Gorath (1962)

directed by Ishirō Honda

Japan

88 minutes

4 stars out of 5

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I am writing this with the space pilot song stuck in my head.

I rewatched Gorath for other reasons, but I'd forgotten that it also takes place around New Year's/Christmas, so it's an appropriate watch for this time of year, or any time of year, because it's great. This is also my first time watching it both A. All in one sitting (I got weirded out the first time and turned it off, then finished it much later) and B. Not stoned. While I continue to advocate for watching tokusatsu while you're high, I can think about the film itself much more clearly in a state where the English dialogue doesn't give me the giggles.

The first fifteen minutes or so of this are a feast of practical effects. I'm very surprised that this movie is so obscure among Western fans, because it contains some of Toho's best miniature work by far. We open with the spacecraft Hayabusa, on a research mission to find out about a rogue wandering star that Earth's scientists have been keeping an eye on. Everything is normal until the final approach, when it rapidly becomes clear that the star is far more dangerous than anyone on the crew could have anticipated. There's a great moment when the radar picks up an unknown spacecraft being swallowed up by the star and destroyed, and the crewmen realize that this is also to be their fate. These opening minutes set the overall emotional tone for the rest of the film, and are peak Ishirō Honda: a group of brave people realizing their own impending doom, and trying to find solace in what their deaths may contribute to the pool of humanity's knowledge. Jun Tazaki's captain character stone-facedly crying is a real gut-puncher, and Tazaki's presence can be a bit of a "Drew Barrymore in Scream" moment if you've only watched a couple of Toho movies and are used to seeing him as some stoic captain or commander who sticks around, if peripherally, for the whole film.

Back on Earth, there's revelry in the streets as a new year dawns. Setting the film around the new year is a clever way to emphasize what year it is, and make it very clear to the viewers that this is the future - the film takes place over the course of several years, from 1976 to 1982 - but it's also a good metaphor for the passage of time in general. As the calendar turns over, the power of science and technology also continues to advance. It may seem silly to viewers watching this over 40 years later, but I think this portrayal of 1982 is actually a really nuanced idea of the future: the clothing and culture is the same, humans are still humans, but the technology is different. (One thing I really loved was the video phones. Imagine being on a Zoom call with Takashi Shimura.)

But despite people getting on with their lives, the threat of Gorath - which is what the wandering star is designated as - looms. Earth is directly in its path, and there's seemingly nothing anyone can do about its impending arrival in seven-hundred-odd days. Surprisingly, this exact premise is really not unfamiliar within tokusatsu; I can think of several television episodes off the bat in which a rogue planet or star threatens the Earth, either randomly or through the bad guys' evil plot of the week, and the hero or heroes need to stop it. Hell, Warning From Space is basically this movie but with aliens. But having the premise stretched to a full film, helmed by Ishirō Honda, makes Gorath stand out from the rest. There's a real sense of anxiety that hangs over the whole film, no matter if what's happening is a calm moment or a scene at the South Pole base where jets are being attached to Earth to try to move it out of Gorath's path.

The science in this is also patently ridiculous, some of the most absurd I've seen on film, but that didn't bother me in the slightest and I would hope it wouldn't seriously bother anybody else either. You've got a little cushion of time as an excuse to suspend your disbelief: it's the future, people can do all kinds of weird future stuff, maybe someday we really will be able to fly the planet around like a spaceship. But more than that, I just think this movie is so good - and so obviously intended as science fiction, as a speculation of the future, and not as fact - that I don't think one should get too caught up in fake science.

Unfortunately, if anything bogs this film down, it's pacing. It feels like the movie ends around the one-hour mark, and everything after that (excluding the jubilant finale when Earth manages to skirt the threat of Gorath) is mostly padding. The movie contains one of the most (in)famous examples of what I've heard called a "Tanaka Kaiju"; I.E. a kaiju that's only in the movie because Tomoyuki Tanaka, the producer, wanted it in there. Manda from Atragon is another example, but Manda works far, far better as a plot device than the extremely shoehorned-in walrus-reptile, Maguma. Its appearance comes right when the lull in the action starts, and it is THE most jarring thing; up until then the film had been so serious, and afterwards it still is, but now there's a giant walrus. I do love Maguma, and I think it's a shame that it was derided and edited out of the U.S. release of the film, but I have to admit that it does feel really out of place.

I think the thing that makes this movie what it is is the weight given to Gorath. Even though it is a non-sentient being, it's treated almost as a god, something that inspires a quasi-religious terror in those who witness it firsthand. Akira Kubo's pilot character, Kanai, in one of the best scenes of the whole film, goes on a solo approach to the star and views it head-on from dangerously close, and it gives him amnesia. Watching this part high really messed me up. It's not as effective as the amnesia subplot in Rodan, but it's still great. The effects used to create Gorath, this fiery, spitting demon planet senselessly devouring all in its path, are incredibly convincing when coupled with the characters' genuine reactions of horror. There are lighthearted moments too, though - for example, I really like when Kanai and his pilot buddies make up some flagrant lie about their captain killing himself so the Space Agency brass will tell them why their mission was scrapped - and they create a nice balance between the constant threat of Gorath and the persistence of the human desire to goof around.

This is just peak mid-century sci-fi as far as I'm concerned. I will not hear criticism of it as cheesy. That's something I sometimes don't even say about movies that don't have a giant walrus in them. Gorath itself made another appearance in Godzilla: Final Wars, where the Xilliens attempt to drop it on Godzilla and he one-shots it and the whole affair is over in like a minute, but the film it comes from is largely glossed over, perhaps due to the poor initial reception when it got its English dub. Which wasn't the film's fault, by the way - weird cuts and editing decisions on the part of its international distributors, including just straight up adding seven minutes of educational content to the beginning of the film, detracted from its strong core. I hope this gets an official DVD release with good subtitles someday, but until then, it's worth digging around for it.