The History of Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964)

[Music] 1964's ghidorah the three-headed monster directed by ishiro honda this is a special one for me as it's the first godzilla movie i ever watched and so it's a sentimental favorite of mine i must have been five or six years old at the time and my family and i were at a barbecue and me being the introverted boy that i was i refused to go outside and talk to anyone so my dad turned on the tv for me and this is what i saw from that point forward i was a godzilla fan and you know what it's the halloween season so this is a pretty damn good movie to talk about because there's a lot of monsters in it so how did this wonderful movie come to be as i said in my last video tomiyuki tanaka needed to fill a spot in the 1964 holiday season due to red beard's ongoing delays but godzilla movies weren't the only monster movies produced in 1964 [Music] another honda directed film would once again involve a giant creature being mutated by radiation instead of a giant reptile it's a massive jellyfish that's causing japan problems you big stupid jellyfish though technically it's not a jellyfish according to the film the monster is a mutated space cell subaru's team spent a lot of time trying to find the correct material to use for such a monster keizumaraze came up with the idea to use soft vinyl and out of concern that the prop might come apart if hung using piano wire they would place it in a water tank and made it move using the fishing line and made the tendrils dance with water flow from a small valve i always thought the way dogara's tendrils come down from the sky looked amazing even today dogara and guidora the three-headed monster share similarities perhaps due to the fact that both productions took place around the same time besides both starring monsters coming from the sky or space they would also have the human characters mostly played by the same talent doing some new things for this genre with james bond arriving on the scene in 1962 with dr no a little bit of the spy genre was injected into the godzilla series with assassins and shootouts along with the usual chaos of the giant monsters however the human characters are definitely not the star of this film that is why the opening credits are showing the monsters themselves not surprisingly a lot of the cast from mothra vs godzilla would return like yuriko hoshi now playing another reporter character naoko the film opens with her sitting in on a ufo club meeting as they search the night sky we're also told that strange things have been going on around the world especially in japan like a heat wave in the middle of winter or you know a giant monster lizard fighting a giant monster moth they all witness meteorites fall to earth foreshadowing our new monster yosuke natsuki's detective shindo also witnesses the meteor shower natsuki's next godzilla appearance wouldn't be until 20 years later in 1984's the return of godzilla the police station we see him in was also used in the production of dogora it's a little curious as to why they didn't just have hoshi play the same character she did in mother vs godzilla both work in journalism after all this goes for hiroshi koizumi as well he once again plays a scientist professor mirai who spends most of the film studying the largest meteorite we could have gotten three movies in a row of dr chujo but instead we get shujo and mothra mira and mothra vs godzilla and mirai in this movie it's the same damn thing koizumi probably didn't mind made his resume look like he was playing all these different characters when they're all just the same thing detective shindo is assigned to essentially be the bodyguard for the visiting princess of the fictional kingdom of seljina princess salno played by akiko wakabayashi the princess is the wild card of the story as she gets possessed by a mysterious voice claiming to be from venus which tells her to jump out of the plane in the english dubbing this voice would claim to be from mars instead the venetian possessing the princess would technically be the first alien in a godzilla movie despite us never seeing it well get ready because in the next film we get aliens that are very visible to the shock of the renaissance fair dressed servants they see their princess leap from the plane and they then die when the plane explodes so not only are they dressed foolishly but then they die in a very unfortunate way salno later reappears in more common clothing claiming to be from venus while prophesizing destruction later when shindo is eating with his mother and sister he connects the dots that his dead princess is actually the crazy woman claiming to be from venus for her part wakabayashi took the role very seriously princess salno was supposed to be the venetian's descendant they were destroyed by kangidora 50 million years ago i wasn't quite sure if she just noticed this inside of her or if she was possessed but i tried to play the character as someone who was sleepwalking i tried not to look at each person's face the princess had the look of a homeless person she really had a boy's style that was actually my favorite kind of look in private one day i was walking around touhou studios with jeans and a big guy's hat on and director honda spotted me and said i like that let's go with that that's how we came up with that style all this publicity gets the attention of the bad guys of the movie the same man who assassinated salno's father and blew up the plane recognizes the prophet from venus as the princess and heads to japan to finish her off the menacing assassin malmus is played by hisayo ito looking badass with those shades he would keep them on for the entire film but unfortunately he had to wear that ridiculous outfit the celgina officials wear early on and it just looks so silly not the best way to introduce your badass assassin yoshia tsuchiya was who hondo wanted initially to play the role but he was too busy helping kurosawa with the neverending redbeard production once again it's shinichi sekazawa writing the story for this one and he has some fun introducing his monster mothra and the showbizion and subaraya once again uses that optical printer to have them appear almost seamlessly they're part of a monzai comedy act led by comedians senia ozora and ichiya ozora no relation manzai is a form of comedy that includes two stand-up comedians going back and forth with each other quickly usually one plays the straight man with the other the funny guy in 2016 netflix released a japanese television series called hibana spark that explores the japanese comedy world if you're interested in the original mothra movie the twins are forced against their will to perform on stage here sakazawa flips the script and they are willingly making stars of themselves this would be the last godzilla movie for the peanuts playing the shobijin and they have some bad news as they answer the little boy's questions it's just casually mentioned that one of the mothras from the last film has passed away in the english version of this movie the surviving larva is male however in the japanese version the twin mothers that defeated godzilla are considered female we don't know how the other twin sister died i like to believe it's from damage she suffered from godzilla i wish i knew that as a child it would have made me happy knowing one of those mothra died considering how much i hated them it always seemed like mothra would get the better of godzilla so i couldn't stand her even when playing pokemon i always remember running into that one trainer who had the butterfree on route 6 and immediately thinking of mothra i saw it as a bit of revenge roasting it with my charmeleon the props from mothra vs godzilla would be reused in this movie however the eyes for the larva were changed from blue to red one of the princess's first big predictions is the return of rodan at mount osso where the two rodin from the 1956 film seemingly died she's of course not believed but quickly vindicated [Music] sankichi omora plays the unlucky guy who's down there when rodan emerges he's the same actor who played the translator from king kong versus godzilla and for some reason rodin has godzilla's roar at first [Applause] also this just looks so disturbing honda did a lot of on-location shooting for this film when rodan appears it is actually at mount osso this once again limited funds for the infant island set piece the small kingdom of celgina is literally just one room but anyway rodan is released to the chagrin of the japanese populace [Music] that rodin motif was initially part of varen's theme until if akube repurposed it sometimes it's associated with ghidorah as well rodan's debut film was 1956's rodan or giant monster of the sky radon rodan is a giant irradiated pteranodon that was seen by some as the embodiment of the soviet atomic threat of the time rodan's off-screen origin is rather simple with godzilla's success in 1954 tomiyuki tanaka met with tsubaraya and honda in an effort to come up with more monsters to make movies about rodan would first be based on a flying monster resembling the archaeopteryx a prehistoric bird-like dinosaur original concept art even gave rodan feathers the inspiration would later change to more closely resemble the pteranodon tanaka brought in ken kurinuma to write a draft for rodin honda along with screenwriter takeo morata would alter it to include human-sized insects and miniature cities being destroyed the rodan were portrayed using puppets and suit mason and haro nakajima would play the monster and would almost drown when the wires broke that were holding him above the water that nakajima was always getting into trouble the suit weighed around 150 pounds so you can see where the difficulty came in this movie also served as a big break for kenji sahara who made his starring debut as shigeru kawamura during the first half of filming all i could do was play my part exactly as director honda told me to he was very gentle and nice and clear and he told me what was good about my acting when i did well as i briefly mentioned in my last video with hoshi's positive experience with the director honda's gentle approach is something a lot of the talent appreciated over the years the young yumi shirakawa only 19 at the time was sahara's girlfriend in the film keo she was very nervous on set but immediately started laughing when she saw honda acting out her part hugging sahara honda would then turn to the now relaxed shirakawa and say why are you laughing you're the one who has to do this ultimately rodin would be a similar movie to godzilla to be taken seriously and despite its monster element grounded in reality whereas godzilla's fiery destruction of tokyo reminded many of the firebombings of world war ii and of course the atomic bombings rodin's destructive winds are reminiscent of the deadly typhoons japan deals with every year my intention was to give rodan a sense of authenticity and credibility and not make it a mere fairy tale i wanted to create something that has ample scientific factual background and support the ending of rodan is similar to godzilla with its somber tone but there's one big difference one of the rodin makes the decision to die alongside its fellow monster adding an emotional core to the creatures the rodin that appears here is possibly one of the surviving rodin from 1956 or maybe their baby it's honestly up to interpretation as i didn't see anything official regarding its identity either way the monster's face is altered from the first rodin now looking much more humorous as the tone of this movie is much lighter than the 1956 film rodan would be played by actor and world war ii veteran koji yoruki as nakajima had to play godzilla over rodan despite playing both monsters in their debut films throughout this story malmos and his goons are hunting the princess and the showbiz themselves even take the princess's predictions seriously the show have a much more active role in this movie not just singing they even manage to help the princess by turning the lights off distracting the assassins they also play a pivotal role later on and yeah they sing too but just as predicted the cruise ship is sunk and it's not by an iceberg [Music] this would be the first godzilla movie to reuse a previous suit though not fully you don't see it in this scene but the head for the mosu goji suit would be replaced due to damages and it doesn't look quite the same the most notable changes are the radio controlled eyes and his tongue is just sort of sticking out starting to resemble sesame street a little here the old head would make a brief appearance when godzilla rises from the ocean to attack the cruise ship not long after rodan gets godzilla's attention as the latter is destroying yokohama their battle officially begins at the base of mount fuji normally when these films have these barren landscapes it usually means they skimped out on intricate sets like urban areas but this set would be an exception the mount fuji set built for this movie was rather extensive and took a lot of manpower and hours to complete the platform for it was raised higher from ground level so the cameras could be more easily positioned for the low angle shots during the opening salvo by rodin this brutal clothesline right here you can see that subaraya superimposed a tree because apparently you could see the edge of the water set in this shot some of the highlights of the two's battle is when rodan picks godzilla up mothra came close to doing that in the previous movie but here we finally see godzilla getting airlifted another comedic moment was when they start volleying a boulder back and forth as david khalet points out the japanese women's volleyball team had just won the gold medal at the 1964 tokyo olympics defeating the soviet union so perhaps this is a little nod to that here suburaya sekazawa and tanaka love the comedy of it all honda not so much honda would even regret not having the time to watch all the special effects scenes as this movie goes along things would only get worse for honda's serious image of godzilla the princess is brought to the lab of dr sukamoto who tries to figure out what's wrong with her because we can't believe something as ludicrous as her actually being possessed by someone from venus that would just be silly in a world full of giant monsters and tiny singing fairies wakabayashi filmed these shock therapy scenes after pulling an all-nighter so honda would let her nap in between takes the doctor is played by the legendary takashi shimura and this would be the actor's last time playing a character in a godzilla movie and of course to godzilla fans he'll always be dr yamane despite the doctor's efforts the possessed princess continues to claim she's from venus she also says that thousands of years ago her civilization was wiped out by the space monster king ghidorah who took the shock of our protagonist is already on earth the stage is set and the demon king of the universe awakens [Music] [Applause] [Music] for the scene pyrotechnics props and optical animation were utilized for the explosions and ghidorah's fireball the giant three-headed dragon begins its reign of terror with its gravity beams destroying the surrounding area with akira if akube's ghidorah motif playing [Music] the yokohama set was rigged to have debris fly up and fans were used to show the gusts from ghidorah eventually tokyo tower is also destroyed by this powerful alien monster sekazawa already had monsters come from the earth the sea islands so why not outer space this time in the script zakazawa would leave artist akira watanabe only one sentence to describe ghidorah it has three heads two tails and a voice like a bell watanabe would go with that but his main inspirations were chinese dragons and the yamata no orochi from japanese legend i've also read that the dragon from the 1959 movie ilya muramatsu or the sword and the dragon in the u.s also inspired ghidorah's design some would think that ghidorah represented communist china who had tested its first atomic weapon in october of 1964. but honda didn't think sexual was doing that as he considered sakazawa to be mostly a political in his writing style ghidorah is basically yamata noah rochi it is an old folk tale and we wrote it as a creature from outer space it is fine for the audience to think that way but i do not believe it was written with such a political notion so with ghidorah we have sort of an angerous situation here with the name being pronounced ten different ways by people who all want to one-up each other so before i go any further no i don't care what you think the correct way to say the damn name is sometimes i say gitera sometimes i say ghidorah sometimes i say three-headed it doesn't matter you know what i'm talking about in japanese katakana the name is literally pronounced gi do-ra the do and ra taken from the word or hydra so there you go have fun arguing about his name i don't care hi hi three-headed would be played by shoichi herose rose was often used for tough guy roles and he was nicknamed solomon because he was a survivor of the battle of the eastern solomons in world war ii for hours at a time hirose would be leaning over inside the ghidorah suit using a crossbar to balance himself seven men would be needed to operate the heads tails and wings from the ceiling using piano wire there were times when all three necks got tangled up or the plastic wires would reflect the studio lights or the wires would get caught in ghidorah scales it was an agonizing operation just like his name the story over what color ghidorah was originally supposed to be is something that's perpetually disputed according to subaraya he wanted to have the monster be crimson keizumaraze who painted the suit says the plan was to always paint ghidorah gold scriptwriter keiko suzuki says he saw a blue ghidorah suit on set early on we can also see from production pictures and promotional images that ghidorah has multiple colors on him with the wings having a rainbow hue but i can't say for sure what actually went down ultimately he would just become the fierce golden colored dragon we know and love the usual crew would create ghidorah with the responsibilities split by body part a small one meter long prop was made for some of the flying scenes as well as a larger prop that was apparently a mere image of the suit itself a rarity for these types of movies the infamous king ghidorah cackle was made using an electric organ [Music] recently when watching the evangelion rebuild movies and if you haven't watched those please do they're just tremendous misato's ringtone made my godzilla senses go off if not mechagodzilla then ghidorah is often considered godzilla's it is probably one of our best monsters and it has an oriental feeling too over the years a meme of sorts has developed over the names of the ghidorah heads in the 2019 movie godzilla king of the monsters the director michael doherty nicknamed the heads ichi knee and son one two and three in japanese the left head has been named kevin by fans due to its seemingly having its own unique personality in the movie damn it kevin i still can't believe we got king ghidorah in an american-made godzilla film i'm still not over that so awesome with now ghidorah causing destruction along with godzilla and rodin beating the crap out of each other the japanese government turns to the shobijin and asks for mothra's help again the military takes an interesting approach in this movie they don't do jack instead of trying to stop all these monsters they simply throw their hands up either they have the us use an atomic bomb which was a no-go in japan or they let the monsters fight it out but even the showbizin admit mothra alone could not stop ghidorah she will need rodan and godzilla's help to stop the dragon king the peanuts perform one last mothra song as the shobijin and call forth their monster to save the planet once again [Music] the song cry for happiness or call for happiness was written by hiroshi miyagawa not akira fukube who always had a hard time thinking of a song for the peanuts duo as mothra makes her way towards godzilla and rodin i noticed that out of context it kind of looks like the monsters are having a fun dance party and mothra isn't invited [Applause] if there was ever a point of no return for the earnest dark nature of godzilla films and its eventual slide towards lighthearted playful movies this might be it before mothra begins talking to godzilla and rodan she has to get them to stop fighting for two seconds she hits them with her silk with each monster laughing at each other when they're hit again this was a tough pill for honda to swallow i used the peanuts as mothra's interpreters but even that was something i had to force myself to do honda was fine with the monsters defending earth but not so much them teaming up he would always do what was necessary though he would never be any sort of roadblock in the production of these films even if they went against his ideas for godzilla i am concerned that we are drifting towards taking the easy route believing a silly storyline is okay though it might be mocked by adults simply because the film is made for children kids will not tolerate nonsense but the anthropomorphizing of the monsters would continue with the showbiz interpreting the monster summit begins the dialogue is absolutely hysterical and actually pretty interesting because for the first time for the exception of mothra we're finding out what godzilla and rodin think of humanity humans are always bullying us godzilla says i mean from this godzilla's perspective maybe that's true this isn't the 1954 monster this is the one from godzilla raids again so maybe he was just trying to fight angerus and humanity started attacking him for it so he attacked back and in king kong versus godzilla maybe he was just trying to get out of the cold water and then they just started attacking him or maybe it's just supposed to be a funny line and i'm just thinking way too much into it in the english dub godzilla supposedly has a dirty mouth he's trying to persuade them but he's having trouble they won't agree he's saying all three of us must fight together against this new monster to say oh godzilla i mean as stupid as the whole thing is i feel like godzilla cursing seems right rodan agrees with godzilla but the two start fighting again and demanding apologies from each other the whole thing is quite jarring when you consider the 1954 film even the last godzilla movie had him as a feared monster here he's just this giant petty goofball the whole summit was seen by some reviewers as mothra representing humanity desperately hoping peace can be established between these two superpowers but you could also look at the last movie mothra is now in the position that the humans were in in the previous film begging for assistance and trying to appeal to the monster's humanity the two bigger monsters can't seem to agree though so mothra eventually gives up and goes to fighty dora herself i love this shot here godzilla and rodan are like wow good luck lady as mothra scuttles towards ghidorah the massive golden monster destroys a giant japanese torii which are usually spotted in front of shinto shrines seen as a transition from the normal world to the religious realm and mothra may have been tiny compared to ghidorah but the dragon was now fighting a god monster and ghidorah doesn't seem to give a he smacks the lady larva around with his gravity beams to the horror of the protagonists what is this facial expression either out of sympathy for mothra or pride in their own strength godzilla and rodan finally decide to intervene to take on ghidorah and the monster battle royale is born or i guess handicapped match seeing godzilla get thrown through the bridge is such a big moment because it shows how powerful ghidorah is it's then rodan's turn as the two clash in the sky this part amongst many others would be redone in 2019's king of the monsters in the spirit of teamwork godzilla even offers mothra his tail to drag her along not too long ago she was biting that tail rodan comically hides behind boulders until the other two arrive and that's when all four begin to fight at the same time pardon my bizarre tangent trust me it's related while drinking one night with my friends we all came up with a scenario what if brock lesnar appeared right now and we had to fight him to the death well our strategy was that me being the skinniest i had to jump on his back my smaller friend john would grab his legs and our largest or thickest friend nick would take the pummeling while we hung on for dear life trying to choke him out or knock him down or poke his eyes or something that's sort of the strategy here as godzilla with his durability is the punching bag taking shots below the belt and the ass while rodan and mothra slowly chip away at gidera in the first draft mothra was going to be in her adult form however they didn't do this because of how complicated the wire work would have become with ghidorah and rodan already in the air wires most certainly would have gotten crossed during the chaos of the monster battle malmest tries one more time to kill the princess and he almost succeeds as his bullet grazes her the fall she takes seems to rid herself of the presence from venus that had been possessing her for most of the film though shindo puts up a good fight it's the collateral damage from the monster battle that finally kills malmoth and it looks pretty funny because i don't think he was supposed to catch that boulder right here it obviously reveals that the boulder is not real sekazow was big on trying to tie the monster fight scenes into the human scenes and vice versa he didn't like the idea of them being completely separate so you'd see moments like this sprinkled in to sequester movies to connect the two seemingly separate stories another example is earlier when the japanese government is seemingly detached from the entire monster rampage when ghidorah suddenly arrives at their doorstep it wasn't only a connecting tissue but this added a nice dose of panic and urgency to the scene this fight reaches its peak when mothra hops on rodan's back and starts firing her silk and what a sight this is peak kaiju aiga right here folks in between all this light-hearted fun they show an avalanche destroy a nearby village and all the villagers crying in terror it's an odd moment in terms of tone what are they trying to make us feel here we're enjoying this crazy monster fight but this shot of the villagers seeing their homes destroyed has some punch to it but we quickly move on to seeing ghidorah suffering the same fate godzilla did in the last movie all three heads wrapped in silk and godzilla adds an exclamation point by tossing the large monster and throwing some boulders at it those same villagers are now cheering as ghidorah isn't killed but run out of town and seemingly off the planet for the first time godzilla is now seen as a hero though to be fair he's really just protecting his turf as ghidorah would have destroyed the entire planet but from this point on godzilla would be a hero or good guy for the remainder of the showa era as a result his win loss record would start to improve as well before leaving the princess and shindo seem to have a little romantic spark as she remembers how much effort he went through to save her despite being possessed the whole time she somehow has these memories of being saved as her plane flies away shindo pauses and keeps watching by himself this scene and the parts where the princess hides amongst the people wearing normal clothing is an idea from the 1953 rom-com roman holiday where audrey hepburn's character essentially does the same thing the ending is directly inspired by it honda even told wakabayashi and natsuki to think of roman holiday when doing this part the end of roman holiday really does pack a gut punch and i can't believe i'm about to do this for a movie from 1953 but see time stamp below to skip spoilers you have these two characters from very different worlds getting close then at the end silently accepting that they will never see each other again the movie even teases the audience with gregory peck's joe walking alone slowly nowadays we're trained to think the princess will enter the left side of the frame running towards him and the movie will end happily ever after not here the music hits and the movie ends that takes guts and it's a romantic comedy of all things you don't see that anymore though some parts were doable that very last tease couldn't be replicated in ghidorah unless shinto was expecting salno to jump out of the plane again so everybody waves goodbye as she returns to her kingdom and the shobajin say goodbye to everyone as well including godzilla and rodan and perhaps it was the peanuts saying their goodbyes as well in their last godzilla film [Music] the movie ends the same as the last with mothra swimming home gidera the three-headed monster was released in japan on december 20th 1964 and would go on to sell four million three hundred and twenty thousand tickets around eight hundred thousand more tickets than mothra vs godzilla a big success but also the new monster guidora was a huge hit with the kids honda would get a lot of fan mail saying how cool guidora was and that's the thing with this movie it's such a fun representation of the early show era when these monsters started sharing the screen with each other i know people like to use destroyal monsters as the kaiju version of marvel's the avengers crossover films that we see today but this movie has the same sort of spirit with all three monsters coming together to save the earth from an alien invader and after all the original and japanese title of the film is three giant monsters the greatest battle on earth on september 13th 1965 ghidorah would be released in the us with the english dubbing done by bellucci productions this version would be extensively altered removing if a kuba's score and scenes would be rearranged as well and as i mentioned before the title of the film was changed to ghidra the three-headed monster with the popularity of godzilla and special effects films increasing in japan and ghidorah being a hit with audiences a new godzilla movie would begin production for 1965's holiday season and in this film godzilla would go where no irradiated prehistoric reptile had gone before next up 1965's invasion of astro monster [Music]

Channel: Big Action Bill

Views: 286,733

Keywords: Godzilla History, History of Godzilla, Godzilla vs. Kong, Toho, Eiji Tsyburaya, Pulgasari, Gojira, rodan, king ghidorah, godzilla king of the monsters, Gigan, Godzillathon, King Ghidorah, Big Action Bill, godzilla vs destoroyah, godzilla meltdown, King Kong vs. Godzilla, Godzilla Singular Point, King Kong, Jet Jaguar, Godzilla vs Mothra, Shobijin, History of King Ghidorah, Ghidorah The Three Headed Monster, Ghidrah, Rodan, History of Rodan, Ghidorah Kevin, Roman Holiday

Id: MaUcYxlHaYM

Length: 33min 6sec (1986 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 03 2021