Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster is a technically exhilarating ‘60s flick about a big fight between everyone’s favorite titular and a large crustacean named Ebirah. While it lacks much subtext, heart, and general purpose beyond that conflict, the fights are fun, and the concept is familiar and straightforward enough to entertain.

After discovering his brother Yata (Toru Ibuki) is alive after getting lost at sea, Ryota Kane (Toru Watanabe) decides to steal a yacht with his two friends and, upon finding him stowed away inside their chosen yacht, a wanted bank robber named Yoshimura (Akira Takanada). The four venture out in Yata’s vague direction, where a storm disrupts their journey as a dark, menacingly sharpened lobster claw rises out and capsizes them. Washing ashore on a nearby island, they discover the island to be the hideout of a militia force’s atomic bomb experiments and manufacturing center. They run into nearby Infant Island local Daiyo (Kumi Mizuno), who explains how her people get exploited to help what they call the Red Bamboo militia to protect themselves from the terrifyingly crabby Ebirah. Upon devising a plan to escape, perhaps unfortunately, they find an unexpected familiar face: Godzilla in deep slumber underground. With nothing but Godzilla and another famed kaiju who’s publicly worshipped on Infant Island, Mothra, the group must find Yata, stop any nuke threats, and escape—or become victims of kaiju rage.

Sea Monster has both a lot to enjoy and a lot that sours it. While the fights are as cutting-edge and on-edge as expected for earlier Godzilla cinema, everything surrounding them is underdeveloped. None of the central characters develop or gain anything of value; Yoshimura talks about his skills and the past they’re attached to—“is breaking in really that easy?” one of Ryota’s friends asks after they infiltrate Red Bamboo’s headquarters, to which Yoshimura smoothly replies, “Only amateurs think that”—and eventually even admits that “You know what guys? I think I’m gonna turn a new leaf,” there’s nothing that demonstrates such growth. Sure, they all awaken Godzilla and, under Ryota’s noble lead, help the enslaved escape their chains, but the filmmakers merely tell viewers what they’re supposed to feel and take away. Again, the characters literally say to each other how they’ve supposedly changed, if they even say that. While the cast isn’t to blame—Takanada makes Yoshimura a cunning side character with more angst and strategic integrity than the script calls for, and Mizuno as Daiyo is similarly fearless—such underwhelming characters, combined with a gimmicky environment where the bad guy even has an eye patch for some reason, waters down Sea Monster‘s otherwise splashy potential.

Thankfully, the baseline premise and some themes (though generic) shine through well enough, and Sea Monster‘s fast pace disguises some of the bloated writing. As is typical of any Godzilla flick, the nuclear metaphor entices, especially when combined with Infant Island’s current fate and religiously inclined response to it: director Jun Fukuda and the crew visually nail slavery’s cruelty and the natural human reaction to it. Cramped in small, moistened caves with nothing other than their sun-yellow robes, seeing Infant Island natives forced to break their backs over time-weathered wooden cranks to make a toxic, environmentally destructive yellow chemical that protects the Red Bamboo from Ebirah is morose. Such imagery, especially when combined with the island’s worships to a sleeping Mothra for assistance—”Open your eyes, Mothra / Like a new day dawning, Mothra / We await you / Wipe away the evening dew / Wipe away our tears / We beg you, Mothra” a set of singing twins musically implore—cleverly depicts slavery patterns throughout history. Mothra, essentially, becomes these natives’ religious icon, the closest thing they have to real-world gods that they can actually (and advantageously) see. Whether it’s the songs of enslaved Africans in sugar plantations across 1800s USA or those of Indigenous peoples throughout the world throughout time, these religiously imbued acts of resistance—especially as the Red Bamboo commands them to “Stop singing!’ as they hum to the rhythm of their hard labor—are both effective and entertainingly realistic. While the Horror of the Deep may be Ebirah, the real monster is the Red Bamboo’s historically familiar acts of repression against an island population for war gains.

Thus, while Sea Monster lacks much depth, it certainly thrashes about excitingly without losing Godzilla‘s core thematic appeal. For Godzilla die-hards and monster mash fans, Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster is a fun romp, even if it lacks the density other more remembered franchise installments are famous for.

Screens FOR FREE Tuesday, 8/5, 6:30 p.m. @ Somerville Public Library Central Branch
Pre-show reel of vintage shorts, trailers, and cartoons projected on 16mm!

Presented by Somerville Ciné-Club