Ebirah Horror Of The Deep

Or Godzilla Vs. The Sea Monster if you want the late night cable version.

I know people consider this to be one of the lesser Godzilla movies but I don't think it's bad at all. True it focuses primarily on the human characters, more so than usual even, with a man named Ryota searching for his brother lost at sea before the weather started getting rough and the tiny ship was tossed before setting foot on an island used for creating nuclear weapons. Soon he and his companions find a woman from Mothra's island and very soon Godzilla as well. So it's a matter of evading military forces, avoiding Godzilla, and trying to find a way past Ebirah the eponymous sea monster. Most Godzilla movies have about half if not 60% of the runtime devoted to the human characters, but here I'm almost willing to bet 85% of the runtime is devoted to the human characters. You don't get a lot of monster action or fighting until the last quarter of the movie. Originally this was supposed to be a King Kong film and it seems abundantly clear when you take that fact into consideration when watching the movie, but my question is would Mothra still be a part of the movie to get everyone off the island? Now why they swapped Kong for Godzilla is beyond me, he still has a lot of traits of the Toho King Kong and I don't mean the 30s japanese King Kong, and I do feel it would have worked better with the ape. This happens to be a significant entry not for plot elements but production elements, this is the final Godzilla film to feature Akira Takarada who's been around since the first film until the Heisei series, this is the directorial debut of Jun Fukuda in the Godzilla series who will pop up more as we go along, it's the first Godzilla movie not to have Eiji Tsuburaya doing the special effects since he was heading his own special effects company though I would say the effects are on par for the series, and both the adult Mothra and the twin fairies also wouldn't be seen till the Heisei series. So quite a few events to take note of for an entry that's less than good. It's not horrible by any stretch, the pacing is decent, the cast does well I even strongly approve that there is zero romance subplot with Daiyo, the plot though scarce of monster action isn't the worst I've seen, but I think it's safe to assume this is a definite skip in the filmography. 2 stars, 5.5/10, and we get a divisive entry in the series next time.