Alternate Titles: Frankenstein versus Subterranean Monster Baragon
Year: 1965
Director: Ishiro Honda
Special Effects Director: Eiji Tsuburaya
In The Suit: Koji Furuhata (Frankenstein), Haruo Nakajima (Baragon)

Toho had an interest in Frankenstein for a long time. The most relevant story is that they had bought the script to a King Kong vs. Frankenstein movie (or actually Kong Kong vs. Prometheus. The path of that script even before Toho got it is a little windy and there were also some underhanded dealings with the original creator Willis O'Brien, but that's all beyond the scope of this project since Toho wasn't yet involved). Toho replaced Frankenstein with Godzilla after they got the script, but they then considered a Frankenstein vs. Godzilla as a follow-up. That wound up getting scrapped in part because Godzilla's role in the movie was apparently more heroic than they wanted, but then the basic plot got revived for this movie, with a new monster, Baragon, taking Godzilla's part. Baragon isn't exactly heroic in this movie, so the script seems to have been revised regardless (and therefore this could have been a Godzilla movie after all, i suppose).

As a real bit of trivia, Toho's interest in Frankenstein actually goes back even earlier, when they considered following up their 1960 horror/sci-fi movie The Human Vapor with a sequel involving Frankenstein.

Baragon became a relatively popular monster in his own right, and will appear in Destroy All Monsters, Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, and Final Wars (not exactly always starring roles, though), and also appears in the NES game that, at least in my own mind, is the foundation of the Tohoverse. He's based loosely - very loosely! - on a ceratops, with a few minor alterations such as being 100+ feet long, having a glowing horn, an energy breath weapon, and being a meat eater.

You have no proof that ceratops didn't have glowing horns or breath weapons.

When i first heard that Toho had made Frankenstein movies (this and the loose sequel War of the Gargantuas), featuring a Frankenstein big enough to fight Godzilla-sized monsters, i pictured a guy in a big rubber suit lumbering around, loosely based on the Bela Lugosi version with giant boots and big bolts coming out of the neck. But that's actually not the case at all. This movie is actually a rare case where one of the kaiju is more or less human, just with some make up and prosthetics on his head. He doesn't look much like what you'd think of Frankenstein at all. It's possible that was for fear of complaints from Universal, who did own a copyright on the make-up for their version. But they did retain the protruding forehead of the Universal version, so we're reminded just enough that we're looking at a very off model Frankenstein. I am sure Toho could have come up with something that recalled the classic Frankenstein while avoiding copyright concernts (if that was even the problem) or just come up with something cool looking in the spirit of the original novel. Take a look at Willis O'Brien's concept art, for example. Instead, this version is very spry and skinny, and he comes across more of a caveman than a Frankenstein.

It's awful.

I should also point out that i'm well aware that "Frankenstein" should refer to the doctor that created the monster, and this creature should therefore be called "Frankenstein's Monster". But the dialogue in this movie refers to him as Frankenstein, so that's what we're doing here. And we've actually tagged him as "Sanda" to imply a little continuity with War of the Gargantuas, although that's a debatable move.

We begin in Germany in 1945, with some Nazi soldiers showing up at a scientist's lab and taking away a case. This is all done without dialogue. The Germans then travel in a submarine to Japan, where they meet up with a Japanese sub and transfer the case. If the word "submarine" had you reaching for your Godzilla shot glass, go for it; the German sub is bombed by an American plane directly after the transfer.

One guy on the Japanese sub is Kawai, played by Toho regular Yoshio Tsuchiya, who will appear later in the modern part of this film.

The other guy in that shot above is Yoshifumi Tajima, who played the Happy Enterprises businessman in Mothra vs. Godzilla, but he doesn't appear outside this scene. There are actually a lot of similar cameo roles in this movie.

The Japanese hope that the Germans, who they know to be at the end of their rope, are handing over a secret weapon, but the item in the case turns out to be the beating heart of Frankenstein.

The heart is delivered to a surgeon played by Takashi Shimura in another cameo role.

The thought is that if they could study the heart, they could create soldiers that are immune to bullets. However, this surgeon is stationed at Hiroshima and soon after the heart is delivered, the bomb is dropped.

15 years later, we see doctors in a hospital dealing with radiation victims.

The scientists are Dr. James Bowen (the American Nick Adams, who also appears in this year's Monster Zero), Dr. Sueko Togami (played by Kumi Mizuno, who was also in Monster Zero), and Dr. Ken'ichiro Kawaji (played by Tadao Takashima, another Toho regular).

Bowen wants to turn the tragedy of radiation "into eternal peace and happiness in the future", and to that end, the doctors are looking at how radiation might be used to strengthen cells while also trying to help cancer victims. We'll learn a little later that Bowen was against the A-bomb drop and he came to Japan to at least help the victims.

Around this time we start hearing about a strange waif running around killing and eating dogs and rabbits. It's said that he's just another tragedy of the war, one of many orphan children.

Meanwhile, Bowen and Dr. Togami begin to develop a relationship, so Bowen shows up at her house where she's cooked a "modest" meal in honor of her birthday.

Isn't it HER birthday? Why didn't HE cook HER a meal?! He doesn't even do the dishes.

They get into a discussion about American vs. Japanese styles of humor, but i suspect Bowen's joke isn't funny in any language. During their meal, they hear an accident and look out to see the waif recovering from getting hit by a taxi. Togami throws him some food.

About a year passes, and Bowen invites Togami to visit the grave of a woman that they had been caring for. She giddily agrees; you will never see anyone so happy to go to a cemetery. It's because she's in looooove, but it makes Min uncomfortable.

Ugh. Togami, sweetheart, if you've been making eyes at him for a year and the best outing you've been offered is a visit to the cemetary, it is so past time to give up this fantasy and start looking elsewhere. This year he's prolly going to invite his smelly friends over on YOUR BIRTHDAY so you can feed them, too.

At the cemetery grounds, they hear a commotion and find the waif in a cave. The police are always happy to turn things over to the main characters in these movies, so the two scientists enter the cave and bring the boy back to their lab.

It's determined that the kid is a "Caucasion... full-blooded white boy" (um...are you sure you don't want to run that test again?). They call together some reporters to get word out to see if they can find out who the kid belonged to.

The reporter on the left is another Toho cameo (Butterfly Hunter #3 from Varan).

Now that he's being fed regularly, the boy starts growing and changing...

...and it's determined that he has a strong resistance to radiation.

Meanwhile, Kawai, the submarine guy that delivered the Frankenstein heart to the Hiroshima surgeon, has settled into a job at an oil field after the war. There's an earthquake that destroys the facility, and he thinks he catches a glimpse of a giant monster during the destruction.

Back to our waif, he's continuing to grow, but not developing in other ways. Part of the problem may be the way Togami and Bowen seem to constantly talk past each other.

Dr. Togami: He doesn't show any signs of recognizing words.
Dr. Bowen: He has strange blue eyes.
Dr. Togami: Could it be caused by anemia?
Dr. Bowen: [shakes head incredulously] No.

The waif starts attacking the television set when a guy on a rock and roll show starts yelling. Togami calms him down and it's proposed that they start putting the waif in a cage or chaining him (Yup. They go right for the cage and chains solution. The sure-fire way to gain trust and cooperation from your trauma victims). While Togami is protesting that, the waif start pawing at her and it looks like he might get violent. Bowen winds up hitting him over the head with a stool, to which the waif barely reacts. But it turns out he was just interested in Togami's necklace.

The information from the media outreach comes back, and the most promising information is that he looks like a boy that was once seen playing in the ruins of the Hiroshima army hospital after the war. At this point the kid has grown so large that he has to be kept in a giant cage in the basement of the lab facility. Eventually Kawai shows up at the lab and relays his World War II experience, and so Dr. Kawaji is sent to Frankfurt, Germany where he meets with the former Nazi scientist, Dr. Rissendorf.

Rissendorf says that the Frankenstein monster has died many times, and always comes back to life, because the heart never dies. He says that as long as the protein supply is sufficient, it will grow back parts of its body, so the best way to tell if the boy is Frankenstein is to cut off one of his arms.

That's the best way? Really? How about limiting the kid to a low protein diet first before we resort to amputating limbs?

Hey, he's a Nazi scientist!

Obliviously.

He says that if you cut off an arm, the arm might even grow into a second monster, which i find hard to believe since it's the heart that's supposed to be the driver, but Min says it's something to do with his cells and she's the scientist in the family so i'll take her word for it. The ability to regrow an entire second creature will also be relevant to War of the Gargantuas.

I might have also said "wizards".

I'll point out that as far as i know, the real Frankenstein monster never grew in size, but i suppose that aspect is due to the radiation from the bomb at Hiroshima. We're still counting it for Drinking Game purposes, though, since there's no actual explanation in the movie.

Back in Japan, the waif is growing so quickly that the chain is digging into his wrist. He does seem to have gained a degree of intelligence and at least makes hand gestures and responds with nods when Togami talks to him.

Togami is shocked to find Bowen and Kawaji, especially Kawaji, seriously considering the idea of cutting off one of the waif's limbs. Eventually, while Bowen and Togami are at dinner again (this time Bowen has cooked an American style bbq meal and Togami is making the bad jokes), Kawaji is sneaking down into the basement to cut off one of the waif's arms. But he's interrupted by a contingent of reporters that burst in snapping pictures with flash bulbs, angering the creature and provoking it to escape.

He later returns to his cage where he just sits there eating, but some police show up and start shooting him anyway, which causes him to run away for real. He later shows up at Togami's house...

...but she's unable to convince him to turn himself in. You might ask how a two+ story monster can evade the police, but hey, this is a Toho movie. He's not nearly Godzilla-sized yet, and they can't even keep track of him.

When some inspectors try to find out how the creature managed to escape, they inspect his cage and find that he didn't break his chain; his hand got torn off.

Is he secretly a Matango? How do you accidentally tear your hand off?

And the hand is still alive, crawling around on the floor. Like any good mad scientists, our heroes put the hand in a protein solution and keep it completely uncovered and unguarded.

At this point it's safe to start calling our waif "Frankenstein". But we've only just discovered that. So it's pretty surprising when someone calls from a hog ranch in Okayama and confirms that "Frankenstein" was just there and ate all their pigs. Monster names are transmitted instantaneously across the Tohoverse.

Frankenstein is bigger than ever, and the police chief has a question for his men that i think we'd all like an answer to.

These cops are also Toho cameos.

There's also been some debate about whether or not the scientists agree that the police should kill Frankenstein.

Togami is unequivocally opposed. Bowen is somewhat more ambivalent, but generally seems to agree with Kawaji, who takes the position that now that they have the hand, they can go ahead and kill the confused monster.

You guys are horrible people.

It is now time for a dance party on a boat. Frankenstein, who is apparently aquatic, approaches and causes a panic...

Where's my scientist with a children's book to explain why Frankenstein is amphibious? Where?

...but ultimately just grabs the boat for a while before turning back and sinking back into the water. Maybe the idea is to show that he just wanted to dance, too, since he was earlier seen enjoying the rock and roll show on television before the guy screamed. In any event, since he doesn't kill anyone here it shows that Frankenstein really isn't a bad guy. But Kawaji keeps saying it's ok to go ahead and kill them because they have the hand.

Monster.

Then: disaster! The unsecured, unguarded hand has disappeared (How unforeseen!). The scientists are lucky that it doesn't go on a murderous rampage, because that would have been on their heads. It turns out to just have crawled into a grate where it died from lack of protein. The weird thing is that the hand continued to get bigger instead of, like, growing an arm. The other weird thing is that this scene, which seems to give a clue as to how they could ultimately kill Frankenstein, won't really have that much relevance at all, except that it reinforces the already established idea that Frankenstein needs protein.

Indeed, we next see him hunting birds by tearing huge trees out of the ground and throwing them into the sky. It doesn't work, but it does alert the locals that he's in the area.

Failing to catch the bird, Frankenstein hunts a toy wild boar instead.

You can't eat that. It's plastic.

He's shown to be a little craftier, digging a pit that i guess he hopes the boar will run into.

The boar, meanwhile, seems completely unaware of the 150' man. Things don't quite work out for Frank, though. It's an army tank that falls into a pit...

...and the boar winds up attacking the soldiers.

Holy crap, that boar is huge! And actually it just kind of runs at them and the soldiers scream in horror and then it runs away.

I don't know what happened in that scene. Someone was just so happy with their boar figure they had to use it even though it made no sense.

It's said that Frankenstein is now in the mountains because he instinctively likes a cold place like Frankfurt. Hey, they know that's not where Frankenstein comes from, right?

We next see our other monster make his formal debut (after a quick glimpse during the oil field scene). It's kind of dark, so these aren't great shots.

Here's a close-up.

Is he supposed to look totally goofy?

The as-of-yet unnamed Baragon is attacking a teen dance party in a cabin. And he apparently kills everyone; there are no survivors to tell anyone that this wasn't an attack by Frankenstein.

No footprints, either, apparently. Your CSI team sucks!

Baragon continues to attack people, causing a cave-in at a mine and then invading a range and eating all the chickens (you can see the feathers falling out of his mouth)...

...before devouring a toy horse.

From the same toy box as the boar figure, i think.

The back and forth on the scientists' position on killing Frankenstein continues. After the loss of the hand they were against killing him again, "for science"!, but after the death of the teens they had to consent to a lethal attack. Dr. Kawaji is still all, "I wish I could have a finger of his"; he definitely seems to be filling the role of the obsessed Dr. Frankenstein character, although he's pretty calm about it and no one else thinks it's odd.

With the way Togami and Bowen communicate, they prolly aren't listening to anything Kawaji says either.

Captain Kawai, who should be credited as MVP of making the plot move forward, shows up again to announce that he saw a different monster at the oil fields, so he thinks these latest attacks aren't from Frankenstein. Reports of a glowing object at the mine cave in reminded him of the glowing horn of the monster he saw.

To confirm Kawai's story, the scientists go to (of course!) the dinosaur museum. And not just any dinosaur museum; the one with murals of dinosaurs frolicking under a rainbow.

Holy shit! Is that dinosaur leaping!

Bowen puts forth his theory that dinosaurs died because the Earth cooled off, but some of them escaped to the deep underground and may have continued to multiply and lived until today. The museum curator (played by the same actor as the equally curt doctor from Dogora) correctly calls this "highly improbable". And yet, i think we're supposed to believe it is the case (who you gonna believe? a scientist or a curator? c'mon.). After all, Baragon is a burrowing dinosaur ("dinosaur"), isn't he?

Tell me more about these burrowing dinosaurs.

The scientists had been dropping food by helicopter in the mountain area where Frankenstein is thought to be hiding. He hadn't been going for the food, but one day they notice that it's gone. So they decide to land and look for him on foot. And, i don't know, i guess they couldn't land right in the area where they were leaving the food, but they apparently have to land so far away that they are just walking around for ages.

He's taller than the trees and in a wide open space, and yet you couldn't see him from the helicopter???

We had been wondering why Frankenstein's clothes grew along with the rest of him, but now we see him in different clothes. And i'm kind of disappointed that we missed the fight with the giant tiger he must have killed to get that new outfit.

That's also a really nice backdrop. Is he living in an exhibit at the Natural History Museum?

While the scientists are wandering around in the woods, the crazy Dr. Kawaji starts getting even more crazy...

...and then reveals that he's brought dynamite and his plan is to blind Frankenstein, steal a limb, and then destroy him. (Fnord says this is something that survived from actual Frankenstein movies, where the scientist inevitably becomes crazily obsessed. But i think he is giving them waaaaay too much credit.) The other scientists are appalled by this, but Baragon shows up and attacks before the conversation goes further. The dynamite is useless against Baragon, but luckily Frankenstein shows up to protect them.

Baragon is less a ceratops and more some kind of dog-bunny.

He's also a leaper.

And he's got laser breath.

Frankenstein should really be hopelessly outmatched in this fight. There's no way he should win against a burrowing, leaping, horned, laser shooting dino-dog-rabbit, but he manages to hold his own.

Dr. Kawaji falls off a cliff for no reason. He lays there for a long time, and rocks harmlessly sort of fall on or at least around him. But i think we're supposed to think he's in peril. Then Frankenstein throws Baragon down the same cliff.

Frankenstein chases Baragon back into his hole, and returns Kawaji to the other scientists, who, by the way, just completely abandoned him.

Kawaji is completely fine, by the way.

Now, this is the first time anyone has seen Baragon and lived to tell about it. He hasn't been named yet or anything. But here's the first thing the scientists say when they get to the nearest town.

That's the first use of the monster's name. And everyone knows what they're talking about. Because that's how it is in the Tohoverse.

Baragon soon resurfaces and the fight with Frankenstein continues. Baragon's roar is pretty similar to Godzilla's.

I thought the idea was going to be that Frankenstein was going to use his superior cunning to defeat Baragon (like digging a ditch that Baragon would fall into!), and he does reach for some embers from a fire he had made, but he very quickly throws the embers instead of using them like a torch. And it just causes a huge forest fire. Frank also pelts Baragon with tree and rocks...

...but trees aren't very damaging and the rocks are obviously just made of styrofoam and harmlessly bounce off. It's kind of a boring fight. I guess it's kind of cool to see a fast human wrestling your typical Toho rubber suit monster. It's certainly something new. And there's a few good moments, with Frankenstein jumping on Baragon's back and another with him doing the old King Kong trick and pulling at his jaw.

Uh, laser breath?

But for the most part it's a fight that drags on without a lot to distinguish the various moments. Frankenstein does keep picking stuff up but instead of using his weapons in clever ways, he just keeps throwing the stuff and it has no effect.

The fire eventually gets to the point where it feels like we're in a Dio video.

But the fire is only in the background and doesn't threaten to harm our monsters in any way. So the fight plods on. Baragon does demonstrate his burrowing ability to its fullest in this battle, but nothing really comes of that either.

Meanwhile, the army does nothing. The general keeps asking for status reports and ordering platoons to move from location to location, all while the monsters remain in the same area, but they never attack. I'm not even sure if they have guns.

Don't do anything to slow down that raging fire or anything, guys.

Finally, Frankenstein gets Baragon in a headlock and starts chocking him and/or pulling on the flappy scale on his head.

This winds up killing Baragon, pretty anticlimactically.

And now you get to choose your own adventure. If you're watching the "theatrical release", the ground suddenly gives way and Frankenstein sinks into the Earth, apparently dying.

But if you're watching the "international release", we've got some additional madness for you. Absolute madness, i tell you.

"What's that?"" That's a giant octopus!"

No it isn't.

Indeed it is. Just your garden variety Mountain Forest Octopus.

...Stop.

Frankenstein rushes to fight it.

And he winds up getting dragged into the ocean, which is apparently right there, just over that cliff.

"That octopus!", they say, as Frankenstein falls to his watery death.

There's no explanation for the octopus, who has nothing to do with the rest of the film.

The weird octopus ending was not really meant to be in this movie. The story is that the American co-producers liked the octopus battle from King Kong vs. Godzilla so much that they asked it to be used in this movie, despite it not having anything to do with the plot. However, after they saw what was filmed, they ended up rejecting it because they were expecting a "marine battle". No kidding. The octopus fight would have made a lot more sense in the scene where Frankenstein surfaces at the teen boat dance but then goes away for no reason. If he had been attacked by a giant octopus there, it would have a) been in the water and b) given a reason for why he ultimately didn't destroy the boat, and c) spiced up the middle of the movie instead of tacking on a fight at the end after we were all ready to pack it in. The octopus was added back for the "international" release and is in the default ending on our DVD, and i'm always happy to have more kaijui than less, regardless of how much sense it makes. In any event, considering why he was added, i'm tagging this octopus as Oodako, the same octopus that appears in King Kong vs.. He'll also appear in War of the Gargantuas.

Regardless of which ending you've chosen, the characters then ask if Frankenstein is really dead, and the answer is basically yes, for now. But he will never really die thanks to his immortal heart, and he will return again someday, somewhere. Kawaji says that since he's a monster, maybe it would be best if he really did die. And that's the end of the movie.

Pretty disappointing if you were really expecting a Frankenstein of any sort. But weirdly interesting in its own right.

Godzilla Drinking Game
	Someone thinks it's a good idea to drag a giant monster across the ocean on a raft (giant eggs count).
	Attacking planes fly directly at a monster, with no possibility of avoiding a crash even if the monster didn't swat them down.
	People refuse to believe in the existence of a giant monster even though they've already acknowledged that Godzilla exists.
	A submarine explodes.	Yep. We're just lucky the Japanese sub made it home, or we wouldn't have even had this movie. Wait, let me rephrase that...
	Teens have a dance party on a boat. Two drinks/head smacks if they get attacked by a monster during the party.	Two drinks / head slaps. There is most defnitely a teen dance boat, and Frankenstein definitely attacks it, even if he doesn't destroy it.
	The government is completely ineffective when faced with a corporation doing something illegal.
	A humongous lumbering monster manages to sneak up on someone. Two drinks/head smacks if it's the army and they're supposedly using radar.	It's so bad the characters in the movie are complaining about it.
	A scientist suddenly figures everything out with little-to-no information and explains it all to everyone.	The scientists pretty much have to be led by the hand in this one. If it wasn't for Captain Kawai and Dr. Riesendorf, i don't think our protagonists would have even figured out the basic plot. They certainly don't suggest any special kinds of attacks or weaknesses to exploit or anything useful.
	A monster suddenly grows in size just because.	Don't give me your Hiroshima fan-fiction explanation. He grows so that he can fight a Godzilla stand-in.
	People expose themselves to major amounts of radiation with no concern.
	Everyone suddenly knows a monster's name. Two drinks/head smacks if everyone else nods appreciatively and repeats it.	Baragon! The way the knowledge about Frankenstein spreads across the land instantaneoulsy is worth a drink, too.
	Army missiles can't seem to hit a 150+ foot monster and instead explode harmlessly around it.	What missiles?
	A woman falls down for no reason.	Dr. Kawaji's weird fall possibly makes up for all the women falling inexplicably in all the other movies.
	Bad dinosaur science. You have to give a little leeway for the time period, but pretending a children's picture book is a scientific journal is always worth two drinks/smacks.	Baragon himself is bad dinosaur science. Dr. Bowen's theory about what happened to dinosaurs after they went extinct, or even why they went extinct, also counts, although at least the museum curator gives him the hairy eyeball for that. And then there's the rainbow frolicking!

Monsters Appearing: Baragon, Oodako, Sanda