Son of Godzilla (Jun Fukuda, 1967)
Cast: Tadeo Takashima, Akira Kubo, Bibari Maeda, Akihiko Hirata, Yoshio Tsuchiya, Kenji Sahara, Ken'ichiro Maruyama, Seishiro Kuno, Yasuhiko Saijo, Haruo Nakajima, "Little Man" Machan. Screenplay: Shin'ichi Sekizawa, Kazue Shiba. Cinematography: Kazuo Yamada. Production design: Takeo Kita, Mutsuma Yoyoshima. Film editing: Ryohei Fujii. Music: Masaru Sato.
Cast: Tomonori Yazaki, Hideyo Yamamoto, Sachio Sakai, Kazuo Suzuki, Kenji Sahara, Machiko Naka, Shigki Ishida, Haruo Nakajima, "Little Man" Machan, Yu Sekita. Screenplay: Shin'ichi Sekizawa. Cinematography: Sokei Tomioka. Production design: Takeo Kita. Film editing: Masahisa Himi. Music: Kunko Miyauchi.
For all their violent destruction and anti-nuke subtext, it was always evident that the Godzilla films were in large part aimed at kids, as the toy market demonstrated. And as the big guy himself began to morph from a malevolent force that needed to be destroyed into a creature deserving of our understanding, it became inevitable that he should turn out to have a family. Hence Jun Fukuda's Son of Godzilla, in which a group of scientists visit a Pacific island (one of the remnants of Japan's ill-fated empire building) and encounter not only Godzilla and some fearsome giant mantises, but also his hatchling offspring, who would eventually be dubbed Minilla. Son of Godzilla is a pretty good installment in the series, centered on the usual human meddling with nature, in this case an attempt to manipulate the weather on the island. The plot creaks as it introduces the sole female member of the cast, the castaway Saeko (Bibari Maeda), daughter of an earlier researcher on the island, who is useful in warning the crew of its perils, including a giant spider called Kumonga. Eventually, Godzilla and son help fend off Kumonga and the mantises and allow the humans to escape, but not before their weather-control technology freezes the island, along with Godzilla and Minilla, who, we are assured, are merely in hibernation. All Monsters Attack returns us to the island, but only in the imagination of Ichiro (Tomonori Yazaki), a small boy who dreams of traveling there to meet Minilla and his father. Ichiro is a latchkey kid in the slums on the outskirts of an industrial city, who is often bullied by larger kids. Generally regarded as one of the weakest movies in the franchise, All Monsters Attack relies heavily on footage from earlier films, including Son of Godzilla. Director Ishiro Honda liked it, however, as the similarity of the name of the film's protagonist to his own suggests. It's explicitly a movie for kids, in which Minilla's discovery of his own ability to stand up to other monsters inspires Ichiro's triumph over his bullies.
