & the whole surroundings show
exposure to heavy radiation, that puts a new perspective to their
invetigations ... especially when a giant dinosaur-like beast is also found
on Oda.
& while government officials are eager to destroy the beast,
only professor Yamane (Takashi Shimura) wants to keep it alive to study
it.
But then the beast leaves Oda & approaches mainland Japan. &
as the monster lays more & more waste to the Japanese countryside,
the army has to realize it simply has no weapon powerful enough to stop
the creature. The only man who seems to have one is scientist Serizawa (Akihiko
Hirata), who has invented the all powerful oxygen destroyer, but he - very well aware that this weapon in the wrong hands
would mean a much greater threat to mankind than even Godzilla - is reluctant
to share his knowledge with anyone. The only person he trusts enough to
show her his invention is Emiko (Momoko Kochi), Yamane's daughter &
his girlfriend - well, more or less since she is secretly in love with
coast guard officer Ogata (Akira Takarada) -, but Emiko has to swear absoulte
secrecy. ... only when Godzilla lays waste to considerable parts of Tokyo,
she is no longer able to remain silent & spills the beans to Ogata,
& the two of them take some considerable time to convince Serizawa
to help them fight Godzilla.
In the end both Serizawa & Ogata go
deep-sea diving after Godzilla to successfully use the oxygen destroyer,
an action that Serizawa also wouldn't survive, since he commits suicide
to make sure that the secrets of the oxygen destroyer would die with him
... Today, Godzilla is mainly known from the colourful,
good-natured orgies of destruction Toho produced from the 60's on (not
that there would be anything wrong with them) during which series
Godzilla would eventually even become the good guy, or even form the
ill-conceived American CGI-movie from the late 90's (now there was everything
wrong with that one). 1954's original Godzilla however was a much
more sombre movie, that was way more thoughtful & serious than its
(mainly American) contemporary competition, since it was the only movie
back then to pose the question of the dangers of a weapon powerful
enough to destroy this most powerful being - & can thus not only be
seen as an allegory on the atom bomb (as which the monster/the movie is
often interpreted) but also on the then contemporary arms race between
East & West (as opposecd to the American monster movies, in which
the monster is mainly a metaphor for communism). In all, Godzilla
is without a doubt one of the best & most thought through
monster-movies of the 50's, even despite some short-comings in the
special effects department (the monster is, which is sometimes all to
visible, just a man in a rubber suit). That Godzilla was later turned
into a series of
sometimes quite funny, sometimes godawful dinosaur-mayhem movies just
can't be blamed on this film.
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