Why Some Giant Monster Movies Are More Terrifying Than Others!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                            I have loved giant monster movies since I was a child, and still do.  When small, I could watch anything, without it bothering me.  I was always sorry, though when the monster was killed.  I was always of the mind of Dr. Yimane, who insisted Gojira should be studied, and not destroyed.

                            The last time I viewed "King Kong" in its entirety, was back in 1993, when I was so pissed and artistically offended by the original "Jurassic Park," I went back to the prehistoric movie of them all.  Today, I always stop the film, with tears, when Kong puts Ann Darrow down on the building, where she will be safe, and Bruce Cabot will come and get her.  And Kong knows this, just as he knows that now he must succumb to defeat.  I cannot stand to see Kong defeated, and plunge to his death.  It just breaks my heart.

                            Likewise, with Gojira; there is something lovable about him, and when he rises from the depths for the last time, as the Oxygen Destroyer is working, I always weep for him.  But there are other moments in this movie to make one weep--the torment of Dr. Serizawa, his noble sacrifice, Emiko's initial reaction to his invention, Gojira's first entrance atop the hill, and that iconic shot of a mother clinging with her children, huddled against a building, disaster soon to reign upon them.  Not to mention the plaintive singing of the school children.

                             Movies like these are masterworks, because they manage to personify both monster and victim.  Standard fare in this genre, make the monsters mere curiosities and the victims little more than puppet-like extras, being put through their screen paces.

                              But there are two movies, in this genre, whose parts may be better than their whole, but work on this personalized level.  The first is 1956's "Rodan," which has two key scenes.

                              The first is what I call the "Mountain Scene."  It starts with a presumably engaged young couple--I love the girl's Americanized Fifties clothing, and all in pink, darlings--departing by car from what looks like a chalet estate.  IMDB refers to them as "Male and Female Honeymooners." They drive to the volcano, not knowing it is Rodan's terrain, in order to get a picture and walk among a potentially eruptive, but not yet, volcano.  Not my idea of a romantic excursion, but....Anyway, the girl poses, and delivers the iconic line, "Are you taking a picture of me, or the volcano?"  As the man backs up to get both in camera range, music and sound build, the girl looks up and screams in genuine fright, the man looks up, sees something is wrong, drops the camera, grabs the girl, and both run, smoke and debris filling up the screen, as though fleeing the Apocalypse.  With the debris acting as a shield, the viewer does not quite see what swoops down and carries them off, nor are they seen in its clutches.  All that is left is the man's camera, and the girl's shoe.

                              As a child this struck me as singularly terrifying, and even viewed today it is. It is by far the best scene in the film, and if potential viewers want to skip the rest, and go directly to this, I would not blame them.

                               "Rodan," like "Gojira," builds tension, by not showing any menace, for awhile.  Miners mysteriously drown, villagers erupt into hysterics, mutilated corpses emerge from the water, long before Rodan, or anything else, makes its appearance.  On Odo Island, home of Gojira, after a cultural ceremony honoring him, he pays a visit on land by night, with the viewer seeing not Gojira, but the people's reaction.  Same with his initial attack aboard the ship.  This is the same strategy Steven Spielberg used in "JAWS," back in 1975, especially with its two most terrifying scenes--the opening, and the little boy's death amidst the bathers.  Unlike Gojira and Rodan, who take on some personalization themselves, once the shark appears in "JAWS," the audience knows it is all a big act.

                                  The final scene, in Rodan, where both are destroyed, in the engulfing volcanic flame, is sad, and operatic.  It starts with Kiyo weeping on Shigeru's shoulder, as he delivers a poignant monologue about the two Rodans being the last of their kind.  Their death throes and mutual agony, as they plunge into the flames has an unbearable poignancy that is touching in ways most movies of this type do not approach.  Maybe Japanese filmmakers were on to something. Rather Wagnerian in its depiction.

But the Japanese were not the only ones to do this.  During my childhood, Channel 9 would run, over and over, the 1959 British film "The Giant Behemoth," known in the UK as "Behemoth, The Sea Monster."  From the time I was a small child, the ferry boat scene stood out for me; today, I cannot bear to watch it.

The entire thing is personalized.  The scene starts with a sign indicating the way to the ferry, and as we follow the crowd, the camera centers on a young couple, very much as the scene in "Rodan" does.  They walk to the boat, get on, and then the routine of launching a ferry, till it pulls out of the harbor, is realistically depicted.  If the viewer has been with the movie up till now, then it is known that  something is going to happen soon, as tension is being slowly built.

The boat pulls out, and characters, as in a play, are introduced.  The young couple again, an older woman in glasses, and a little girl, with a doll, who joins another woman--her mother or aunt?--along a bench.  Things are tranquil for another few seconds.  The camera returns to the young girl of the couple, pointing at something, as the camera cuts to the monster arising from the water, and a terrified scream off camera.  Panic shows on the faces of the personnel, the operators are seen turning the instruments furiously in fear, trying to evade a tragedy they probably know is inevitable.  The older woman practically chokes on her own tissue she is clutching, with fear, the young couple fearfully run from the side of the boat--but to where?  Then the camera cuts to the monster doing its thing, where it can be clearly seen as puppetry and stop animation by master Willis O'Brien, as this was one of his last films.

Once the monster is gone, the water is still, the music ominous, and various objects are seen floating; the saddest of which is the little girl's doll, which is where I always got upset.  This scene is  even more upsetting than the one in "Rodan."  The last shot is of a facially disfigured man, and the final message is brought home--since the monster, as the viewer already knows, is radioactive, the water itself is, too, so forget drowning; as soon as anyone hits that water, they are dead!!!!!!!!!

The emotionality of this scene stands out in a film that is just a basic giant monster movie.  The behemoth is not a bit personalized, though there are references to Biblical allegory, and a twist ending, suggesting another behemoth is on the way.  But never, at any time, did I feel sympathy for this monster.

But I defy you to watch the ferry boat scene without some kind of emotional reaction,  If there is none, maybe you need  a psychological litmus test, darlings!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Scenes like these made these films special and still watchable today!  If both scenes discussed here had been marketed and shown as short films alone, they most likely would have been hailed as brilliant!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Today, anything rising above the standard level of trash is considered brilliant, and that ain't good, dolls!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!