Rodan

Rodan (Sora No Daikaiju Radon) (1956)

Runtime: I saw the American cut of the movie; that is only 72 minutes long

Directed by: Ishiro Honda

Starring: Kenji Sahara, Yumi Shirakawa, Akihiko Hirata, Akio Kobori, Yasuko Nakada

From: Toho

Last night I saw this movie on TCM; it wasn't great but I can't say it was bad either. I explain it in a rather brief fashion below: 

Last night on Turner Classic Movies they showed a bunch of creature features; I am talking about such “classics” as The Black Scorpion and Empire of the Ants. I only watched this film, and regrettably it was the American dubbed version that took out a few scenes, had other editing take place and one of the voices you hear was from none other than George Takei. Hilariously, the host of TCM last night was DENNIS MILLER. Hearing him talk about kaiju films was as surreal as you'd imagine.

I knew already that the first half of this movie (only 72 minutes long in its American form) was actually about miners dealing with giant bugs and Rodan (actually, two of them) the pterodactyl doesn't show up until the second half, with them not flapping their wings and being clearly seen until the third act. That was an interesting way to kill time. I can't say the movie was boring or poorly made; the direction of Ishiro Honda and the musical score of Akira Ifukube (at least what you heard that wasn't replaced by stock music) were both nice. It's just that in this abbreviated form, I can only say the movie was average.

I will presume that the full movie as made by Toho was better. At least I am pretty sure that the opening to the original doesn't have a gigantic info dump explaining the plot and the ending did not have fawning narration. I say that from what I have seen, Rodan made more of an impression in both Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster and Invasion of Astro-Monster.