In Memoriam: Akira Takarada, Godzilla’s Favorite Co-star

Japanese actor Akira Takarada passed away in Japan on March 14 at the age of 87. He had a long career stretching back to 1954, ending only with his death (a 68-year career!). He was under contract to Toho Pictures during the 1950s and ’60s and starred in some of their best-known films, including many Godzilla and other giant monster and sci-fi films. At the age of 20, he starred in the very first Godzilla film, GOJIRA (1954) and would be seen in its American re-edit, GODZILLA, KING OF THE MONSTERS (1956). He would appear in several more films by the same director, Ishiro Honda, including MOTHRA VS. GODZILLA, GODZILLA VS. MONSTER ZERO, KING KONG ESCAPES, and LATITUDE ZERO. Toho Pictures otherwise treated him as a light leading man and put him in several comedies and musicals, as well as at least one gangster picture where he sings some tunes. He was a staunch hero in the sci-fi films and an amiable, likeable handsome young lad in the other films. However, he revealed a wider range of acting ability when he did dramatic roles for directors Mikio Naruse and Yasujiro Ozu.

Life Meets Godzilla

Life Magazine recently published a special issue devoted to Godzilla, which I found in the magazine rack at my local Walgreen’s. After thumbing through it, I decided to purchase it despite the excessive price of $14.99, since it seemed to be a rare instance of a high-profile mainstream American media outlet covering a Japanese pop culture phenomenon. Granted, it was timed to promote the recent Warner Bros. release of the latest Hollywood Godzilla movie, GODZILLA VS. KONG, but there were enough pictures of the original Japanese Godzilla in the magazine to pique my interest. (Last I checked, Life Magazine and Warner Bros. were both part of the same corporate empire, although that may have changed recently.)

Gamera, Frankenstein, Sabata and Zatoichi: The Genre Films of 1970

50 years ago, in 1970, neighborhood theaters offered quite a varied landscape of cinematic fare, although it took me some time to find it all. I managed to see lots of 1970 releases in theaters in the years 1970-72. (Films sometimes took months or years to reach my local theaters.) Most of these were Hollywood films of varied genres or American independents. I would see everything from PATTON to M*A*S*H, KELLY’S HEROES to ZABRISKIE POINT, FIVE EASY PIECES to LOVE STORY and RIO LOBO to WATERMELON MAN, sometimes on double features! It would take years of TV watching, visits to revival theaters and, much later, cable TV and home video, before I caught up with all the great foreign genre films released in 1970, including England’s Hammer horror, Hong Kong’s Shaw Bros. martial arts adventures, French crime thrillers, Japanese samurai, Japanese kaiju, and Italian westerns. One of my favorites from the year is one I first saw in 2018. So there are always new ones to be discovered or rediscovered after decades.

From Wake Island to Gamera to Perry Mason

In 1942, Hollywood made WAKE ISLAND to commemorate one of the earliest battles in the Pacific War. As depicted in the film, the American marines on Wake Island, vastly outnumbered by attacking Japanese in the early months of the war, fought back valiantly for weeks before finally being overrun and killed. In the film, Brian Donlevy plays Major Geoffrey Caton, the Marine commander on the island, and Albert Dekker plays Shad McClosky, a civilian engineer heading all construction on the island. McClosky resents having to take orders from Caton, but when the fighting starts, he demands weapons for himself and his men. Caton says no. When the Japanese finally storm the beaches en masse, Caton and McClosky man a machine gun together in a foxhole and fight to the death.

American Stars in Japanese Films: LATITUDE ZERO (1969)

LATITUDE ZERO, directed by Ishiro Honda, is an unusual film in Toho Pictures’ filmography of sci-fi monster films. It features four Hollywood stars among the main cast members and one American newcomer in a significant role. It has a Jules Verne-style science fiction setting located underwater far from Japan. There is no central monster to be fought, just a series of smaller, lesser monsters, all rather unformidable and all in the employ of a mad scientist who can’t quite make the best use of them. Production-wise, the film’s most unique feature is the decision to shoot the entire film in English with synchronized sound, which meant all the Japanese actors with speaking parts had to be competent enough in English to make themselves understood. There may have been some post-dubbing to correct a rough patch here and there, but what you’re hearing on the English soundtrack are the actors’ actual voices, mostly recorded live on the set.

American Stars in Japanese Films: Nick Adams in GODZILLA VS. MONSTER ZERO

 

Nick Adams was the first American star to go to Japan to appear in Japanese films that would get significant distribution in the U.S. He made three films there and I wrote about his first, FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD (1965), here on July 8, 2013. His second was GODZILLA VS. MONSTER ZERO (1965), as the film is widely known today, although its original U.S. title was MONSTER ZERO and its official English title, as decreed by Toho Pictures, was INVASION OF ASTRO-MONSTER. (The original Japanese title, KAIJU DAISENSO, is translated as THE GREAT MONSTER WAR. KAIJU DAISENSO remains the best-sounding and most dramatic title.) Americans had appeared in two earlier Godzilla films, but only in scenes added to the re-edited versions shown in the U.S., most notably GODZILLA, KING OF THE MONSTERS (1956), in which scenes of Raymond Burr, as American reporter Steve Martin, were newly written and shot for the American release version two years after its original release in Japan under the title, GOJIRA (1954). The other one was KING KONG VS. GODZILLA (1963), in which a few scenes with American character actors were added to the U.S. release version. Adams was a co-star of MONSTER ZERO right from the start, in both its Japanese-language and English-dubbed versions. Adams’ third film in Japan, THE KILLING BOTTLE (1967), is a detective film that was never released in the U.S. although it was, according to IMDB, dubbed into English.

American Stars in Japanese Films: Nick Adams in FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD (1965)

Today, July 8, is the 160^th anniversary of Commodore Matthew Perry’s arrival in Japan to begin the process of “opening up” the island nation to trade with the West, thus beginning a process that eventually, after some serious tears in the relationship, gave us giant monster movies, anime, and J-pop, among other things. On the occasion of this anniversary, I’ve decided to focus on a landmark film which marked the first significant cinematic collaboration between the U.S. and Japan, FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD (1965). While it wasn’t the first co-production between the two countries (I believe that would be TOKYO FILE 212, from 1951), nor is it the first Japanese movie to import an American star (more on that below), it was the first such film to make a real dent on the international market.

 

American Stars in Japanese Movies: MESSAGE FROM SPACE (1978)

MESSAGE FROM SPACE (1978) was designed as Japan’s answer to STAR WARS. It was directed by Kinji Fukasaku, who’d directed THE GREEN SLIME nine years earlier (see my entry of April 22, 2012). I remember seeing it in a neighborhood theater (the Loew’s Paradise) in late 1978 and enjoying it a great deal. On a technical level it may not be as good as STAR WARS, but it certainly pleased me a lot more. I was taken with the baroque imagery created by its mix of historical styles in the design of its spacecraft, costumes, sets and spacescapes. That space-traveling sailing ship was the clincher.

I was also moved by Vic Morrow’s performance as Garuda, a world-weary ex-General who’d resigned from the Earth Federation’s military after losing his R2D2-like robot sidekick, Beba I, and getting reprimanded for making unauthorized use of a spaceship to send the deceased robot into orbit. ( It’s never clear how the first robot “died” or why he simply couldn’t be repaired. Besides, Garuda’s got another one, Beba II, all lined up to take his place.) Morrow invests his character, a disillusioned old warrior, with a level of emotional layering that we don’t often find in American characters created for Japanese films.

American Stars in Japanese Films, Part 1: THE GREEN SLIME (1968)

I remember seeing the trailers for THE GREEN SLIME back in 1969 and being put off somewhat by the cheesy-looking design of the title monsters, so I didn’t make the effort to see it back then. I was a high school sophmore at the time and more interested in “serious” sci-fi, such as 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, PLANET OF THE APES and…BARBARELLA!  I eventually saw it on TV and kicked myself for not seeing it in a theater when I had the chance. It’s a film that’s historically important for several reasons. It was the first U.S.-Japan co-production shot in Japan with an entirely Caucasian cast and the first with more than one name actor from the west. It was the first science fiction film directed by Kinji Fukasaku, who would make two other significant entries in the genre, MESSAGE FROM SPACE and VIRUS, both also featuring American stars. (He’s been more famous in the past decade for his final film, BATTLE ROYALE, 2000.) The film was released in December 1968 in Japan and in May 1969 in the U.S.

I have a still from the film, scanned here, as well as screen grabs from the Warner Archive DVD, which I watched for this review.

Robert Horton, in dark blue uniform, on the far left; Luciana Paluzzi, with stethoscope, on the right, in THE GREEN SLIME