An attack of the crabs is never pretty, especially from one the size of Madison Square Garden, but that’s unfortunately only one of the issues Godzilla had to endure in his seventh big screen outing.
For one thing, Ishiro Honda, the man who had expertly marshalled the King Of The Monsters from his creation to five of the last six of his rapid evolving adventures, was nowhere to be seen and in his place sat Jun Fukuda, a director more interested in making something even more lighter in tone than the sci-fi camp of the previous entry, Invasion Of Astro-Monster. Also gone was Godzilla’s usual composer, Akira Ifukube, in favour of Masaru Sato, who, after providing scores for Akira Kurosawa, also aimed to add more of a bounce to Godzilla’s immense stride.
The result was Ebriah: Horror Of The Deep, a rather strange entry into the Zilla cannon which, despite Dr No style evil organizations and the titular killer lobster, feels more of a side quest for Toho’s radioactive mascot, rather than a main quest.
Convinced that his brother, Yata, is still alive after bring lost at sea, his uncomfortably intense younger brother, Ryoto, tries to secure a yacht in order to renew the search single handed. His first attempt is to try and enter a dance marathon and win a boat as a prize (as you do), but instead leaves with two aimless youths, Ichino and Nita who promise to show him some boats. However after finding a boat apparently belonging to bank robber Yoshimura, the little psycho steals it with everyone on board and sails it out into the open sea and immediately is shipwrecked after getting double-teamed by a violent storm and an even more violent giant crustacean named Ebirah.
The group wake up on an island and soon find that it’s home to the Red Bamboo, a terrorist organisation who have been plotting some nefarious shit by making heavy water that can be used in nuclear weapons and kidnapping natives from the nearby Infant Island in order to make a yellow liquid that keeps Ebirah at claw’s length.
Teaming up with shapely, escaped native, Daiyo, this mismatched group desperately try to stay ahead of the Red Bamboo’s search parties and inadvertently stumbles into a cave that contains a snoozing Godzilla. After the group is split up in various ways (Nita is captured, Ryoto is carried to Infant Iskand by a weather balloon), the remaining members if the gang desire that their only way to defeat the Red Bamboo and get past Ebirah, is to wake the snoring saurian and hope for the best.
So, with a spot of lightning and a bit of luck, Godzilla drags himself out of his cave to grumpily throw hands with the first willing victim he can find – but as the crabby Kaiju faces off with an actual crab, the Red Bamboo takes steps to make sure no one gets off the island alive.
If Ebirah: Horror Of The Deep feels a little off, and doesn’t feel Godzilla-y enough, for lack of a better word, that because it isn’t. The story of a random group of people getting shipwrecked on a island owned by a crime syndicate and bailing themselves out by waking up a monster was originally intended to be another Toho vehicle for King Kong after his bout with Godzilla back in 1952. However, things ultimately turned out differently, someone changed “Kong” to “Godzilla” in the script (and nothing else I’d wager) and Toho was off to the races but this time with Fukuda calling the shots.
When taking this into account Ebirah starts to make a little more sense as it has far more of a Kong vibe pulsing through it’s skipping rope sized veins. Actively turning on evil humans, an ability to draw strength from electricity and engahing a passing giant condor to a random scrap all suit the Eighth Wonder Of The World far more snugly than The Big G, Christ, there’s even a scene requiring the lead Kaiju to be temporarily smitten with a fetching native girl; not exactly textbook Godzilla, I’m sure you’ll agree, but it’s certainly vintage Kong. Kong loves the ladies.
Honda’s absence, while not devastating, is still felt quite profoundly, as is the familiar themes of regular composer Akira Ifukube and their successors, while turning in a passable action/adventure film, hew toward an even more family friendly tone.
The colours are bright, the score is jaunty and we get such moments as swinging 60s surfer music playing while Godzilla fends off fighter jets while doing an approximation of the twist and the dark shadow of the bombing of Hiroshima is all but obliterated by the bright, jokey attitude on show.
Also Ebirah is a rare case of the human stuff (which honestly isn’t actually that bad) actually being far more entertaining than the monster stuff and a lot of that is down to cast more than familiar with the effects of staring off screen at men in rubber costumes duking it out. Akira Takarada, Akihiko Hirata (complete with eye patch), Jun Tazaki and Kumi Mizuno are all creature feature veterans and attack the material with the usual rambunctiousness, but you can’t ignore the sizable issue that if you were to take all of the Kaiju out of the movie, it wouldn’t actually make that much of a difference to the story in general which is somewhat problematic.
Also working against the carefree nature of the film is the lacklustre title creature who, despite his ominous title billing, just isn’t that formidable a foe, proving not once to be the “Horror Of The Deep” that the title promises and instead is only an annoyance of the shallows. Slow, utterly water bound and completely susceptible to Godzilla’s radioactive breath, this lobstrosity hardly ranks in the upper echelons of the Kaiju rogues galley, although the moment where Ebirah’s attacker rips of one of his claws and clacks it at him like a clapper board, ghoulishly calls back to the days when Godzilla was still a spiteful dickhead.
The final mark against this so-called Horror Of The Deep is that you could definitely tell Toho were starting to tighten their belts when it came to their budgets because while an island is far cheaper to recreate in models than a city, it bloody well looks it too.
Die hard monster fans will still find plenty to enjoy, like a cameo from a slumbering Mothra (why are all the Kaiju sleeping so much, do Godzilla and Mothra have narcolepsy or something?) or an unabashed silly outlook, but as the film plods along like a giant hangover made flesh, interest starts to wane and when it’s all said and done it really does feel like a sizable step down from everything that has come before.
Despite it’s sizable claws Ebirah: Horror Of The Deep regrettably doesn’t come through in a pinch.
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