It Gets Silly: EBIRAH, HORROR OF THE DEEP (1966)

[00:00:01]What happens when you take a beach blanket bingo style island adventure, add in an evil organization that feels like a rejected James Bond villain, assemble an absurdly random collection of supposed heroes, and then for the climax, add in some kaiju monsters?

[00:00:19]Well, you get the first of many deliciously goofy Godzilla movies, of course. Strap yourselves in, ladies and gentlemen, because today we've got terrorists, slave girls, a safe cracker, a nuclear bomb, and a giant lobster.

[00:00:34]That's right. We're going to talk about Ebirah, horror of the deep.

[00:00:43]>> [music] [music] >> The inhabitants of Infant Island are being kidnapped and enslaved by the Red Bamboo, a terrorist organization with plans for world domination. The Red Bamboo has set up operations on a different island nearby, where it is protected by Ebirah, a giant lobster that kills anybody who tries to get in or out of the area. When a ragtag group of thieves are shipwrecked on the island's shores, they come face to face with their own morals and decide to help the slaves, only to discover Godzilla resting in the island's enormous caverns. They hatch a wild plan to wake the atomic dinosaur, [music] but can they survive the ensuing chaos long enough to free the Infant Islanders and escape with their lives, or will the Red Bamboo set off a nuclear bomb and lay waste to them all?

[00:01:52]Despite being one of Japan's highest earners of 1965, Invasion of Astro Monster underperformed the high expectations set by its predecessors in Toho's Godzilla franchise. And by then, it was obvious Godzilla had a franchise all his own, having slain Toho's other kaiju in popularity to become both a homegrown favorite and an international star. However, the guys running Toho were starting to worry that a change in direction was needed to prevent increasingly diminishing returns. So, they pivoted away from Godzilla and back to King Kong.

[00:02:31]They still had two more years on a licensing agreement for the big ape with RKO that had already produced King Kong versus Godzilla. And they had been approached by Videocraft International, an animation production company out of New York that had just hit it big with their television special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

[00:02:50]Videocraft International would, in 1968, become better known by the name Rankin-Bass Productions, which is what I'm going to continue to refer to it as from now on.

[00:03:02]Rankin-Bass had already struck a deal with the Japanese animation studio Toei to begin production on The King Kong Show, set to premiere in the autumn of 1966.

[00:03:12]And knowing about Toho's deal with RKO, the big wigs at Rankin-Bass thought it might be neat for the Godzilla studio to make a King Kong movie to coincide with it.

[00:03:23]Toho liked the idea, and so the job of creating a new King Kong movie went to writer Shinichi Sekizawa, a veteran tokusatsu screenwriter who had penned the likes of Battle in Outer Space, Mothra, and most importantly, King Kong versus Godzilla, along with all the other Godzilla films made after the first two.

[00:03:45]Originally titled Operation Robinson Crusoe King Kong versus Ebirah, it was rejected by Rankin-Bass for not being faithful to the spirit of their upcoming cartoon.

[00:03:56]Now, as an aside, the Toho movie Rankin Bass did eventually approve of was King Kong Escapes. And you have to wonder how that movie was any more or less, {quote} {unquote}, faithful than King Kong versus Ebirah would have been.

[00:04:12]Toho though, still thought that Sekizawa's script was good and worthy of producing. So, on a budget of 120 million yen, moderately less than the budget for Astro Monster, the studio tapped Jun Fukuda to direct. The director of Rodan and the popular Young Guy series, along with the Japanese James Bond parody Iron Finger, Fukuda had proven up to the challenge, even if his name didn't hold as much weight as Ishiro Honda's.

[00:04:39]However, according to Fukuda, by the time he got the job, King Kong had already been swapped out for another giant creature. And that creature was Godzilla.

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[00:05:44]The The that would eventually be known as Ebirah Horror of the Deep reunites the hero and villain actors from the original Godzilla, Akira Takarada and Akihiko Hirata.

[00:05:55]Takarada plays Yoshimura, the professional thief who decides to choose a more moral life in the end, while Hirata once again dons an eye patch to play the Red Bamboo Captain Ryui, renamed to Yamoto in the English language dub.

[00:06:10]The female lead, the island girl Dayo, originally went to the actress Noriko Takahashi, but she had to bow out during production due to appendicitis and was replaced by Toho staple Kumi Mizuno, who had previously played the female leads in Matango, Frankenstein vs. Baragon, and Invasion of Astro Monster.

[00:06:31]Meanwhile, Mothra's twin fairies, the Shobijin, are no longer played by the Peanuts, but instead by the similar musical duo of Yuko and Yoko Okada, also known as Pair [music] Bambi.

[00:06:45]The only other actors of note, or at least the only ones I recognize, are Jun Tazaki as the Red Bamboo base commander >> [music] >> and suit actor Shoichi Hirose as this unfortunate slave.

[00:07:01]And speaking of suit actors, Haruo Nakajima once again dons the Godzilla suit while Ebirah is played by Hiroshi Sekita.

[00:07:10]The special effects were credited to Eiji Tsuburaya, but by this point, Tsuburaya was busy with his new self-titled production company and only really served in a hands-off supervisory capacity. Instead, the bulk of the work on Ebirah was directed by Sadamasa Arakawa. Due to the tighter budget, a lot of older suits and models were repurposed. For example, the giant condor that attacks Godzilla, the Dai Condoru, was a remodeled Rodan model, while the Godzilla suit was the Daisenso Goji suit from Astro Monster, albeit with a different head in many scenes due to the fact that the original head was being used by Tsuburaya for an episode of Ultraman.

[00:07:55]Incidentally, when Godzilla scratches his nose in this scene, that's an odd to Fukuda's young guy movies.

[00:08:02]The Ebirah suit was built in two halves, an upper half for Sekita to perform in when the creature is partially underwater, and a lower half that could be attached whenever the beast is seen in full.

[00:08:14]For the scenes in which Godzilla and Ebirah fight completely beneath the surface, some shots were faked by filming in slow motion through glass, while others were done for real, with a suit actors forced to wear breathing equipment and endure the frigid cold.

[00:08:30]Nakajima, ever the trouper, didn't complain about it at the time, but he would later say that it was one of his least comfortable performances, which is saying a lot considering he had his genitals badly burned when his suit caught fire during Varan the Unbelievable.

[00:08:48]As for the music, producer Tomoyuki Tanaka wanted the great Akira Ifukube to return, but Fukuda argued that he needed to set a new tone with his movie and preferred to hire Masaru Sato, who had not only worked extensively with Akira Kurosawa, but had also done the score for Godzilla Raids Again.

[00:09:08]Fukuda eventually got what he wanted, but Tanaka was reportedly furious about it.

[00:09:18]Ebirah, Horror of the Deep, or as it was known at the time, Godzilla, Ebirah, Mothra: Great Duel in the South Seas, released in December of 1966 in Japan, where it was paired on a double bill with the romantic comedy This Is Youth.

[00:09:33]It's tough to nail down exactly how well it did, but with some estimates giving a domestic box office gross of around 300 million yen, combined with its reduced budget, Ebirah was certainly more profitable for Toho than Invasion of Astro-Monster had been.

[00:09:50]In America, [music] Ebirah didn't get a theatrical release, but instead went straight to television in 1968 under the title Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster.

[00:10:01]The movie has a mixed legacy among fans, no doubt because it is seen as a major tonal shift away from the serious Godzilla of a decade earlier.

[00:10:11]Godzilla movies had already been getting more and more family-friendly, which is the reason Ishiro Honda cited for walking away from them, but with its rockabilly soundtrack, whimsical plot, colorful sets, and island setting, Ebirah is seen as the moment Godzilla went all in on silliness, a lot of which can be blamed on the fact that the part of Godzilla was originally written for King Kong, which is evidenced by his being powered by electricity, his apparent fascination with a human female, and his overall sleepiness throughout the film.

[00:10:46]And I get it. Godzilla doesn't even appear on screen until the 30-minute mark, where he's unconscious, and he doesn't wake up and do anything until nearly an hour in, which is crazy considering the movie is only an hour and a half long.

[00:11:01]The first act feels incredibly aimless and haphazard. There's a guy looking for his lost brother who goes to a dance contest to get a boat, only to wind up befriending two of the dance contestants who convince him to steal a boat from somebody who it turns out had already stolen it, and then they wind up on this mysterious island with a giant lobster and inexplicable weather events guarding it, where they find a bunch of bad guys with a nuclear bomb using slave labor to make a chemical that can control the aforementioned giant lobster. Oh, and then there's Mothra for some reason, who like Godzilla is asleep for nearly the whole movie.

[00:11:41]I've had fever dreams that are less random than that.

[00:11:44]And when Godzilla does finally get going, it feels more like he's going through the motions, fighting Ebirah because well, just because. And then he attacks the Red Bamboo base, not because they are using nuclear power, but because he feels like it, I guess.

[00:12:01]Then at the very end, the writers try to shoe in some unearned character development and make some half-baked anti-nuclear message that doesn't feel thematically relevant.

[00:12:12]>> Well, anyway, maybe I'll go straight from now on. Oh.

[00:12:18]>> [laughter] >> So, given all that, you probably think I'm going to slam this movie. But, I have to admit, I actually kind of love it. Let's be clear here. Whether you prefer serious Godzilla or silly Godzilla, all Godzillas are great.

[00:12:36]Except for the giant iguana, but we don't need to talk about that. And this movie wins me over every time I watch it. Sure, it's cartoonish as all get out. Remember, it started life as a movie tie-in to a literal cartoon show, and sure, there's not a lot of Godzilla in this Godzilla movie, but it's just straight-up fun. Like I said in my Independence Day review, sometimes all a movie is trying to do is entertain you, and if it does, that's all that matters.

[00:13:07]Ebirah entertains me. So, in my estimation, that makes it a sci-fi classic.

[00:13:15]And that's all for today, my fellow Earthlings. What do you think of Godzilla getting silly? Let me know in the comments, and while you're down there, don't forget to hit those like and subscribe buttons. Thank you for watching, and until next time when we'll try to track down a room that will grant wishes, this is the Unapologetic Geek telling you to never be ashamed of what you love.

[00:13:37]As long as you're not hurting anybody.

[00:13:44]>> [music] [music] [music] >> You see, we have to use our brains, understand?

[00:13:59]Ah.

[00:14:01]>> [music] [music] [music]