When Ghidorah: The Three Headed Monster begins, Japan is plagued
with an unusually strong heat wave in the middle of January. On top of this, the
country is also witness to a spectacular meteor shower on the same night when
Princess Salno is flying to Japan for a visit aboard her private jet. She’s
admiring the meteor showers when a mysterious voice commands her to go for a
walk…straight out of the plane. Just as the Princess takes the plunge, her plane
explodes in a vast fireball. Meanwhile, a group of scientists in the wild
discover one of the meteors that has crashed landed. They set up a research
station, where they realize that the meteor is growing in size. The Princess
abruptly turns up in the streets of Tokyo, claiming to be a prophet from Venus.
And all this occurs even before a single rubber monster can be seen!
The cop who was originally ordered to protect the Princess in Japan sees the
Venusian prophet girl in the paper and, recognizing her as the Princess, tries
to track her down--as does his sister, who works for a TV series that deals with
strange phenomena. The Venusian/prophet girl claims that Rodan will awaken, and
he soon does--breaking free from the side of a mountain in a scene that thrilled
me the first time I saw it as a small boy. Because of my earlier exposure to
this film as a kid, I can’t help but feel a fondness for it now, even though
it’s probably not the best of the original 1960s Japanese monster films, and the
new DVD release is something of a disappointment. The DVD release is issued in a
smart new package, with the film presented in it’s original Japanese, as well as
the English-language release.
But the problem is that the English-language release has no closed captions, or
English subtitles, for the deaf and hearing impaired. Only the Japanese version
has English subtitles, and this continued practice by Classic Media on their
Toho Master Collection (their DVD release of the original Gojira had the same
deal with the subtitles) is getting annoying--to the point where, unlike Gojira,
I did not bother to purchase King Ghidorah this time out. The film itself is
somewhat lame anyway, with the special effects not really standing up to the
test of time. The miniature effects--the mini-cities and vehicles--are
outstanding, as usual. But the monsters clearly look very fake this time out,
with Rodan obviously looking like a puppet in several shots. King Ghidorah was
never my favorite of the 1960 Godzilla movies (that would have to be Invasion Of
Astro Monster). Yet if Classic Media continues to ignore the deaf community,
then I’ll have no choice but to continue to ignore their future DVD releases.
--SF
