A mine disaster releases enormous ancient insects that go on a killing spree. As the safety officer, police, and eventually the military hunt the bugs, an earthquake releases a greater foe in the form of a supersonic flying reptile.
With the same director, producer, composer, and FX artist as Gojira/Godzilla, King of the Monsters, it isn’t a stretch to say that Rodan was Toho studio’s attempt to capitalize on the success of the big lizard. No harm in that; they made another boatload of cash, and giant monster fans got a pretty good movie.
The structure is better than that of most Toho films, with the first half playing out as a real horror film. There’s a lot of tension while men explore the mine where an unknown force is killing the employees. I can’t recall another “daikaju” film that built suspense half as well.
Of course the title, posters, trailers, and DVD box declare what’s coming: the second half is good old fashioned city crunching by some fast flying monsters. For a change, there’s a reason why bullets aren’t taking out the big beasties (the soldier’s keep missing). It all leads to an unusually emotional climax that might leave young kids and the sensitive a bit teary-eyed.
Rodan doesn’t look too bad, for a chicken puppet, primarily because we don’t see a great deal of him. On the few occasions that the camera lingers, the flaws are visible and a serious movie begins to feel silly. The big caterpillars are pretty cheap, but this is 1956, when few monsters actually appeared realistic. The miniatures and other FX are more than passable, enough so the shots were reused over and over in later monster films (whole segments were plopped into Godzilla’s Revenge).
I can’t think of a single Toho film that doesn’t have a painful plot element or massive jump in logic. Rodan gives us a guy going into shock and having amnesia until the plot needs him to recover, simply from seeing a big egg hatch. This isn’t a Lovecraftian sight that mortal mind’s cannot handle. It’s a big egg. The scientists and military come to some pretty interesting conclusions that just happen to be right, but in a movie where a multi-ton reptile can fly faster than the speed of sound, perhaps I shouldn’t sweat the details.
The American version has an opening narration about the dangerous of nuclear bombs over a montage of old A-bomb tests. Since Rodan has nothing to do with radiation (he’s just a dinosaur that’s lasted a long time in his egg), this is an unnecessary addition. The dubbing leaves a lot to be desired, but at least the voices are more interesting than normal, and some even sound Japanese. George Takei (of Star Trek fame) wrote in his autobiography that four people dubbed all of the characters: himself, Keye Luke, Paul Frees, and an unnamed woman. I wouldn’t doubt this. I recognized Paul Frees’ distinctive voice coming from three different characters.
Rodan would return many times, fighting against, or alongside of, Godzilla. He’s at his best here.