Ghidorah: The Three-Headed Monster (1964) – Review

By the time we reached the fifth movie in the life and times of the legendary city stomper known as Gojira, Toho studios were in full swing. Arriving a paltry nine moths after the previous installment, Ghidorah: The Three-Headed Monster should have reeked of being a colossal rush job, but returning director Ishiro Honda and his experienced crew instead turned out not only one of the best of the early early movies, but also introduced Godzilla’s most popular villain into the bargain and finally turned its huge star from vicious atomic metaphor to googly-eyed earth protector.
Arguably a 60s answer to the present day MCU, G:TTHM could arguably class itself as The Avengers due to the fact that, in the desire to create a fully functioning monster universe, the movie links almost all of its major properties by not only drafting in Mothra to fight the intergalactic threat, but also ropes in cross-eyed, supersonic pterodactyl, Rodan after his volcanic demise at the end of his own movie to provide a monster mash on a scale hitherto undreamt of.

It all seems to be kicking off in Japan. While a huge, magnetic meteor has crash landed on Mount Kurodaki, elsewhere Detective Shindo has been assigned to protect Princess Salno from an assassination from angry dissidents created by the political issues in her native land of Selgina. However, after the princess is apparently killed in a plane explosion after she witnesses strange lights in the sky, she suddenly turns up elsewhere, safe and sound but instead claiming to be a priestess of Venus and begins uttering doom laden predictions that soon disaster will strike.
While the Princess/Priestess may initially seem like she’s nuttier than a bag of peanut M&Ms, her grim predictions start to come true when Rodan emerges from Mount Aso, seemingly rested from a subterranean snooze and then Godzilla suddenly pops up from the Ocean and starts making a bee-line to the nearest populated area. Reporter (and Shibdo’s sister) Naoko, attempts to contact Mothra via the doll-sized Shobijin in an attempt to calm the rising chaos, matters are made even worse when the real danger that the Priestess is concerned about, hatches from the magnetic meteorite in the form of a massive, golden hued, space dragon named King Ghidorah who vows to raise Japanese property insurance through the fucking roof.
In addition to everything else that’s occuring, after Salno’s evil uncle recognizes her doing doomsayer act on the evening news, he sends shades sporting assassin, Malmness, to finish the job that plane explosion failed to do and Shindo has to up his game if he’s going to keep the seemly confused Salno alive.
However, covering overtime to make everyone un-alive is King Ghidorah, whose rampage, it seems, can only be halted by the combined efforts of Godzilla, Rodan and Mothra – if only the latter can convince the other two Kaiju from beating the living crap out of each other.

While it’s childishly easy for someone not clued in to the rich history of Kaiju cinema to look at this piece of 60s, camp, with all of its rubber suits and fishing wire manipulated flying and simply dismiss it as quaint trash; but Ghidorah: The Three-Headed Monster is something of a Marvel as not only does it rank as a monster mash that’s on a scale practically unheard of at the time, but it also manages to pivot the entire franchise in a whole new direction. In fact, you can pin point the exact second when Godzilla shifts from a building crushing juggernaut of destruction to the protector of the world the series would cast him as from this point on. Pre-empting a shift to the side of the white hats that trumps The Terminator, the Velociraptors from Jurassic World and even Jason Statham’s Deckard Shaw from the Fast and Furious franchise, Godzilla’s attitude adjustment (courtesy of Mothra acting delivering Dr. Phil levels of advice via insectoid screeching) may seem overwhelmingly stupid on paper, but in reality proved to be tremendously endearing.
It also meant that Toho could now start building a rogue’s gallery for their radioactive figurehead that could rival that of Batman and with King Ghidorah, they got off to a magnificent start as even in his slightly goofy, 1960s form, the triple-headed juggernaut is quite the resplendent sight as he spastically spews lighting from his three mouths while giving his trademark “bididididi” roar.

Almost as impressive as Ghidorah’s golden wingspan is that the human plot, which is as quietly batshit as all get out, manages to hold the attention just as much as the monster action does. Essentially a mixture of political intrigue and alien conspiracy theory, the tangled history of the Elizabethan ruff wearing people of Selgina is such a weird set-up for any movie, let alone one where a trio of monsters sit down, mid-fight, to discuss their feelings – and yet Honda manages to make it work desoite essentially dumping a random spy plot directly into his Kaiju movie. While the two plot are linked by strands thinner than Mothra’s silk (the alien consciousness within the princess states that Ghidorah previously destroyed her home planet of Venus), it’s so barmy, you can’t help but get engrossed, but also there’s plenty of crunch and wallop as not two, not three, but four massive kaiju brawl for the fate of the planet.
With the pitch black social commentary of the original Godzilla firmly growing ever more distant in his rear view mirror, Honda embraces a colourful, fun nature as never before and fully cements his rubber-suited, screeching menagerie firmly into the realms of cartoonish popular culture. It may be fairly silly on paper, but watching Honda utilize these rubbery monsters in surprisingly innovative ways is like mana from heaven to a grizzled old kaiju-phile like me and it’s truly a magnificent sight as these wobbly legends clash. Pulling off impressive double-team takedowns such as having the larvae form of Mothra hop on Rodan’s back in order to get a better shot with his silken strands or watching Godzilla get poleaxed clean through a bridge as a forrest goes up in flames around him feels like the sort of stuff you’d originally need CGI for, but Honda’s devoted crew manage to pull it off with exquisite model work and a shit load of fishing wire. Ok, granted, maybe there’s a little bit too much boulder tennis and Godzilla catching a Ghidorah gravity beam to the butt is pandering to a young audience at it’s most shameless, but the soft spot I have for this movie is more than enough to compensate.

Epic, fun and unabashedly strange, Ghidorah: The Three-Headed Monster is not onlyone of the best of the original run of movies, it also proves to be all Zilla, no filler.

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