‘Rodan’ or — Seriously Great?

I’m a huge Godzilla/Kong/dinosaur fan meaning if there’s a giant monster in it I’ll want to watch it. Although there’d always been one kaiju movie that had eluded me for years, and that’s ‘Rodan’ (1956). Last weekend the wait was finally over, my seemingly never-ending quest fulfilled. I’ve finally seen ‘Rodan’! So, after many years of building up my expectations, how was it?

Short answer — ‘Rodan’ is one of the greatest giant monster movies ever made. And that’s not hyperbole.

There are four main reasons ‘Rodan’ works as well as it does, and those are — structure, pacing, tone and style — all of which it absolutely nails. With all going that for it it’s no wonder this beast soars.

When the brutally mutilated body of a miner is discovered in a shaft by a safety engineer the automatic assumption is murder. However, this theory is soon shattered when a giant insectoid creature attacks the nearby mining village that night, and even though it is killed by the authorities more of these horrors quickly appear.

An expert declares these huge larval monsters to be Meganulons, a prehistoric type of dragonfly nymph roused from slumber by the mine’s operations. They are deadly, lethal and almost unstoppable… but not as deadly, lethal and unstoppable as what feeds on these massive creatures. Whatever it is must be big… VERY big. Eek!

‘Rodan’ was only Toho Studio’s third giant monster movie (and its first in colour) meaning it was made in the post-war period before these films became goofy (don’t get me wrong — I love goofy Godzilla) and so still had a genuinely terrifying edge to them, and ‘Rodan’s edge is certainly terrifying and surprisingly bloody. Not only that but Rodan isn’t simply a lumbering force of nature but a stone-cold killer, a predator, which only increases the film’s atmosphere of serious dread.

But it’s the escalating scale of the destruction that really hooks the viewer with ‘Rodan’ doing a phenomenal job of building up one form of frightening menace only for that to then, in turn, be obliterated by an even bigger, more ferocious nightmare. When we realise the precise function the Meganulons serve in their prey/predator relationship with Rodan it’s suitably gruesome, and if those large beasties are mere morsels for this winged terror then what the hell are we?!

Technically, the scenes of destruction are some of the best special effects legend Eiji Tsuburaya ever created for Toho, the carnage as exhilarating as it is petrifying. All this is complimented by some truly inspired directing by Ishirō Honda, the filmmaker utilising excellent use of both the greens and browns of the environment as well as pulling off some stunning compostions (a neon sign against a burning city is particularly striking).

Not only that but Rodan’s supersonic nature allows the creature to be frequently represented by nothing more than the high-altitude contrails of a jet plane, the shimmering white vapor trails imbuing this terror from the sky with an incredible sense of dynamism, speed and veracity. It’s also drop-dead gorgeous to look at.

‘Rodan’ is exceptional. It’s not just one of the best kaiju movies ever made, and it’s certainly the best flying monster movie ever made, but when it comes to sheer pacing it might, just might, even give the original ‘Godzilla’ (1954) a run for it money. It doesn’t come any better, or more beautiful, than this.