Ptoo Many Pterodactyls: Rodan

“Rodan” (1956)
Starring Kenji Sahara, Yumi Shirakawa, Akihiko Hirata, Akio Kobori
Directed by Ishirô Honda
Written by Takeshi Kimura and Takeo Murata, story by Ken Kuronuma, English version by David Duncan
Approved

A major challenge with any biographical film is choosing how much of the subject’s life to spotlight. Do you try to fit in a little bit of everything or do you focus on and more fully explore certain moments or periods?

The makers of “Rodan” elected to heavily feature the destruction wrought by the ptitular pterodactyl and didn't even acknowledge his artistry as a sculptor.*

Full disclosure: I wrote that opening weeks before actually watching the movie, which I thought I'd seen before. Apparently, though, I was only familiar with Rodan from his appearances in other Godzilla movies – and not ones in which he was somewhat on fire.

The movie follows the intersecting paths of a doctor (Richard Gere) and an unhappily married woman (Diane Lane) who... wait, sorry, that's the 2008 Nicholas Sparks adaptation “Nights in Rodanthe.”

“Rodan” was released two years after “Godzilla,” but does not initially appear to be a sequel or part of a shared universe, although we know at this point that the big G isn't the only prehistoric specimen roaming the Pacific islands. Both movies are directed by Honda and both featuring Hirata as a scientist, albeit a less tormented and tragic one here. It starts out in a mining town thrown into turmoil by an underground flood that leaves two miners missing. When one of the miners turns up dead from wounds he clearly didn't suffer via drowning, the other is blamed.

Engineer Shigeru (Sahara) is determined to find out the truth and see if the suspect is still alive, in no small part because he's engaged to the guy's sister, Kiyo (Shirakawa). But more lives are claimed, and as he comforts her, bam, this thing bursts in.

Yeah, giant dragonfly nymphs known as Meganulon from deep in the Earth are killing the miners. And unlike many creature features, where the authorities don't believe the nature of the threat or characters are isolated by circumstances, the miners immediately get heavily armed military backup. But it's Shigeru who finally puts the kibosh on one of the critters using a mining car, then gets trapped in a cave-in. He emerges some time later in a different location with amnesia, unable to recognize his fiancee.

Soon, pilots report seeing a large, unidentified object flying at supersonic speeds and causing devastating sonic booms. Shigeru's memory comes flooding back when he sees eggs laid by one of Kiyo's pet birds and flashes back to a cave in which a ptowering pteranodon hatches from an enormous eggs and starts eating the creepy nymphs.

Back at the mine, Shigeru is present when a winged creature emerges from the ground and exclaims, “That's it! The bird that hatched from the egg!”

“You think?!?” I said dismissively. “As if there could be another one.”

But then...

My bad Shigeru. There are two Rodans. And I guess both of them grew up really fast?

The ptwin pterodactyls wreak havoc, sonic booming a Jeep as a soldier tries to warn the folks at headquarters, ptaking down planes – perhaps also by sonic boom 'cause they don't seem to actually make contact.

Eventually it's decided the military should just bury them when they return to their underground nests. A missile barrage starts a cave-in, but wouldn't you know it, the ptitanic pterosaurs escape – briefly. All that concussive force apparently triggered a volcanic eruption, and soon both are ptoasting in the lava.

Shigeru narrates emotionally about their deaths in a manner that is somehow both over the top and kind of poignant.

“Like moths in those rivers of fire, they seemed almost to welcome the agonies of death,” he waxes. “Each had refused to live without the other, and so they were dying together. I wondered whether I, a 20th century man, could ever hope to die as well.” I guess he didn't see one of them ptry, and fail, to fly away.

The opening narration (at least in the English version, the only one available on this particular library DVD) touches on the realities of atomic weapons and suggests their use could be what awakened the pterrifying pterodactyls and their skeevy insectoid food source. But it doesn't keep the metaphor going as well as the original “Godzilla.”

And it didn't really need to, because as tense as Godzilla was, this one feels much more up close and personal. Even after the scale of the creatures increases dramatically, there's a sequence where two honeymooners fall victim to one of the still-unseen creature's ptremendous ptalons.

Honda and company do a great job of differentiating these ptitans from Godzilla, and not just because they can fly and are in color. The destruction is not a lumbering beast trampling a cityscape and melting stuff with radioactive breath; it's ptailored to their aerial anarchy.

After watching the first two Godzilla movies with subtitles, this was a return to how I was introduced to the genre, with sometimes awkward dubbing. But it's never enough to take me out of the movie.

The effects are dated, sure, but still impressive. Even though you're not mistaking it for a documentary, the practical ptechniques give the creatures and action a weight and authenticity that higher-tech efforts can sometimes lack.

But the main thing I'm left thinking is, if not one but ptwo Rodans got their ashes kicked by a volcano, then who do those aliens yoink out of a mountainside in “Monster Zero?” There may be an in-continuity explanation somewhere, or it could just be the filmmakers wanted another recognizable monster to join forces with Godzilla and Mothra and didn't sweat the details.

My theory is that neither of the Rodans that emerged in this movie's reveal was the one Shigeru saw hatching. He was their kid, and after his parents encountered humanity and wound up deep fried, he just decided to stay inside for a few more years. And in that way, I've never identified with a kaiju more.**

* - Give this joke a minute. It's a Thinker.

** - Not because anyone in my family died by volcano, but because sometimes I don't want to be around people either.