Julian R. White This film tends to be exceedingly rare on DVD and VHS, and I really wish it wasn't that way. This film was made more or less to prove a point, that pollution was beginning to become a major problem for much of Japan. With unique music and scenes, and a monster who obviously doesn't fit in with Godzilla's other enemies, it's a one of a kind film. It's a pretty awesome one, I've seen it again and again. It has a few scenes that seem a bit unnecessary though, groovy hippy like music and scenes of flashing colors don't really bring a lot to the plot or feel of the film. The monster though, is totally massive, nearly twice Godzilla's size when it's full grown. It's one of the best in my opinion, I really like it. I would say this is one of the must sees of the Godzilla franchise.

beetle-259-554148 Okay, so.... Godzilla vs Hedorah! It's been said that this is a Godzilla movie you either love or hate, so it's either a 10 or a 0. For me personally, this movie is a 5; right smack dab in the middle! It's not a shining gem or a smouldering turd, it's just kinda "eh" *gesture where you shake your hand with all the fingers flat out*So, the premise; rampant water and air pollution has spawned Hedorah, a sentient monster made of pollution that is like a mix of the Blob and a garbage dump! Hedorah is able to melt people to bones! The only hope for humanity, as always, is GODZILLAAAAA~!!!!Hedorah is a notable monster as he is the last monster of the Showa era that is acting on his own will, he isn't obeying anyone or under mind control, unlike Ghidorah, Gigan, Megalon, Mechagodzilla, and Titanosaurus of the succeeding Showa films.This movie is different; there's bizarre animation, trippy montages, and drug innuendos a-plenty!!! Now, the animation shown isn't anime, it's just some bizarre animation straight out of Uncanny Valley. Hedorah is shown sucking on a smokestack from a factory and exhaling the smoke before showing his bloodshot eyes, a blatant reference to taking a bong hit.As someone who has taken a few bong hits before, I found this to be a clever little thing. The drug innuendos can be excused because this movie was made in 1971; weed culture was still in it's very huge first run!There are two or three POV shots from Hedorah's perspective.Also, no review of Godzilla vs Hedorah would be complete without mentioning the bizarre scene where Godzilla FLIES. This was a total WTF moment.All in all, if you watch this movie with a sober mind like I did, you'll either hate it or it'll just be "eh". If you watch it after smoking some weed or ingesting an edible, it'll be the best damn Godzilla movie you've ever seen!

William Samuel Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster is the kind of movie that doesn't know what kind of movie it wants to be. It must be a kid's movie, because the protagonist is an annoying kid who idolizes Godzilla. Yet some scenes would be more at home in a horror film; as when crowds of people are asphyxiated and skeletonized by the smog monster's noxious emissions. At other times there are signs that this movie wants to be a drug fueled exploitation flick. There are weird cartoon sequences that seem inspired by Yellow Submarine, and at one point a character in a dance club starts hallucinating, for no apparent reason, that his fellow party-goers have paper Mache fish for heads. There's also a perfunctory astronomy lesson with no real connection to the rest of the film, plus a shot where Hedorah, the titular Smog Monster, flies through a construction site, and the structure collapses, but with no sound. Was the recording track for scene damaged at some point? If that were the case, you would think the filmmakers could re-record the sound effects, or substitute a clip from the studio's library.But I'm forgetting what this movie is all about, which is Godzilla- and the need to protect the environment. In 1971, when the film was released, this message had not yet become a cliché in children's movies. It was also a very relevant at a time when there was little to no regulation of factory emissions and hazardous waste disposal, and when rivers in downtown Cleveland could suddenly burst into flames.But Godzilla makes a very odd environmental spokesman, to say the very least. When he first appeared in 1954's Gojira, he was the embodiment of the death and destruction that nuclear weapons could, and had, unleashed on Japan and on the world. Now however, he is Tokyo's savior, a completely benign figure who doesn't knock over a single building, even by accident. Godzilla doesn't always have to play the villain, but he should at least be an anti-hero, dangerous to man even when he's protecting us from other monsters. Godzilla also makes one of his least dramatic entrances in this film. Instead of slowly rising from the sea, or bursting out of an iceberg, he ambles out of the sunrise as annoying trumpet music blares. Regrettably, this score will be repeated in most scenes where the big guy appears. As for Godzilla's opponent, Toho has come up with one of its cooler ideas here. Hedorah is not a single organism, but rather colony of billions of rapidly splitting microorganisms. This means that it can change form at will, and can repair almost any damage suffered by producing new cells. Unfortunately, the idea just didn't work. What we end up with, at least in the monster's final form, is a giant, misshapen blob of rubber under which the actor can barely move. This brings us to the battles between the monsters, usually the high point of any Godzilla film. Some of the earlier fights aren't too badly staged, but once Hedorah learns to fly, Godzilla's main tactic seems to be standing around and failing his arms angrily. And as for the final battle near Mount Fuji, having the military build a pair of giant electrodes to dehydrate the Smog Monster is a fairly good idea, since by this point it's clear that Godzilla can't do it on his own.But why oh why did this have to mean a protracted sequence in which our hero rips apart his now helpless opponent piece by piece (twice!), to make sure that every drop of moisture is evaporated? Wouldn't it have been more effective for Hedorah to instantly dry out and crumble to dust, like a vampire exposed to sunlight? This isn't Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster, it's Godzilla vs. the giant mud pie.There's also the question of how Godzilla knew the purpose and operation of the electrodes, and why his atomic breath provided power to them, rather than blasting them to bits like everything else it touches. But this isn't where our suspension of disbelief is really tested. I mentioned earlier that Godzilla had to go through the process of drying out Hedorah twice. This is because the first time, there proves to some life still left in the blob of filth, and its prior flying form escapes into the sky. So how does Godzilla catch up to his rival and bring him back? Simple, he flies after him. That's right; Godzilla actually flies by using his atomic breath as a form of jet propulsion. This may be the single most ridiculous sequence in the history of Japanese cinema.I'm not recommending that no one ever see this movie. It achieves a sort of campy grandeur, almost to the point of being so bad that it's good. I would suggest viewing this film just once, so you can gawk in amazement at its sheer awfulness. Or, if that's too much for you, just type in "Godzilla flies" on YouTube. You won't be disappointed by the result.

dee.reid By 1971, it was clear that Godzilla, that mutant fire-breathing dinosaur borne of nuclear holocaust (and human hubris), had become a superhero of sorts - defending his home turf of Japan (and the rest of humanity as a whole) from all sorts of monster threats, both from Earth and outer space.By the time I was 11-years-old in 1997, I had already seen most of the "Godzilla" films made during first-generation Showa Era (1954-1975). One of the last films I had yet to see was 1971's "Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster," and am I glad this was one of the last pictures I ever saw from that era.To put it simply, "Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster" scared the living daylights out of me when I first saw it! No "Godzilla" movie before or since had ever done that to me before. Like the one that started it all, 1954's Ishiro Honda-directed "Gojira," "Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster" has a message, and an urgency to it, that has been rarely seen in the genre since before and after its release in 1971."Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster" was an anomaly of sorts from other "Godzilla" movies released during the '70s. It deviated in many ways from established formulas and principles that had since become common to the genre. It reverts back to the growing sense of urgency and impending apocalyptic doom that hadn't been seen in the kaiju-eiga ("Japanese monster movie") genre since "Gojira" back in 1954. In short, "Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster" has the approach and appearance of a full-fledged horror film, rather than your typical sci-fi monster smash-up - and make no mistake: there's some pretty scary stuff going on here (in spite of the ultimately mixed results of the film's presentation).Japan was undergoing a huge pollution crisis in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a result of its booming economic and industrial prosperity in the wake of post-World War II reconstruction. "Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster" has Godzilla returning to battle the Smog Monster of the title, Hedorah, an alien life-form that feeds on pollution and proves nearly impossible to kill, even for the mighty King of the Monsters himself. The creature arrived here on Earth from another galaxy and fed on, and thrived in, the polluted waters of Japan's Tokyo Bay. In the end, it takes the combined might of Godzilla and the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) to finally combat and defeat the horrifying monster.I'm not really spoiling anything by saying that Hedorah is ultimately defeated by the combined efforts of Godzilla and the JSDF - I'm simply proving a point of how dangerous Hedorah is to Godzilla, and humanity as a whole. I'm also demonstrating the urgency of the film's message about pollution and how human beings must do their part to prevent another Hedorah from arising again. Japan did eventually recover from its pollution crisis, but it was clear that Godzilla also leaves a hefty warning at the end of this film, as if to say, "Don't make me come after you next."Directed by Yoshimitsu Banno and co-written by himself and Takeshi Kimura, "Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster" is a unique entry in the first-generation Showa-Era "Godzilla" films; Godzilla himself would not face a monster like this again until "Godzilla vs. Biollante" in 1989 - the crowning achievement of the second-generation Heisei-Era film series (and my personal favorite film from that era). Teruyoshi Nakano's special effects highlight the fact that Hedorah was unlike any monster Godzilla had ever faced prior to 1971, and represented Godzilla's first truly significant threat (yes, even more so than the mighty three-headed space demon King Ghidorah). Hedorah, is after all, a walking pile of sludge capable of changing into multiple forms and emitting a corrosive sulfuric acid mist that kills anything it comes into contact with. And by film's end, Godzilla has the gruesome battle scars to prove that Hedorah is a significant challenger to his reign as the "King of the Monsters."This is a dark, cynical, and angry film - the likes of which haven't been seen since "Gojira." Much of this film's action is set at night - heightening the horror movie motifs of the picture and the growing sense of impending apocalyptic doom; great credit must be given to director Banno for deviating from set formula (and reportedly as a result of doing so, he was banned from ever working in the kaiju-eiga again by producer Tomoyuki Tanaka, who was in the hospital recovering from an illness during this film's production and was thus not involved in the film much at all). This movie frightened me when I was younger (the only "Godzilla" movie to do so), and there are still parts of it that I have a hard time watching (any of the scenes featuring the wake of Hedorah's destruction have a way of leaving a lasting impact on the viewer, since graphic scenes of human carnage, death, and destruction were a rare occurrence in the "Godzilla" films following "Gojira"). Yeah, the film has many scenes of destruction and nightmarish imagery that will certainly frighten anyone not prepared for it, and expecting "Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster" to be like any typical Japanese monster-on-the-rampage movie.This is the most nightmarish "Godzilla" film made since "Gojira" in 1954.7/10