EBIRAH, HORROR OF THE DEEP (a.k.a. GODZILLA VS. THE SEA MONSTER) is from 1966 and it’s the seventh Godzilla picture. The title monster is a giant lobster, and there are other members of the kaiju community involved, but the central conflict is actually unrelated to them – it’s about a fairly random group of people who stumble across The Red Bamboo (a terrorist army – like, with uniforms and everything) and use the monsters to disarm them for the sake of the world.

It happens like this. Ryota (Toru Watanabe)’s older brother Yata (Toru Ibuki, GHIDORAH, THE THREE-HEADED MONSTER)’s fishing boat was lost during a storm on the South Seas. He’s presumed dead, but Ryota thinks he’s alive because a psychic at Spirit Mountain (Noriko Honma, STRAY DOG, SEVEN SAMURAI, YOJIMBO) said so. He wants to take a boat out to the uncharted area where he thinks he’s shipwrecked, but he doesn’t have a boat, and he’s kind of a rube, so when he sees a dance marathon on TV where the grand prize is a yacht, he goes there.

I don’t know what he was thinking there, a little bit late to enter, buddy. But best friends Ichino (Chotaro Togin) and Nita (Hideo Sunazuka), who come in 15th and 14th place out of 300 contestants, feel sorry for him or are amused by him, so they drive him out to a boatyard and sneak him onto someone’s yacht. The apparent owner Yoshimura (Akira Takarada, GLORY TO THE FILMMAKER!) pulls a gun on them, but when they explain that this guy came out from the boonies to see a yacht he gives them permission to spend the night on it. Strange choice, plus he turns out to be a thief hiding out after stealing over 4 million yen from a safe in a pachinko parlor. Anyway, while they’re asleep Ryota sets sail to find his brother, so they’ve involuntarily joined an adventure.

They end up shipwrecked on a small island where The Red Bamboo have enslaved natives of Infant Island, forcing them to mash fruit into a yellow substance that they spray off their boat to repel Ebirah. Also they have a lab straight out of a 007 movie where they’re manufacturing atomic weapons. The yacht boys befriend one of the natives, Daiyo (Kumi Mizuno), who explains some of this stuff to them. Nearby on Infant Island, Daiyo’s countrymen do their songs and rituals to awaken Mothra, but she just lays there motionless for some reason.

I guess maybe this is supposed to be taking place at the same place where we last saw Godzilla in INVASION OF ASTRO-MONSTER. He, Ghidorah and Rodan rolled down a cliff in a big ball, then Ghidorah flew away. Rodan is nowhere to be seen in this one, so he must’ve woken up a long time ago, but the pals find Godzilla’s lazy ass hibernating in an underground cavern. They feel it is their responsibility as world citizens to wake him to attack The Red Bamboo, so they create a lightning rod on top of a mountain using a cool sword they found, and sure enough it gets struck by lightning the next day and gives our boy a charge. Good call, boys.

This is Ebirah territory, so obviously Godzilla’s gotta fight the local boss. There’s a funny part where a boulder is thrown and they knock it back and forth like volleyball. When Ebirah scoops it in his claw it becomes more like jai alai. And the fight goes underwater for a bit, filmed in a tank.

Godzilla also shows off by fucking up a squadron of fighter jets, just ignoring their missiles, slapping them out of the air and stomping on them. That’s fuckin crazy that a terrorist army has fighter jets. Thank Godzilla we have Godzilla to deal with them. That actually happens right after he gets attacked by a giant condor officially called Ookondoru, reportedly made out of a Rodan flying scene prop. I don’t know if this is a coincidental attack, if this is a terrorist sympathizing mutant bird, or what, but Godzilla makes short work of him, obviously. Otherwise he’d make the title. Good scene, though. Good effort, Ookondoru.

It’s very satisfying when the Infant Islanders make them fake yellow serum (no active ingredients) and they get attacked by Ebirah, like they deserve. I like Ebirah. He doesn’t have much range since he can’t fly or jump and we never see him on land, but he’s a cool design and with his exoskeleton-based body is able to move in ways very distinct from other kaiju. I approve. His best move is when he picks up a boat, dumps the passengers out, then skewers them on the sharp point of a claw and eats them like a shishkebab. Godzilla’s best move against Ebirah is when he bites off both of his claws and mockingly snaps one of them open and closed in front of him. Some real cold hearted shit.

I also like any time we can see Mothra and her island. I just have great respect for them and their culture. Mothra is so still during most of this movie that I started thinking she was a matte painting, but she (spoiler) does finally wake up. It’s very cool that the enslaved Infant Islanders know to build a little basket around themselves, knowing she’ll know to fly down and lift them to safety. That’s a really reliable deity they got, no sarcasm.

Unfortunately Godzilla gives Mothra some guff, residual drama from MOTHRA VS. GODZILLA I guess, or maybe he’s doing what they call “negging,” I don’t know. But the movie ends with an actual drawn animation shot of her flapping wings. It’s pretty.

At first Yoshimura denies being a safecracker, but later he proudly uses his “special skills” to pick the lock on a jail cell, and other things. It’s kind of like how it always comes in handy in movies to know how to hotwire a car. He seems kind of like a suave Chow Yun Fat or George Clooney type character, the handsome dude wearing a yellow jacket over a striped shirt, almost looks like a cardigan. The other best fashion statement is the leader of The Red Bamboo (Jun Tazaki, HIGH AND LOW) wearing an eye patch with the same logo as their uniforms.

I like that this one isn’t about a scientist or a reporter. It seems like it’s going to be, because at the beginning Ryota is trying to get help from a newspaper reporter, but then he gives up and leaves. I get it, Ryota – our institutions have failed us. So instead of the usual pros it’s this motley cross-section of society: two hipsters, two country boys, one streetwise criminal, one traditional Indigenous islander. Together they stop a terrorist army from acquiring atomic weapons, while also seeing four giant monsters. It gives ya hope, you know?

This is the second Godzilla movie to use composer Masaru Sato, who had done GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN more than a decade earlier, and eight Akira Kurosawa movies in between, including THRONE OF BLOOD and THE HIDDEN FORTRESS. This was his followup to THE SWORD OF DOOM. It’s not a drastically different score, but I noticed a little bit of what sounds to me like Dick Dale influenced guitar – I hope somebody was thinking of it as a surfing movie. Also the music at the dance contest sounds in the vein of the ’66 Batman theme.

It also marks the first of several Godzilla movies directed by Jun Fukuda of SAMURAI I and II fame. He had directed RODAN, though, so it made sense. He later said that his monster movies were terrible and that there shouldn’t have been any sequels to GODZILLA, but he was a loyal employee of Toho so he did what he was assigned.

The other new blood was special effects director Sadamasa Arikawa, protege of Eiji Tsuburaya, and more experienced in TV. Reportedly they gave him a lower budget, allowing for fewer composite shots and causing them to set it on an island, where they wouldn’t have to build a model city. It doesn’t seem chintzy to me though.

INVASION OF ASTRO-MONSTER, you may remember, was a co-production with the American animation studio Rankin-Bass. The original plan was to follow it up with OPERATION ROBINSON CARUSO: KING KONG VS. EBIRAH, but Rankin-Bass only wanted to do it if Ishiro Honda and Tsuburaya returned, so they parted ways when Toho insisted on Fukuda and Arikawa. Toho responded by saying fuck Rankin-Bass, fuck King Kong, this is a Godzilla movie now (exact words). They later buried the hatchet to make KING KONG ESCAPES.

Anyway, they liked the KING KONG script and didn’t change it much, which some theorize why Godzilla is awoken by electricity and apparently turned on by Daiyo, though I guess I was too much of a prude to pick up on that second one. As long as he didn’t act on it I guess I can’t judge him.

APPENDIX – Genre movies released earlier in 1966:

DRACULA: PRINCE OF DARKNESS, BLOOD BATH, THE MAGIC SERPENT, DAIMAJIN, GAMERA VS. BARUGON, MUNSTER, GO HOME!, BATMAN, THE WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS, DALEKS – INVASION EARTH: 2150 A.D., RETURN OF DAIMAJIN, FANTASTIC VOYAGE, FAHRENHEIT 451, SECONDS, CHAMBER OF HORRORS, CASTLE OF EVIL, DAIMAJIN STRIKES AGAIN, THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO

APPENDIX II: My chronological Godzilla and Gamera reviews

I have the Godzilla and Gamera blu-ray sets and for religious purposes I have been very slowly going through them chronologically (mixed together). I never really knew where any of them came out in relation to each other, so it’s interesting to watch them in release order and see the evolution. Sorry, I didn’t write about the first one, but here are the reviews in the series so far:

1954 – GODZILLA

1955 – GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN

(1961 – MOTHRA)

1962 – KING KONG VS. GODZILLA

1964 – MOTHRA VS. GODZILLA
GHIDORAH, THE THREE-HEADED MONSTER

1965 – GAMERA, THE GIANT MONSTER
INVASION OF ASTRO-MONSTER

1966 – GAMERA VS. BARAGON
EBIRAH, HORROR OF THE DEEP