Wow. Just… holy smokes. If you like how goofy the Showa Era Godzilla movies are, you’ll love this one. Even if you think these films are a little too cheesy, this is a must watch because it is absolutely, jaw droppingly insane. It’s one of my all time favorites, and a major reason I started this blog was to fervently share my love for Godzilla vs Hedorah with anyone who will give me the time of day. Everything about this one-off from director Yoshimitsu Banno is bonkers, including one of the most terrifying behind the scenes tales in the whole franchise. It’s so out there that producer Tomoyuki Tanaka promptly fired Banno, interrupting the planned sequel which was to take place in Africa. A mix of psychedelic surrealism, animation, environmentalism, phenomenal practical effects, and off the wall antics, enjoy it or not, you will be forever changed after watching the incomparable Godzilla vs Hedorah.

Around the year 1997 or so, I was visiting a lake house that my good friend’s grandparents owned. It was a hot, lazy summer, with plenty of time to kill and not a lot to do. This was before the age of cell phones, and the cabin didn’t have internet, and only got a few channels on the very small TV that was there. We had plenty of fun running around the woods, jumping off the dock into lake Winnipesauke, and eating too much snacks and soda as teenage boys are wont to do. One afternoon, while in between adventures, puttering around the house we put on the TV guide channel to see what was on. Something interesting scrolled by: Godzilla vs The Smog Monster (the American title). Having spent many hours painting and assembling models while watching other Godzilla films, we leapt at this opportunity to catch one that hadn’t found its way into our collection yet. And then probably laughed the hardest we’d ever had in our lives.

1968’s Destroy All Monsters was meant to be the big closing chapter for the Godzilla movies, but after a television series deal fell through, Toho got the opportunity to make another film as part of a child-friendly lineup in 1969, albeit with mostly recycled footage on a shoestring budget. With the future uncertain, a couple years passed, but Godzilla had maintained an underground fandom who still showed up for screenings at Toho’s Champion Film Festival held three times a year. Seeing that there was still a market here, Tanaka sought out Banno after seeing his debut documentary at the World’s Fair, Expo ’70 in Osaka. He thought Banno could bring some fresh life and revitalize the series, and boy howdy did he get more than he bargained for. With Eiji Tsubaraya’s death and Ishiro Honda’s retirement, it must have seemed like a good idea at the time for Tanaka. Though the budget was still scaled down, and Banno was limited to a single unit instead of splitting production into special effects and drama, the visuals in Hedorah are amazing.

Ok now, let’s walk through the fun stuff. Gear up, it’s gonna be a wild ride. You’re first hit with some odd squawking trombones and real-life shots of a factory smokestack in the city spewing pollution and pans down to some sludgy water, where Hedorah’s signature red eyes emerge from below. A woman starts singing a somber tune asking where all the fish and birds have gone, which soon picks up and leans hard into acid rock territory. She’s shown in front of a liquid light projection you’d find at a Jefferson Airplane concert. The lyrics are DARK, man. “There’s no one left on earth / No one to even shed a tear” is juxtaposed against a broken mannequin covered in black slime, and a floating patch of oil, trash, and dead fish. A broken clock in the harbor “chimes” as is if to say “Time’s Up, Jerkwads.” Smash cut to some beautiful clean flowers. We are not even 3 minutes into this film, and it’s already laying it on thick. Banno is not shy about bringing Godzilla back to his political commentary origins.

We meet a child Ken played by Hiroyuki Kawase, who’s playing with some Godzilla toys; keen eyes will spot King Ghidorah and Baragon figures hanging in the background too. Will this be another meta-movie like All Monsters Attack? No, the kid just likes giant murderous monsters responsible for the deaths of millions. To be fair, Godzilla has been framed as heroic for a while at this point. He’s also constantly wearing the shortest shorts made in the entire country of Japan. The requisite haggard fisherman arrives to show a weird “fish” to Ken’s biologist father, Dr. Toru Yano, played by Akira Yamauchi. Toshio Shiba portrays Ken’s hippy-dippy uncle Yukio, who is dating Keiko Mari’s nightclub dancer Miki Fujinomiya to round out the main cast. All actors put in decent work, Ken’s youthful optimism radiates at times, and at others he expresses fear and concern for his father. Yukio is an excellent scumbag with a heart of gold, and the role of grim scientist fits Akira Yamauchi like a shoe. Unfortunately Keiko Mari isn’t given much to do except scream and tag along, but she does it well.

The weird fish is some gross tadpole thing, and Dr. Yano goes on a dive to investigate. Here, we see the first actual underwater footage in a Godzilla film (1966’s Ebirah used post-production effects to simulate light refracted through water). 1969 marked the first successful commercial underwater videography, and ironically for the purposes of this movie the technology took off among oil companies. While Dr. Yano’s in the bay, Ken’s out shucking oysters with a twelve inch Bowie knife. This child is like seven, but hey, he seems responsible. Hedorah flies out of the bay, and there’s a neat show of his knife passing through the muck without harming the nascent creature. It completely wrecks Dr. Yano’s face, forcing him to bandage up for the rest of the film. After an interview with the press, a news story is interspersed with something truly bizarre: an animated short. Banno’s documentarian background provides these as bumpers between acts and they are definitely Cheap Cartoons Made In 1971. Note the bleeding whale and the hundreds of dead sharks and fish; never accuse Banno of being overly subtle.

Accompanied by some drunken trumpet players, Godzilla arrives backlit by a literal Rising Sun. He might as well have been carrying a Mitsubishi rolled up in pavement like a sushi roll. Lightly twanging banjo and some jazz flute provide some background tunes for a voiceover of Ken’s letter to the editor about how Godzilla would be upset to see all this nuclear waste and pollution. He dreams of Godzilla blasting it out of existence, and seems to take this as prophecy, like a little Muad’dib. Dr. Yano discovers that each bit of the tadpole will combine to form a bigger creature, and posits that a bunch of them came together to form Hedorah (named after “hedoro” roughly translating to sludge). He fears that unless we clean up our act, it will grow bigger than Godzilla. Spoiler alert, we don’t! And it does! 50 years later, we have made some progress, but still struggle with climate change. Wollaston beach in Quincy, MA is actually a big US success story transforming it from a chemical dump site to a mostly useable beach, although I did come out of the ocean with some hedoro all over my feet one time.

Yet another batshit insane scene follows as we find Uncle Yukio 7 scotches deep at a club playing some gnarly psychedelic rock. Miki is dancing in fish-scale makeup and a skin-tight body suit with sea life printed all over, including a…uh…clam on her clam. Her stage is mirrored and I guess because they don’t explicitly show anyone dropping LSD or snorting coke, the studio execs were just like “this is fine for a children’s movie.” Miki sings a poppin rendition of the theme song and the liquid light show shifts to animated skeletons dancing on a blood red background. Meanwhile, Hedorah crawls out of the ocean to take a big ol’ hit off a smokestack like a bong. Oh, his red eyes make so much more sense now. He has an awkward rumble with Godzilla, who ends up spinning him around to fling goop all over town. There’s a great cut between the spinning, and some seedy gamblers shuffling tiles, and yeah, they may not be on the up and up but the sludge crashes through the window and kills them all before sloshing back out to rejoin its larger counterpart. Yukio has had too much, uhhh, “to drink” and hallucinates everyone with fish heads in a wild Fear and Loathing moment before Hedorah goop oozes down the steps. Just to twist the knife a little harder, after the slime retreats, it leaves a poor little kitty cat covered in toxic filth! Come on, Banno!

After some pseudoscientific exposition, we next find Hedorah flying around town, being a menace, eating cars, and leaving black clouds in his wake. Whenever he passes a group of people, they collapse immediately and the pollution corrodes their flesh leaving only bones behind. A news clip shows an increasing number of split screens with talking heads arguing about what to do, interspersed with shots of Hedorah…and an actual baby half submerged in mud. Who’s kid is this? How did Banno get away with that? While Dr. Yano gets serious about finding a way to defeat Hedorah, Uncle Yukio decides the best thing to do is throw a nihilistic party before the end of the world. It’s supposed to be a million people gathering, but only a hundred show up. They have a good ol’ dance party anyway, while some hobos watch for some reason, and somehow Ken was invited to hang out with these freaky deaky beatniks. It’s a good thing he’s there though, because as Godzilla approaches the party, he sends Ken a telepathic message! If it wasn’t clear that Banno has no interest in what abilities Godzilla actually has and doesn’t have…it will be soon.

During the final showdown, Dr. Yano’s plan is to lure Hedorah in between these two enormous “electrodes” that will produce a field to dry out his sludge. There’s a power surge that damages the cables supplying electricity to the machines, and the military struggles to repair them in time. Hedorah is now in its final massive form, towering taller than Godzilla and shooting a deep red beam that really works aesthetically. This is the largest suit Toho had made, weighing around two hundred fifty pounds, covered in multiple layers of paint and glitter. And this is where Hedorah’s suit actor Kenpachiro Satsuma ran into some trouble. He came down with an acute case of appendicitis on set. As you can imagine, it takes quite a while to take off a two hundred fifty pound monster suit. So doctors had to perform an appendectomy while he was still inside it. And if that weren’t horrifying enough: this was how Kenpachiro found out that painkillers DON’T WORK ON HIM. Yikes.

To counterbalance some of the more grim imagery in the movie (Hedorah’s eye is mauled and swollen shut, some sludge scarred Godzilla’s eye and hand), Banno throws in some ridiculous moments. Godzilla tries to block the red beam with an Ultraman pose, and then there’s the big scene this movie is known for. After Hedorah tries to flee in his aerial form, Godzilla does friggin gymnastics pose, matter of factly puts on a face that says “OK, let’s DO this” and then fires his atomic breath into the ground to produce lift and flies away! Readers, when I first saw this, I absolutely lost it. We were just howling until our sides hurt. It’s just totally bananas and one of the most joyful scenes in the entire series. There’s this goofball march that plays while he’s in pursuit too, it’s astounding. The humans never repair their cables, and Godzilla just shakes his head at them as if to say “amateurs!” and powers the electrodes with his atomic ray.

After the bout is won, text appears on screen asking “Will there be another?” It turns out Banno wanted to make another Godzilla movie, and was in the writing process, but Tanaka saw the end product of Hedorah and decided no way in hell. Thus ends Banno’s sole Godzilla movie, but not his contributions to the franchise. After the novelty of 3D movies, and then with the invention of IMAX, Banno spent several years pushing for a 3D Godzilla short remake of Godzilla vs. Hedorah. While the smog monster aspect of this never came to fruition, this is the project that eventually got picked up by Legendary and became 2014’s Gareth Edwards reboot. So there you have it. The modern Monsterverse owes a debt of gratitude to the most wild, bonkers, crazypants Godzilla director in history.