Sora no Daikaijû Radon |
Japan • 1956 • 82m •
   • Directed by: Ishirô Honda. • Starring: Kenji Sahara, Yumi Shirakawa, Akihiko Hirata, Akio Kobori, Yasuko Nakada, Minosuke Yamada, Yoshifumi Tajima, Kiyoharu Onaka, Ichirô Chiba, Mike Daneen, Tsurue Ichimanji, Saburô Iketani, Saburô Kadowaki. • Music by: Akira Ifukube.      In the small town of Kitamatsu, strange things begin to happen when one of the shafts at the coal mine goes deeper than any other shaft they have there. First, a flood happens and when safety engineer Shigeru Kimura goes to investigate, he is horrified to find one miner dead and his friend Goro missing. Soon more bodies turn up and the main suspect is Goro. However, one night while Shigeru is visiting his fiancee Kiyo, Goro's sister, a giant catepillar like monster crashes through her house. Immediately, the authorities realize that Goro is not to blame but the monsters are. Shigeru and the authorities then go back in the mine and track down the monster. While in the mine, they also find Goro's body and while they attempt to free Goro's body, a landslide occurs trapping Shigeru in an adjoining cavern. A few days later Shigeru is found but he is in a state of shock caused by the fact that he saw an even more terrible creature, a flying reptile called Rodan, hatch from its egg. Soon the world finds out about the creature and the world is now on alert as they await for this terrible monster to attack.
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It's after a number of US Military nuclear test dubbed "Mission Gigantic" in the South Pacific that things started happening in the far off Japanese mining town on Kyushu island. The water level started raising in the mine and miners started disappearing in it. Trying to get to the bottom of the problem local mining engineer Shigeru Kawzmura, Kenji Sahara, in checking out the damage is attacked together a with number of miners by a hoard of prehistoric Meganulons, dragon flies, who end up almost wiping out the entire group! Deciding to take matters into his own hands Shigeru pushes a coal cart into one of the attacking prehistoric monsters killing it but at the same time setting off an earthquake that ends up burying him together with the remaining Meganulons.
It's later when Shigeru is found mindlessly wondering around outside the now no longer in existence mine that it's discovered that he completely lost his memory. It's not until he's in the hospital and his girlfriend Kiyo, Yumi Shirakawa, shows Shigeru a nest with bird eggs in it just about the hatch that his memory finally comes back to him with shocking results! It's the hatching eggs that reminded Shigeru of the two monster prehistoric flying reptiles the Rodans that he saw and caused him to black out. And those two birds, the Rodans, at first mistaken for UFOS are now on the lose and causing death and destruction by whipping of typhoon like wilds all across the Pacific rim!
Eye popping special effects that rival anything we see now without the use of computer enhancement makes "Rodan" a classic among 1950's Japanese monster films. The Rodans after annihilating the Japanese city of Fukuoka are tracked down to their secret nesting place on the foot of Mt. Aso and then given the business or treatment, a massive artillery and rocket barrage, that causes Mt. Aso a volcano thats been inactive s for hundreds of years to finally erupt.
The explosive final sequence has Shigeru give a truly touching and heartfelt epilogue about how he both fears and admires the Rodans in their both destructive power, the birds have a 500 foot wingspan and weigh over 100 tons, and love and dedication to each other. With one of the Rodans dying in the volcanic eruption the remaining one, in not wanting to live without its mate, joins it in the fiery holocaust that the massive Japanese Army & Airfrce caused. As an almost weeping and relived, in that the danger of the Rodans destroying the world has finally ended, Shigeru ends his his speech, that's dubbed in English by an 18 year old University of California student, and future TV Star Trek cast member, George Takei, by saying these dramatic words about the Rodans demise:Are there other prehistoric monster waiting to emerge and battle the human race in the future? And can we be able to beat them back a second time? At least for now those fears, with the Rodans dead and buried in the lava pumping out of Mt.
Review by sol1218 from the Internet Movie Database.
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