Rodan (film)
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| Rodan | |
|---|---|
 Rodan (1956) |
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| Directed by | Ishirō Honda |
| Produced by | Tomoyuki Tanaka Frank King (USA) |
| Written by | Ken Kuronuma (original story) Takeshi Kimura Takeo Murata |
| Starring | Kenji Sahara Yumi Shirakawa |
| Music by | Akira Ifukube |
| Cinematography | Isamu Ashida |
| Distributed by | Toho |
| Release date(s) | December 26, 1956 |
| Running time | 82 min |
| Language | Japanese |
| Followed by | Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster |
| IMDb profile | |
Rodan, released in Japan as Sora no Daikaijū: Rodan (空の大怪獣 ラドン Sora no Daikaijū Radon?, lit. "Giant Monster of the Sky: Rodan"), is a 1956 tokusatsu film produced by Toho Studios. It was the studio's first daikaiju eiga filmed in color (though Toho's first color tokusatsu film, Madame White Snake, was released earlier that year). It is one of a series of "giant monster" movies that found an audience outside Japan (especially in America). The first were serious horror and adventure stories, before the genre devolved to the level of "kiddie" entertainment in the 1960s and 1970s. For a time the film was released in the U.S. under the title Rodan! The Flying Monster.
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[edit] Plot
Rodan follows in the footsteps of other Japanese monster movies, such as Godzilla, which involve a giant monster being awoken from an ancient hibernation by human beings. In Rodan, miners digging far into the earth stumble across a clutch of giant caterpillar-like insects, which viciously attack several of the miners and prompt a government investigation into the matter. The giant bugs turn out to be little more than food for two gigantic flying beasts called Rodans, similar to pteranodons but far larger and more powerful, who hatch from giant eggs and proceed to terrorize the entire world.
Rodan is notable for its action scenes, which are surprisingly well filmed and still excite audiences today. Unlike most of the Toho monster movies, which featured "action" scenes consisting of roaring monsters lumbering across the landscape at a stupefyingly slow pace, the battle scenes and monster rampage in Rodan are thrilling, exciting, and fast-paced; it is much easier for the audience to suspend disbelief and accept the low-tech special effects here. The emphasis on action and thrills, and willingness to scare the audience, has made Rodan one of the more enduring entries in daikaiju eiga.
In the original Japanese version this daikaiju is called "Radon", a truncation of "pteranodon"). While it is commonly believed that the Japanese Radon became Rodan for the international release due to a translation error, it is likely that the name was deliberately changed to avoid confusion with the chemical element radon. The name Radon is, however, preserved in the English-dubbed version of Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II (1993).
[edit] Cast
- Kenji Sahara ................. Shigeru Kamura
- Yumi Shirakawa ................. Kiyo
- Akihiko Hirat ................. Professor Kashiwagi
- Akio Kobori ................. Chief Nishimura
- Yoshifumi Tajima ................. Izeki
- Ren Imaizumi ................. Dr. Sunagawa
- Rinsaku Ogata ................. Goro
- Jiro Suzukawa ................. Yoshi
- Yasuko Nakata ................. Female Honeymooner
- Kiyoharu Onaka ................. Male Honeymooner
- Hideo Mihara ................. Military Commander
- Kanta Kisaragi ................. Suteyan
- Ichirô Nakaya ................. Senkichi
[edit] U.S. release
Rodan was quite successful in its first run in the United States. It was the first Japanese movie to receive general release on the West Coast to strong box-office. 1 It later received the biggest TV advertising campaign given to a film to that date on New York's NBC flagship station WRCA-TV. 10-, 20- and 60-second commercials were shown for a week before the film's opening.2 It grossed an estimated $450,000 to $500,000 during its opening weekend at 79 theaters in the New York metropolitan area. Several theatrical circuits, including RKO, announced that Rodan broke the records for a science-fiction film. 3
[edit] Footnotes
- Note 1: "Toho's Science-Fiction Team Completes Another Thriller; Tint Entitled 'The H-Man'" Far East Film News May 30, 1958, p.15.
- Note 2: "Rodan" Far East Film News April 4, 1958, p.4.
- Note 3: "Toho's 'Rodan' Hits Jackpot in New York" Far East Film News March 28, 1958, p.15.
