Alternate Titles: Radon Giant Monster of the Sky, Rodan! The Flying Monster!
Year: 1956
Director: Ishiro Honda
Special Effects Director: Eiji Tsuburaya

This is Toho's first color kaiju film (with 1956's Legend of the White Serpent, which is outside the scope of this project, being Toho's first color film). We unfortunately only have the dubbed English version of the movie, but luckily this film managed to survive comparatively unscathed in its transfer to America, compared to the first Godzilla movie and Varan. Scenes have definitely been cut up and moved around, and that's pretty evident even without the help of the internet due to the really weird choice of using the same very recognizable scenes repeatedly, but storywise there don't seem to be major revisions. The dubbing is still awkward, with the script designed more to mimic the mouth movements of the Japanese actors, so you get halting dialogue like "Should we... go... see...?"

The movie also opens with an added scene comprised of stock footage of nuclear bomb tests, including one called "Mission Gigantic" and another that ends with someone saying "the kill is complete". It's an overlong intro that is seemingly unrelated to the rest of the film, but it ends with "Can the human race continue to deliver these staggering blows without arousing somewhere in the depths of Earth a reaction, a counter attack, a horror still undreamed of? There are persons in the Japanese islands who believe that horror has already been seen."

They really knew how to name missions back in the 50s. You'll never get a Mission Gigantic nowadays, let me tell you.

The main character in this story, Shigeru Kawamura, is played by Kenji Sahara, an actor who will be seen again and again in the Tohoverse (he actually appeared in Gojira, but only very briefly and without dialogue). He's dubbed by George Takei in his first acting role. His voice work for Godzilla Raids Again actually happened after this film because it was released in the US later. But Takei is given the same type of overwritten narration as in Godzilla Raids Again. It's somewhat better because there is less of the just literally describing in excessive detail everything that we can already see on the screen and more of a narration of the thoughts in people's heads as things are going on, but it's still distracting. Kawamura is the safety engineer of a mining company and he gets involved when a problem in the mine results in first a flooding and then a series of murders that a scientist incorrectly identifies as the work of a "maniac". Shigeru's friend Goro is initially suspected.

He must not have been a real scientist. Prolly just a lowly doctor. Cause as we all know, in a Toho film, scientists are always right.

There's a funny scene where there are some police looking for Goro in the mine, and one of them admonishes another saying, "How many times do i have to tell you to be quiet?" so they can sneak up on Goro and then immediately starts shouting, "Goro, are you there?". All three of the police are killed.

Our first sighting of the killer is at his girlfriend Kiyo's (played by Yumi Shirakawa) house, where Shigeru has gone to comfort her after the villagers have harassed her for her brother Goro's alleged actions. And it's definitely not Goro.

Since our first scientist (lowly doctor) obviously got it wrong and therefore has no reasonable expectation to be allowed to remain in a Toho monster film, our good friend Akihiko Hirata is brought in, this time playing a Professor Kashiwagi.

Finally! A real scientist!

This creature is identified as a Meganulan, a prehistoric insect. It's said that it's not known how the creature still manages to exist but if we can find out it will be a boon to all mankind. Then they call in the military who enters the mine with overwhelming firepower. I don't know about bringing in multiple bazookas (or whatever they were) into a mine shaft, especially one that's already exhibited signs of instability. Also, they seem to have put all unarmed people in the front, so you just have all these people crowding the cavern when the Meganulan attacks. And despite all the weapons, Shigeru is the one to kill the creature with a coal cart. But he gets into trouble when, after locating Goro's body and having it sent home, he climbs through a hole into a side cavern where the flooding came from (like you do), and finds a second Meganulan. When he calls for help, the army responds by firing a machine gun into the hole triggering a massive earthquake...

...that Shigeru deftly sidesteps. The rest seem equally capable of dodging certain death by collapsing tunnel walls. I mean, that earthquake was of biblical proportions; i don't know how anyone walked out of there alive. But they do, although Shigeru remains separated from the group and is thought buried.

Holy crap, the entire earth just collapsed. And Shigeru avoided dying by taking a single step to the left! Why can't you all do that?

What follows is a scene that i hope to god makes more sense in the original Japanese version. Dr. Kashiwagi calls the Earthquake Center to ask if an earthquake happened near the mine (which, doesn't he know that?) and, after confirming that it did, he is invited, without having identified himself, to go check out the site of a nearby volcano, Mt. Aso. It's lonely at the Earthquake Center, i guess.

Shigeru is found stumbling around outside the volcano, but he has amnesia. Treatment for amnesia in Japan in 1956 seems to have meant being put in a room full of people who shout things at you like, "Name the girl you love" and showing him photos of prehistoric insects and shouting "Don't you remember? It killed your friend Goro!". But at least we get a classic dinosaur* mug shot scene.

I forever identify Kenji Sahara to fnord12 in future movies as "that bandaged head guy".

At this point we start getting reports of a strange UFO that does loop de loops and kills Japanese fighter pilots and destroys British cargo ships. It's described as a "supersonic maniac", and it emits jet sounds and white trails of smoke. If you didn't know what movie you were watching you would never guess that it was a prehistoric flying reptile. The UFO is spotted all over the Pacific: China, the Philippines, Rangoon, Singapore, and the US military outpost on Wake island, where an American fighter pilot is killed (off screen).

A partial photo of the UFO is produced after a pair of weird honeymooners go to the volcano, because your wife standing in front of a desolate wasteland is a picture you want in your wedding album...

....and they get killed, but at least their camera is retrieved.

Why do these women never wear appropriate shoes for the places they are visiting? Who wears heeled white pumps and a white dress to go traipsing around in volcano ash?

After noting that the photo could be showing the wing of a giant bird, Dr. Kashiwagi immediately snaps his fingers and demands his file on transitional saurian forms. It seems this might have made more sense in the Japanese version, but in the American version it's very abrupt.

He's a scientist. He's trained to identify blurry shapes in the corners of pictures with unerring accuracy. He might not be able to tell when an earthquake has just swallowed the earth outside his window, but he can certainly identify transitional saurian forms.

Meanwhile, Kiyo continues to work with her amnesiac boyfriend, Shigeru, and when she shows him that her pet birds have laid eggs, he goes into a fit and we get a flashback showing him back in the mines. He wound up in a cavern full of Meganulan...

...and then a giant egg hatches, revealing an adorable winged creature...

...that towers over the already large Meganulan and begins to eat them. Despite being bigger than the Meganulan, it's clearly much smaller than the fully grown Rodan that we'll see later, even though someone later speculates that it might have hatched fully grown.

Shigeru leads Kashiwagi and other researchers to the place where he remembers seeing the egg hatch, and at first nothing is found but then they find gigantic egg shell fragments partially buried by a cave in. Carbon dating puts the egg shell at 20 million years, and it's said to be a primitive form of egg from a reptile, not a bird. Shigeru is shown photos of various creatures (two dinosaur* mug shots in one movie!)...

...and he picks out the Pteranodon. It's ultimately decided that the creature is one that is related to the Pteranodon but it's carnivorous (er... so was the Pteranodon) and it's called Rodan.

Forget the "pteranodon". WTF is that thing in the picture beneath it? It's like something out of the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual.

At least in the US version. The creature's name in Japan was Radon, a kind of shortening of PteRAnoDON. But "Rodan" in the US, which Wikipedia says is "possibly to avoid confusion with the atomic element Radon".

And on that note, it's worth noting that in contrast to the introduction about nuclear testing, the story here is that humans delved too deep into the Earth and unleashed an ancient horror.

So the Balrog is really a dinosaur?

It is later said that flooding with water warmed by radioactivity may have been what woke everything up, though.

When this information is presented to the military, they locate Rodan nesting near the volcano and begin bombing the hell out of it. This is actually footage from the end scene that is being reused. In this version, it's the army that essentially aggravates the monster and causes it to go on its rampage. When Rodan emerges from the volcano...

...Shigeru points at it and says, "Yes, that's it!". Well, thanks! It's good to know that you didn't see some other unknowable horror under the Earth.

What follows is some awesome destruction porn as incredibly well crafted models - for the first time in color - are blown away by Rodan's powerful wings. The footage is so good it will be reused in later Godzilla films (ok, that may really be a reflection of the later movies' budgets than the quality here, but it is good). Rodan himself is ambitious for Toho because he flies. So in addition to the guy in the rubber suit, there are at least two different flying models...

...plus an animatronic head.

And when they do use the rubber suit they still try to show him flying in it, although it looks awkwardly like a guy in a suit being raised up by strings, which of course is exactly what it is.

Radon also demonstrates a steam breath identical to what we've seen from Godzilla so far. This will not be seen in later films.

There are in fact two Rodans at this point.

They are mates. So Rodan actually beats Mothra to the screen as the first female kaiju. It's not said where the second Rodan came from (if from the same nest in the volcano as the first one, should they really be mates? Is incest a concern in the giant prehistorical reptile world?). You never heard about Rodan's mate in the later films, either. It's the great underdeveloped tragedy of the Godzillaverse; he's one of the few kaiju that wasn't the last of his species but in the end he lost his mate anyway.

I hold out hope that the Japanese version at least explains how two Rodans come to be.

One thing i can't get over is the use of jet noises as the Rodans fly around. Another thing i can't get over is the reuse of footage. The same airplane flying at Rodan 1,000 times in a row.

The military has no hope against the Rodans. No scientist has developed a special bomb this time, and the defense forces don't even have a little Rodan figurine on a map. Totally unprepared. Min does note that the military guys wear pristine white gloves, though.

What is with that? Every movie with military personnel has them all wearing white gloves while working. Are they afraid of callouses? How do they keep them so pristine while loading rockets?

In the aftermath of the carnage, as one bitter army guy says, obviously, "The Rodans did this...", we have the military and the scientists converging again. And i submit the following for your review:

"We haven't seen Rodan for a week."
"Isn't it possible they're back underground?"
"Yes, everything leads to that conclusion."
"Will you explain that, doctor?"
"These Rodan are reptiles, a member of the snake family. After they gorge on food, human or otherwise, they'll hibernate a long long time.

I made fnord12 replay that scene a couple of times because i was so sure i couldn't be hearing any of it correctly. Then we had to close the windows because i was cackling so loudly, fnord12 was worried we'd disturb the neighbors.

No one asks "How long?" (could it have been centuries?)(on the other hand, i guess the fear is that they might lay eggs, although that's not stated), and the decision is made to bomb the volcano where they are nesting. Which is what set them off in the first place, if you're watching the American movie. And the movie is shameless about reusing that footage. To show that there are two Rodans in the volcano, the same scene is shown twice, inverted one time so that it looks like it's on the opposite side. It's also funny that they nest separately (this is a kid friendly movie, after all), and somehow manage to completely encase themselves in rock.

As for the military, at least they can hit a stationary volcano. They also have multiple gigantic rockets, just an endless number of rockets (and reused footage) used to create avalanche that buries the Rodans. The barrage also causes the volcano to erupt. One of the Rodans dies and the other refuses to leave it, so it flops around in the lava until it dies too. It's an incredibly boring end fight where the monsters do nothing.

What i learned from this movie was that if there is a volcano spewing lava, you can stand in front of it and be completely safe if you're human. If you're a giant monster, though...sucks for you.

And with it, George Takei's crazy overwritten narration, talking about how the Rodans are "like moths" to the flames of the volcano and saying things like "I wondered if I could ever die as well" as the Rodans do and will it always be so? Will there be even more and terrible monsters as mankind continues to exploit the Earth? In the Godzillaverse, you can bet on it.

The Rodan movie was a success, and it's easy to see why. As the firrst color kaiju film, and with a flying monster, it was quite a spectacle. And you'll see below it is pretty sparse on drinking game offenses. The pacing is off considerably, but i think that may be specific to the US version, with the weird decision to reuse a lot of footage and basically kill the end scene by duplicating it earlier in the movie. The character will go on to appear in a number of Godzilla films. The Meganulan will reappear in Godzilla vs. Megaguirus a good 44 years from now, where they will be revealed to just be the larval form of a bigger threat (and so i've listed Megaguirus as a Monster Appearing in this entry even though it's not 100% accurate).

*Yes, we know these creatures aren't actually dinosaurs.

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.	In this movie the monster can do a 180 degree turn at super-sonic speed, so you can't blame the pilots for crashing.
	People refuse to believe in the existence of a giant monster even though they've already acknowledged that Godzilla exists.
	A submarine explodes.
	Teens have a dance party on a boat. Two drinks/head smacks if they get attacked by a monster during the party.
	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.	I would say their inability to keep track of two humongous flying monsters is practically the same thing, but if we start counting every time they lose track of a kaiju, we'd be drinking constantly.
	A scientist suddenly figures everything out with little-to-no information and explains it all to everyone.	A UFO is destroying planes? Get me my file on transitional saurian forms!
	A monster suddenly grows in size just because.
	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.	We're still in the stage where we're pretending these creatures are legitimate prehistoric animals, so this one doesn't qualify.
	Army missiles can't seem to hit a 150+ foot monster and instead explode harmlessly around it.	Again, Rodan is meant to be super fast, so no one can be faulted for missing him. And the army could sure hit the hell out of that stationary volcano.
	A woman falls down for no reason.
	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.	In a movie otherwise sparse of the usual tropes, this one gets hit repeatedly, from the dinosaur mug shots to the identification of both the Meganulon and Rodan as actual prehistoric creatures and of course the "reptiles, a member of the snake family" line.

Monsters Appearing: Megaguirus, Rodan