[HorrorScience] Ghidorah the Three-Headed Dragon (1964)

Reading time: 6 minutes

Qualification

San Daikaijū: Chikyū Saidai no Kessen

Year

1964

Duration

94 minutes

Director

Ishiro Honda

Distribution

Yosuke Natsuki, Yuriko Hoshi, Hiroshi Koizumi, Akiko Wakabayashi, Haruo Nakajima, Takashi Shimura, Hisaya Ito, Akihiko Hirata, Kenji Sahara, Yoshifumi Tajima, Soichi Hirose, Masaki Shinohara

Script

Reuben Bercovitch, Takeshi Kimura

We continue with the Toho monster films that make up the Godzilla saga with this film, the fifth on the Japanese dinosaur's personal account, after gojira (1954), Godzilla strikes back (1955), King Kong Vs Godzilla (1962) and Mothra Vs Godzilla (1964).

Released the same year as the previous film, Ghidrah The Three-headed monster (translated into Spanish as Ghidorah the 3-headed dragon) is a film that will affect the rest of the Godzilla films for various reasons, the most obvious being the introduction of Ghidrah or King Ghidorah, who would end up becoming Godzilla's most famous enemy.

It all starts with a group of people who try to communicate with extraterrestrials, since according to them, the heat wave that sweeps through Japan in the middle of winter has been caused by beings from another world, the communication will fail, but thanks to their careful surveillance they will witness a meteor shower.

From here we go to a police station, Shindo chats with his boss about the visit of the princess of a small country called Selgina. The heir to the throne will travel to Japan unofficially, and it will be Shindo's task to take care of her, since it seems someone wants to kill her. While flying to Japan, the princess is stunned looking out the plane window at a light from the sky, which tells her to abandon the plane because she is in danger. Seconds later the plane will explode in mid-flight.

The next day a woman identical to the princess will appear reciting strange prophecies that (obviously) no one takes seriously, which does not prevent journalists from deciding to interview her to find out more about her and her prophecies. Seeing the level of journalism, it is not surprising that Mothra's fairies appear on television (which you should already know from the previous films) who for some reason now dedicate themselves to appearing on television and even give interviews and talk about the state of the peaceful monster.

[HorrorScience] Ghidorah the Three-Headed Dragon (1964) — The prophet will quickly attract the public's attention, although more for her appearance than for what she says.

The prophet will appear once again, this time warning of the resurrection? of Rodan, minutes before the flying saurian reappears from the depths of a volcano.

Meanwhile, Shiro discovers that the girl of the prophecies is identical to the recently deceased princess, so he begins his investigation to clarify the truth. His main witness is a fisherman who claims to have rescued a woman identical to the princess on the high seas.

We're halfway through the movie and if that Ghidrah guy hasn't appeared yet, don't worry, because some geologists are studying one of the meteorites that fell to earth recently and they are going to get a surprise in the shape of a three-headed monster.

As I said at the beginning, This film is important in the Godzilla filmography because it is the one that introduces the dragon King Ghidorah (called Ghidrah in this film) who will become Godzilla's fiercest enemy and one of the most popular monsters of the genre. Ghidorah's design is great and his enormous strength will force Godzilla, Rodan and Mothra to collaborate to defeat him.

All this would be epic if it weren't for 2 reasons. The first is that the collaboration between monsters is done in a totally laughable way, since they talk to each other to decide whether to ally or not, which is hilarious and ends with the little seriousness that remains in the saga, which had barely been able to recover from the antics seen in King Kong Vs Godzilla. Godzilla and Rodan behave like angry children with each other and Mothra will act as a mediator so that they put aside their differences and face the new enemy.

The second reason is that the princess or prophet plot is a complete bore and it contributes nothing, despite eating more than half of the footage. It is common in these films that humans take up a large part of the time, but the story of this film does not seem to lead anywhere, it is simply there to occupy minutes and try to explain something to us about some guys who want to kill a princess. They could have saved that whole story and focused the investigation of the police officer, the journalist and the geologists on the meteorite shower from which the three-headed dragon emerges.

In short, a film with many inconsistencies in the script and a final part that is quite laughable and entertaining, but little else. Within the Godzilla franchise, the film takes a step back from Mothra Vs Godzilla As far as general quality is concerned, at the same time it offers us the first Monster Mash of the saga (with four monsters beating each other), the first appearance of the dangerous and popular Ghidorah and the first steps of Godzilla on the path that will lead him to become the protector of humanity (even if it is for mere territoriality).

Curiosities about the film:

Initially Ghidorah was going to have a lilac body and multicolored wings, and instead of lightning he was going to shoot fire from his mouths.
The American version of this film, in addition to changing Ghidorah's name to Ghidrah, cut minutes of footage, something common at the time.
This is the first Godzilla film in which Rodan appears, something curious considering that both Rodans died at the end of Rodan – The children of the volcano (1956).