The Films of 2015: Goodnight Mommy

[Beware of Major Spoilers!]

Goodnight Mommy (2015) is a new Austrian horror film that has earned a tremendous amount of positive buzz, in part because of a skillfully-edited -- though ultimately deceptive -- trailer. 

Watch the trailer (posted earlier today on the blog) and you’ll understand my point. The imagery featured in the clip implies that the movie is pure horror, featuring an Evil Mother-type (in bandages) chewing on insects and evidencing inexplicably sinister behavior towards her twin boys. At one point, she moves -- alone in the woods -- in a distinctly inhuman way.

The truth of the film, however, is something quite different.

In fact, Goodnight Mommy is actually a psychological horror film of the torture porn variety.

And it isn’t the (apparently fearsome…) Mom who inflicts all the suffering.

Instead, it is an angel-faced, mentally-disturbed child who is the monster. 

Here, a little boy ties the mother to a bed, mocks her for wetting her pants, and at one point even super-glues her mouth shut. All the while, Mom begs for release, for a return to sanity, and -- spurred on by guilt -- the child refuses.

The problem with this approach, beyond the deceptive trailer, is that Goodnight Mommy features no coherent cinematic point-of-view about its strange narrative.

Specifically, the film features at least two inexplicable moments that serve as creative “cheats,” and work against the movie’s real story, ostensibly about a very traumatized, very sick child. 

In short, the movie is a hodgepodge of half-formed ideas -- like High Tension (2003) meets The Sixth Sense (1999) -- only one with no clear awareness that it boasts a responsibility to play fair with the audience in terms of setting and sticking to one set of rules, or one creative approach.

Critics and commercials are already hailing Goodnight Mommy as another must-see “sleeper” horror film: a worthy follow-up to last year’s The Babadook (2014), or this year’s It Follows (2015), essentially. 

But caveat emptor. 

Viewers expecting a similarly stimulating and horrific experience should temper their expectations, going in. 

Goodnight Mommy is confused about what it is, and what kind of movie it wants to be too.

And that confusion, ultimately, takes away from the good performances and even the beautiful cinematography. There are moments of real power in the movie, but they are undone by the movie’s confusion about its own story-line.

“Am I alive?”

Following an operation that leaves her face bandaged, a mother (Susanne Wuest) returns home to her son, Elias (Elias Schwarz). 

He is still traumatized by the death of his twin brother, Lukas (Lukas Schwarz), and carries on conversations with the dead boy. Lukas is either a delusion or a ghost, but ether way he is Elias’s constant companion.

Elias’s mother refuses to play into Elias’s delusion, and Lukas convinces Elias that she is not really their mother at all, but an impostor.

Elias is swayed, and with Lukas’s help he begins to torture the apparent stranger in their midst, hopeful that she will reveal what has happened to their real mother.

“I thought we agreed not to believe her.”

In my introduction to this review, I note that Goodnight Mommy “cheats” on at least two occasions. The story -- as you can detect from the synopsis -- involves a boy who fantasizes the continuous presence of his dead brother. We in the audience also see him, but his mother does not. 

This mother may not be very nice. She may be suffering guilt of her own.  But she is not a monster. 

I won’t hold the shots and editing in the trailer against Goodnight Mommy, but at no point in the film does Mother munch on a living bug and then smile with diabolical glee. She munches on a cracker instead, and smiles.

The bug scene is actually part of a nightmare that Elias experiences. For the trailer, the two scenes -- which occur in different acts -- are edited together to suggest one continuous moment.

That’s not the cheat involving her, however, that I want to write about. Instead, there is a scene late in Goodnight Mommy wherein Mom runs out into the woods alone, and undergoes some kind of frightening seizure.

In horror movie vernacular, she goes all Jacob’s Ladder (1990). 

Her head wobbles and twists in fast-motion, as if she is possessed by the Devil itself. To put it another way, her features twist and stretch in a way not possible in the natural world.

Let me be plain: This scene has absolutely nothing to do with the film’s narrative, about a sick kid punishing his mother for his own guilt. 

She is not a demon.

She is not a monster of any kind.

She’s just an emotionally-tortured, grieving, recovering human being. So why on Earth does she get demon-faced at this juncture?

Well, it makes a hell of an image in the trailer doesn’t it?

Secondly, we get a shot, early in Goodnight Mommy, of Mom looking out a large window, into the yard. The camera is positioned outside the window, looking in at her, as she gazes out.  Reflected on the window is the image of the two boys playing there. 

Only one boy, however, should be reflected there, right?

Because Lukas -- as a ghost or as a delusion -- is not truly present in a physical, real sense. 

Again, this is not a scene featuring Elias’s world view, as many other scenes in the film clearly are. This is the mother’s shot; a composition in which it is her (contemplative) gaze that matters.  So why does the movie fool us with the image of two boys?

If this is her shot -- her view upon the world -- there should only be one.

Now ask yourself, just for a moment, what horror fans and movie critics would say if M. Night Shyamalan had pulled this “trick” in one of his films, like The Sixth Sense?

Queue the angry villagers with torches, right?

I believe that the story Goodnight Mommy attempts to tell involves no supernatural twists or entities at all, but rather psychological trauma and guilt. Little Elias feels responsible for Lukas’s death and so imagines him as a playmate. 

When his mother won’t indulge his delusion, Elias blames her, and victimizes her. 

He turns his anger at himself outwardstowards her.  In a nightmare, Elias directs terrible violence at his mother, cutting open her stomach (only to reveal swarming insects inside, which Elias collects as pets).  

This dream sequence, I believe, reflects the idea that somewhere inside his psyche Elias understands (or at least registers) that he is the monster. He cuts open his mother, but his insects teem and skitter out.  It is his own ugliness that he releases.

There is no place in this particular story for the demonic “moment” with the Mom alone in the woods, or the scene featuring a reflection of two children when we know, almost from the beginning, there is only one. 

Such moments don’t fit. They seem designed purely to mislead.

Actually, it’s worse than that. These misleading moments in Goodnight Mommy diminish the ‘real’ story of psychological instability with gimmickry, special effects and trickery. They lead the audience to believe an outside influence (demons? ghosts?) must be at work, when in fact, human psychology is the only monster on display. 

Now, one might argue that, at some point, Elias does see or view his mother as a sinister figure, like a demon.  But again, we get to the significant issue of cinematic point-of-view. Elias is not present in the woods to see his mother seize and rattle like a monster. She is alone when it occurs  Therefore, we must assume -- at the moment that this occurs -- she is some kind of inhuman monster. Why? The camera is clearly in omniscient, third-person mode here.

Make no mistake, there’s much intriguing material in Goodnight Mommy.  For example, the boys see a photograph in an album of their mother with an exact lookalike.  

Was this a twin sister that their mother murdered (the way, perhaps, that the sick Elias murdered his lookalike, Lukas?)  

Mom’s excuse about this photo is not adequate, really. She claims the other woman is just a friend and they liked to dress in identical fashion. 

And we never learn for certain how Lukas died, only that Elias “blames himself” for his death.

The mother’s identity, indeed, is kept in the air, even though a wall-sized photograph of her is seen prominently in many compositions. In each one, however, it is blurry, indistinct, so that we can garner no useful information from it.

We start to wonder: has she changed her face to resemble a dead sister? There are a few occasions in the film when Mom's image is doubled/reflected, and so the idea of a dead twin has some merit, I would argue.  In the mirror, does she see herself or the "other?"

If so, there’s the possibility that the movie really concerns how psychological illness is passed from generation to generation.  Mom doesn't turn into a demon in the woods so much as she attempts to reshape her identity to conform to one she misses, or covets; that of her dead twin.

But once more I must stress that the techniques and shots Goodnight Mommy adopts don’t work well with the story the film attempts to vet. They mislead instead of illuminate.

This is true, even in the valedictory shot: a family reunion in the Hereafter. All three characters are there, surrounded by burning embers.  But a question: if the murdered woman was not Elias’s mother (as he and Lukas have agreed to believe) then they are in the afterlife not with their Mom (who ostensibly is still alive somewhere), but with the impostor they killed. Right?

Again, and again, the movie just doesn’t track logically.

And that fact doesn’t mean that Goodnight Mommy fails to be beautiful or creepy.  Indeed it is beautiful and creepy. I enjoyed many aspects of it.

But finally, Goodnight Mommy is also infuriating.  It is not at all what it presents as.  

If you’re in the mood for a gruesome torture porn story -- and I don’t hate that genre as some fans do -- you may get some visceral satisfaction from it.  

For those who prefer for their horror films to make sense on a literal as well as metaphorical level, the film is virtually certain to disappoint.

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The Films of 2002: Wes Craven Presents They

The umbrella franchise title “Wes Craven Presents” promises a lot, but doesn’t often deliver. I carry great fondness for Wes Craven Presents Wishmaster (1997), for example, a fun rubber-reality horror movie that seems imported directly from the late 1980s era of Hellraiser (1987). 

Contrarily, Wes Craven Presents Carnival of Souls (1998) is one of the worst horror movies I’ve had the misfortune to sit through.

This film -- Wes Craven Presents They -- occupies the middle space between those two poles. It isn’t fun at all, but nor is it a jaw-dropping train-wreck.

Being of more recent vintage, They at least looks good, even if the script and characterizations can’t quite keep pace with the cinematography. Except for the (poorly-rendered and dated) CGI monsters, this Roger Harmon looks of apiece with other genre films from the same time period -- the early 2000s -- including Mothman Prophecies (2002) and The Ring (2002). 

Alas, They is not frightening or effective, like those efforts. It's a bit muddled, actually.

I understand that the film apparently went through extensive testing, re-shooting, and even had an alternate script, at one point, so I suspect such creative disruptions are the cause of the film’s maddening vagueness.  I enjoy a good, ambiguous or mysterious horror film as much as anyone, but there’s no ‘there’ in They. Nothing seems to connect, make sense, or build to any meaningful conclusion.

The idea underlying the film is good, however. Basically, They is all about psychology, and and childhood trauma. Those things that scare us as children, the movie warns, return in adulthood, causing depression, isolation, and even suicide.  Other people can't see or detect these "monsters," but you know they are there, right at the edges of periphery.

That’s not a bad, general template for a horror movie, though not an overly original one, either. They touches adeptly on its core concept -- of childhood monsters coming back -- a few times, but basically functions as a series of not-terribly-effective or intriguing jump scares that lead, finally, to a baffling and unsatisfactory conclusion.

“They come for me when it’s dark.”

One night, a little boy, Billy, begs for his mother to save him from the monsters in his bedroom.  She doesn’t, and something terrifying drags him under his bed.

Twenty years later, Billy (Jon Abrahams) is a depressed, drug-using adult. He calls a friend, Julia Lund (Laura Regan) to a diner to meet with him, and confides in her that the monsters from his childhood have returned.  He recommends she stay in the light, and then commits suicide

After Billy’s death, Julia, and Billy’s friends -- Sam (Ethan Embry) and Terry (Dagmara Dominczyk)  --meet with her, and report that they are also experiencing a return of their childhood night terrors.  

Soon Julia experiences this phenomenon as well, even though her boyfriend, Paul Loomis (Marc Blucas) tries to convince her that she is just experiencing stress related to her school work.

Julia goes back to her childhood therapist, Dr. Booth (Jay Brazeau), to see if she can help uncover the truth about these monsters.  

But when Billy’s friends begin to die, Julia knows he was right; that the monsters have returned...and want to take her away.

“Something that scared us as kids has come back to collect us.”

The opening scene or set-piece of Wes Craven Presents They hits the trifecta of childhood fears. 

Young Billy must contend with a thunderstorm, a closet door that won’t stay shut, and a monster hiding under the bed. These are the specters all children contend with, and the landscape, indeed, of the bed-time or night-time ritual. They's prologue is effective and creepy, and succeeds in one very profound way:  It reminds what it feels like to be “five years old again," as one character notes later in the action.

I was not prone to nightmares as a child, but I always had to sleep with my closet door shut, and I would cower under the bed-covers during thunder and lightning storms.  I still recall one night, after a long trip away from home, when I saw strange lights dancing on the wall of my bedroom, and became terrified that they were sinister. I had to call for my Mom to help.  One composition in They -- of a toy shadow moving on the ceiling -- reminded me of that occasion.

As children, we don’t truly possess the necessary governing mechanism to always control these fears of what lurks in the dark, or under the bed, or inside the closet, so They’s opening is fertile territory for a horror film. One thing that strikes me about the meticulously paced and orchestrated scene is how uncaring and unconcerned Billy’s mother seems by his terror, especially in the face of his comment that “They” are in the dark waiting for him.  She is just a blank slate. She is mildly comforting, I guess, but mostly seems to not want to be bothered.

One has to wonder if this lack of caring, or help, for that matter, is the childhood trauma underlying all the aforementioned bedroom/night-time fears.  What these things -- the creature under the bed or int he closet -- seem to be really be about is the fear of being alone, of being in the dark with no one to help. At one point, Billy cries out for his mother…and she doesn’t answer.

The creepy prologue is probably the high-point of They because it establishes a nice alternate reality. In this cinematic world, childhood night terrors are real. Monsters are hunting and taking children from their bedrooms for some dark purpose.

The rest of the movie doesn’t really work because we never learn that purpose, alas. 

We never even get a hint of it. Why are Billy, Julia and the others selected in childhood for abduction? What makes them special?

If they are abducted (as we see in the prologue) as children, why do the monsters send them back to our world and come for them again in childhood?  What's with the wait time?

And if the monsters want these particular people so badly, how come they don’t instantly grab them once the young adults have entered their domain? One scene reveals Julia wandering into another dimension, where the monsters lurk and wait. But they don’t attack her for a few minutes. They don’t even notice she’s there. They don't seem interested in her at all, a fact which goes against the idea of tagging and retrieving certain people.

If they are tagging and marking their victims (as the film makes plain), these monsters might at least notice when their victims happen into close proximity. Instead, the monsters seem sleepy and quiescent at first.

Although an attempt is made to link the monsters of They to the folklore of the incubus, it seems half-hearted, in some way.  Incubi and aliens are often linked to night terrors, it's true, but the monsters of They seem to boast a complex m.o that those mythological beings do not; one including capturing, releasing, tagging and abducting.

They works better on a metaphorical level than it does on a literal level. 

The kids who experienced such traumatic night terrors grow up to be…terrorized.  Billy -- described by Paul as “permanently freaked out” -- has sought out drugs (like Prozac) and battled depression to contend with his demons.

 Sam has become a morbid painter, creating huge black canvases of nihilist art. 

And Julia seems in denial about her past, at least at first, but everyone suspects she is having a psychotic break from reality.  

Issues like abandonment, perhaps, from their youth, have returned to spoil their adulthood.  

And things not handled in childhood have a way of coming back, affecting the present, don't they?  The monsters are therefore the personification or manifestation of such unresolved issues.

But again, as much as one can read all this psychology into the narrative, the plain fact is that the movie doesn’t provide literal explanations or motives for the creatures.  

They aren’t well-delineated in terms of their behavior, either. We see hints that they possess technology, for instance (in their tagging ‘darts’) but again, their behavior in the dark world makes them seem more like animals than beings with distinct motives and the capacity for reason or intelligence.

After the scene in which Billy establishes the rules -- that the creatures hide in the dark, affect lights, phones, and power, and  that crying children serve as a kind of an early warning system --- They hits the skids, featuring numerous encounters with the monsters, but no real rhyme or reason as to when, why, how, or where they appear to their victims.

I suppose the question I most want answered involves the disposition of the victims. Why do the creatures take them in adulthood? 

What do they do to them once they have them? 

What finally becomes of those they abduct?  

There are no clues really, and so They, as noted in my introduction, seems maddeningly vague at times. We know there are monsters in another dimension and that they tag kids, and abduct those kids as adults.  Anything beyond that is all speculation, and there aren’t even good clues here to go by.

Theyfails too, because the main character, Julia, as played by Laura Regan, is a bit insipid.  She is slow on the uptake, quick to panic, and just sort of irritating. Her boyfriend, Paul, is an unimaginative dullard, and one cruising on automatic pilot. His sole duty is to ignore and disregard Julia's stories of monsters terrorizing her.  Sam and Terry show more life, but exist mostly to form the movie’s victim pool. And Sam's loft apartment looks imported straight from The Ring.  I always wonder, when I see a setting like this, how a starving artist can afford such digs.

When you throw in the lousy CGI monsters, They proves remarkably unsatisfying. Like The Mothman Prophecies,They features numerous God’s Eye views of modern cities, with the camera peering straight down from a tremendous height. In Prophecies, these shots suggested a force “above” human sight and identification. Here, they add nicely to the feelings of isolation and abandonment.  

Several times in the film, we also see newscasters discussing “rolling black outs,” and this is not only an historical reminder of the Gray Davis/Enron Era in the early 2000s, but a sign that our technology is being manipulated by the monsters so they can more easily access our world. Modern society, in other words, proves as neglectful as Billy’s mother proved to be in the film’s prologue. There is no help for these people in childhood or adulthood. Nobody cares enough to actually prove helpful.

I can see why the late, great Wes Craven would produce and present a concept likeThey.  The notion of a group of people joined by their night terrors is highly reminiscent of A Nightmare on Elm Street(1984) and the concept of psychological disorders appearing as ‘monsters’ is also familiar from his film canon.  But given the pedigree declared by its title, They should be more than a half-explained outline of a familiar story.

It’s weird that a movie called They never decides, even for a moment, who “they” actually are, or what they want with their victims.  

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Cult-Movie Review: Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1972)

One way to comprehend and appreciate the Godzilla movies is to parse them as, essentially, the Japanese monster equivalent of James Bond-styled movie adventures. 

Thus, every Godzilla outing features a different and dynamic antagonist and the same, dependable hero, Godzilla, who faces this new threat or challenge. But in different eras, Godzilla is interpreted differently, not unlike the varying interpretations of 007 by actors Connery, Lazenby, Moore, Dalton, Brosnan and Craig.  Sometimes Godzilla is friendlier, sometimes less so.  Sometimes he is silly, and sometimes he is deadly serious.

The monster movies of the 1970s Showa period are a great deal more fanciful in presentation than some. 

They are more aptly fantasy entries than outright horror shows, like the original Gojira.  On a personal note, I admire and love the Godzillafilms of the 1970s Showa Era, and their interpretation of Godzilla as a reluctant warrior for mankind, not to mention hero of children everywhere.

One of the very best Godzilla films ever made – of any era -- is Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1972), or Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster as it was known in the United States upon release.  The film works as both a compelling Godzillaentry, and also as a science fiction film featuring a meaningful statement about the environment.

Remember, the great kaiju movies, in my opinion, are the ones that create monsters that are avatars for some pressing issue in the human world, often atomic testing, and the notion of Mother Nature’s revolt against that poor behavior. 

Godzilla vs. Hedorah creates a great monster, Hedorah, out of the issue of pollution, which was a major component of the 1970s science fiction film.  Efforts from around the world, including No Blade of Grass (1970), and Z.P.G. (1972) imagined worlds in which our soiling of the planet led to catastrophic and apocalyptic futures.

Hedorah possesses a unique and fascinating life-cycle, which means that the monster adopts multiple forms in the sea, on land and in the air, throughout the film, and that fact livens up the battles with Godzilla quite a bit. 

Godzilla vs. Hedorahalso features at least one major sequence set during blackest night, and so there is a dark aspect to this film that makes it memorable in the canon.  The film also tailors its message of “saving the Earth” so as to be appealing to children, who will recognize that Godzilla -- for all the damage he causes -- is on the side of the planet, and Mother Nature herself.

A beast called Hedorah that arises from “a sticky, dark planet far away” is nurtured in the pollution, sewage, and detritus of Earth’s 20^thcentury civilizations. 

The grotesque, blob-like entity with red eyes develops and grows through three distinct stages -- in the ocean, on the surface, and in the skies -- and soon proves a grave menace to human life, especially in Japan.

When Hedorah flies above that nation’s cities and factories, he excretes deadly sulfuric acid that burns away skin and reduces human bodies to skeletal corpses.

Meanwhile, one boy, Kenny, dreams of his hero, Godzilla, and believes that only the giant atomic lizard can save the world from this terrible new threat.

Fortunately, the giant green dinosaur soon shows up, and engages in a battle to the death with the smog monster.

  

Going back for a minute to the useful 007 Bond comparison, Godzilla vs. Hedorah opens with a catchy pop tune, a lava-lamp-like introductory montage, and a musical performance by an attractive female singer. 

Similarly, the film also features the obligatory almost stand-alone action set-pieces here…the ones in which the protagonist first confronts the antagonist, and is defeated, and then the climactic encounter, wherein good finally prevails.

Continuing down this road of comparison further, the best way to judge or critique a Bond film, largely, is to categorize the elements in terms of their antecedents and determine whether the ingredients in the current entry stack-up to moments from franchise history.  

Is the new movie as powerfully vetted as past entries? Does it toss in some surprises to go along with the elements that a devoted audience expects to see?

In terms of Godzilla vs. Hedorah, the answers to such questions are universally affirmative.

Hedorah makes for a dangerous, original, and grotesque villain, not merely in terms of his ever-changing appearance, but also in terms of his abilities and proclivities.  When the airborne Hedorah strafes his human prey and sprays a toxic chemical, humans below are dissolved to bone instantly, and it’s a frightening, grotesque effect.  Another image of Hedorah that remains unforgettable sees the beast perching atop a factory smoke-stack, imbibing pollution directly from the pipe, as it were.

It seems to me that both Bond and Godzilla films rise and fall on the basis of the villain’s nature and plans, and Hedorah’s constantly shifting nature, nasty composition, gruesome power, and odd appetite make him an unforgettable antagonist.

Godzilla vs. Hedorah finds some new subtext and social critique material for the long-standing franchise.  Historically, Godzilla has been parsed as an avatar for atomic power. He owes his very existence in the 20^thcentury to human nuclear testing, and so forth.  In Godzilla vs. Hedorah,however, the series gives him a villain who also symbolizes an important element of the disco decade zeitgeist: pollution. 

As seen in films such asFrogs (1972) and Doomwatch (1976) environmental pollution proved the great bugaboo of the age, and here, the alien seed that is Hedorah sprouts from sewage and garbage strewn into the ocean.  The opening scenes in the film depict smoke stacks, factories, and filthy brown ocean water.  We see, without fakery, examples of how man has destroyed that which Nature has provided.  These moments are powerful because they are real. Man’s technology and industry -- coupled with his propensity to destroy that which he touches – are turning a paradise into a nightmare.

From this hot-house of detritus emerges something unspeakably awful: the crimson-eyed menace from another world.  And when Hedorah sucks smoke out of a factory stack like it’s a giant bong, the film’s powerful point is nailed visually: we’re actually feeding the vehicle of our own destruction when we pollute the Earth.

Commendably, the Godzilla series has adjusted with the times to remain relevant and interesting.  The nature of “the monster” has changed (from nuclear power to rampant pollution and environmental damage), but the overall premise hasn’t been altered at all.  The fact is, state these Japanese films, mankind’s behavior and irresponsibility are jeopardizing everyone on the planet.

What makes Godzilla vs. Hedorah such a charming and worthwhile film, however, is not necessarily the polemical aspects of the drama. Contrarily, the film often adopts the viewpoint of a child, who sees the pollution and wishes for some miracle to stop it. 

That miracle is named Godzilla. 

“Godzilla would get really angry if he saw this. He’d do something,” the child, Kenny, declares upon musing over pollution.

In this case, the child seeks an answer to a problem, and hopes for a person (or creature) brave enough and bold enough to take action.  The film actually forges a meaningful link between this boy and Godzilla, suggesting that Godzilla can hear his hopes and thoughts, and thus comes to the rescue of humanity.

Kenny hopes that Godzilla will fix by might that which man chooses not to address. 

Furthering the idea of the film as originating from a child’s viewpoint, Godzilla vs. Hedorah often cuts to a cartoon representation of the sludge monster, perhaps in an attempt to maintain the whimsical aspects of the tale, especially in counter-balance to some of the unexpectedly gruesome special effects. 

Finally, the film even features a great (if idealistic) answer to the problem of pollution: “if everyone pulls together, we can defeat it.”

If we can just do that one thing, Godzilla will not gaze down upon us with such disapproval in his eyes, as he does in the coda of this particular outing.

Another real treat here is the fact that Godzilla vs. Hedorah is beautifully-shot.  The compositions make full use of film’s rectangular frame, and some vistas -- even those featuring an obviously mini-metropolis and dueling men-in-suits -- remain visually impressive.  There's a downright lyrical moment near the end of the film when Godzilla stands before a sunset, and the implication seems to be that it is mankind's reign itself that is setting, unless we change our ways.

 Perhaps some of the ideas here -- like a peace march to stop pollution-- seem dated in the cold light of the cynical 21^st century, but Godzilla vs. Hedorah, with its child-like innocence and focus on a real 1970s “monster”  --pollution -- works just about as poetically and effectively as any Godzilla movie ever made in my opinion.

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Cult-Movie Review: Ghidrah: The Three-Headed Monster (1965)

Godzilla makes the dramatic shift from being a villain and enemy of the human world to a dedicated (if reluctant…) Earth defender in the rip-roaring Toho effort, Ghidrah: The Three Headed Monster (1965).  

This film also introduces the world to Godzilla’s key nemesis: the three-headed flying alien dragon known as King Ghidorah.

Ghidorah would return to battle Godzilla in many other films, including the brilliant adventure Monster Zero (1970), Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (1991), and Godzilla: Final Wars (2004), to name just a few titles.

The enduring charm of Ghidrah: The Three Headed Monster, in large part, rests on its fanciful depiction of the monster world and, importantly, the monster viewpoint about that world. 

Specifically, in the film’s delightful and unexpected final act, humanity asks for assistance battling the berserker Ghidrah, and Godzilla and Rodan must consider their priorities. 

Are they man’s enemies, or do these beasts have a basis for cooperation with the human race?

Fortunately for mankind, Mothra is present to talk some sense into the recalcitrant Godzilla…

“These monsters are as stupid as human beings!”

A foreign princess, Selina (Akiko Wakabayashi) is presumed dead after her plane is destroyed  by assassins en route to Japan.

However, Selina soon re-appears in perfect health...but claiming to be a Martian princess. 

In this new identity, Selina warns the people of Earth of an impending crisis, a repeat of the very one that destroyed her advanced home world.

While assassins from her home-land continue to seek to assassinate Selina, the alien princess’s warnings come to pass.  As she forecasts, the fearsome pterodactyl Rodan awakens at Mount Aso, and Godzilla ascends from the sea.

Selina’s protector, Detective Shindo (Yosuke Natsuki) and psychiatrist Dr. Tsukamoto (Takashi Shimura) become convinced that Selina is acyually possessed by the spirit of an alien, and she makes a final, dire prediction.  The monster that destroyed her home planet, Mars, in a matter of months, is now on Earth.

This too comes to pass, as King Ghidrah, or Ghidorah -- a three-headed goliath -- emerges from a meteor and lays waste to Japan.

Desperate, authorities make an effort to solicit Mothra’s help on Infant Island, and the giant insect acquiesces. 

However, Mothra alone cannot defeat Ghidorah. So Mothra attempts to convince the quarrelsome Godzilla and Rodan to join forces and vanquish their common enemy, but it is not an easy sell.

When Mothra decides to go it alone, and is savagely attacked -- and ridiculed -- by malevolent Ghidorah, however, Godzilla comes to the rescue, followed by Rodan…

“Godzilla, what terrible language!”

The theme of cooperation, already given voice in Godzilla vs. The Thing (1964) is front and center in Ghidrah: The Three Headed Monster. Here, Godzilla and Rodan must stop their bickering -- with the help of a third monster, Mothra -- and defend the Earth from a threat of monumental proportions.

In terms of metaphor, it is not difficult to gaze at the film as a post-Cuban Missile Crisis, Cold War Era plea for sanity and cooperation among the argumentative powers of the world.  If we follow it through symbolically, Godzilla may here represent the U.S. (as he is the avatar of American nuclear tests), Rodan the Soviet Union, and Mothra...level-headed, practical Japan.  Only by all three “monsters” (or nations…) working together will the “alien” Ghidorah be defeated.

This theme finds voice in the brilliant finale, as Mothra, Godzilla, and Rodan share a meeting of the minds, or international monster summit of sorts.  Mothra attempts to sway them with reason and logic, but Godzilla and Rodan are too busy kicking rocks into each other’s faces, at least at first, to listen.  Eventually Mothra gets their attention, and then Godzilla and Rodan must consider their options.  

They both hate mankind, and remember, importantly, that mankind hates them.  Why should they help?

Well, as Mothra points out, we all share this Earth together, and so Godzilla and Rodan must put their hatred for man aside and do what is right for the planet.

I absolutely love the imagination and audacity of this film's climactic sequence. Mothra’s tiny princesses translate for the human audience while three monsters gurgle, growl and squeal at one another in serious conversation, determining the fate of the planet in the process.  

This sequence conveys some important information, too. The first thing is that man, in his arrogance, presumes that he controls the planet and its future. Ghidrah: The Three Headed Monster reveals him “humbled” before the monsters.  If man is to survive, and not suffer the same fate as the Martians, he will have to put his trust into beings -- monsters -- he considers enemies.

Secondly, the monsters dislike man as much as man dislikes them, apparently. More is made of this notion throughout the Godzilla franchise, actually.  In Godzilla: Final Wars, for instance, we learn that Godzilla hates man -- and can’t forgive him -- because of his misuse of the planet, and because of all the “fires” (wars?) man has started.

Third, and finally, Godzilla, we learn here, seems to possess both a grumpy attitude (and the vocabulary of a sailor…) but also a strong moral barometer.  He cusses and uses bad language when talking to Mothra, and that’s a funny moment.  But more importantly, Godzilla refuses to fight until he sees what a total bastard Ghidrah really is.  Ghidrah mocks and plays with poor Mothra and that action offends Godzilla’s sense of honor, even though Mothra has, in the past, defeated him.

Mothra is quite the smart creature too. No doubt, Mothra goes it alone intentionally, hoping that Godzilla will detect the level of the danger, and be drawn into the battle to save the planet. That seems to be precisely what happens.

Indeed, what seems to separate good monsters from bad monsters in this thoroughly enjoyable film is a sense of justice or honor. 

Mothra, Godzilla and Rodan all demonstrate the capacity not merely for growth, but for cooperation. They are able to rally to a cause greater than themselves, in other words.  

By contrast, King Ghidorah is really a berserker with no value system beyond destruction.

I suppose that the question that must be reckoned with involving Ghidrah: The Three Headed Monster involves changed premises or changed assumptions in the Godzilla franchise.  Are audiences willing to embrace Godzilla the hero, over Godzilla the avatar of nuclear destruction? 

And if so, is it a corruption of the franchise’s original idea?

Although on an artistic front, I do prefer the purity of the nuclear metaphor in Godzilla (1954), I must confess that on an emotional level, I love the idea of Godzilla as Earth’s (grumpy) defender.  I love the big green monster as a hero, and as a friend to the human race.  It may be a corruption of the original premise, but I do find Godzilla in these Showa "versus" films to be an appealing combination of innocent, tragic, and lovable.

One further quality of Ghidrah: The Three Headed Monster that may keep it from being a corruption of the original franchise intent and rather an evolution of key concepts is the example of Mars.  The alien princess reports: “Centuries ago, the monster appeared in the skies of Mars. Within a month, the culture of Mars had been wiped out completely. The civilization on my planet had reached a stage of development which you people will not achieve for a long time…Today, because of the space monster, it is a dead world…dead and unpopulated.”

Encoded there is a direct corollary to the warning in Godzilla (1954).  

Man has and will continue to achieve advances in terms of his technology, and his capacity for war. But if he brutalizes nature in that evolution, nature will have its revenge, and man will, in that conflict, lose. 

Ghidorah, in essence, here takes on the role of Godzilla from the first film.  He is Out-of-Whack Nature Personified: a threat that can’t be reckoned with in terms of technology or conventional war.

Ghidrah: The Three Headed Monster is such an imaginative and entertaining film not only because it features lovable and idiosyncratic monsters, but because it endows its monsters with a point of view that is not human-centric, and allows them -- in their  own destructive way -- to settles matters based on those points of view.  

To some, this approach of giving the monsters human personalities may seem silly or childish, but in a way, this creative choice perfectly expresses the childish nature of the Cold War conflict.

Are we really going to destroy the world because we can’t get along with each other? Can we stop kicking sand in each other's faces long enough to see that the planet needs our help?

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