Ebirah, Horror of the Deep

Ebirah, Horror of the Deep (1966)
Toho Studios
Director: Fukuda Jun, Arikawa Sadamasa (special effects, although Tsuburaya Eiji gets the credit on-screen)
Also known as: Godzilla vs the Sea Monster (the US title).

In a remote mountain village, a priestess tells bereaved mother Kane yet again that her son Yata is not in the land of the dead. Yata’s ship was wrecked in the South Seas some time ago, but his body was never found. Distraught (and milking her one scene for all it’s worth), Kane refuses to listen to her naysaying neighbours and insists that Yata’s still alive. She’s sent her other son, Ryota, to demand that the authorities search for him.

Ryota doesn’t have much luck with the local council and has turned to the press instead. (A local radio news report later in the movie suggests this is somewhere near Hayama, in Kanagawa Prefecture.) Waiting in a newspaper office for a journalist to interview him, he sees a flyer advertising an endurance dance marathon. First prize is a yacht. Ryota hurries over to the venue, where the marathon is already in its third day and the number of contestants has dwindled from 300 to 15 (easier on the budget, I suppose). Two of the dancers, Ichino and Nita, drop out as he stands there, staring like a psychopath at the model of the prize yacht. The three of them drive down to the harbour to amuse themselves by looking at the boats tethered there. One, the Yahlen, catches their eye and they sneak on board, only to be surprised by a man with a rifle. This is Yoshimura, who accuses them of trespassing on private property but says they can stay until morning provided they let him get back to sleep. Why he does this is anyone’s guess. Naturally, he regrets it in the morning when it becomes clear that Ryota has commandeered the vessel to search for his brother, and they are now in the middle of the ocean and heading south.

From a local news report on the radio, Ichino and Nita deduce that Yoshimura is not the American owner of the Yahlen (as if the name painted in English on the side weren’t enough of a hint), which has been reported stolen, and that he has in fact committed a recent break-in and theft at a corporate office. Nonetheless, they’re stuck with each other. As the yacht’s supplies run low, they see some strange clouds on the horizon, sail into a storm and are attacked by a gigantic crab claw. The yacht is lost, along with Yoshimura’s briefcase full of stolen money. The four men are washed up onto the rocky shore of an island. They climb further inland in search of food.

At the top of a cliff, they find a cutlass with an ornate hilt, suggesting there might be other people around; they also find a dense forest offering a feast of bananas and orange citrus fruit. On the far coast of the island, they see a flashy modern-looking ship approaching, spraying some sort of yellow substance in its wake. Unable to catch the crew’s attention, they hack and slash their way down towards a dock, patrolled by armed men in uniform and with a scientific compound of some kind behind it. The ship pulls in and unloads a couple of dozen captive Pacific Islanders under armed guard. (Readers of this blog can probably already guess what I’m going to say about the portrayal of these captives: Japanese actors in brownface make-up and “primitive” costume. In a positive departure from previous kaiju eiga, they speak for themselves and do so in fluent Japanese, not in an exoticised way or a made-up pidgin dialect.) A few of the captives make a break for it along the beach and are shot at by pursuing soldiers and from a guard tower. Two of them surprisingly find a canoe in an inlet and set out to sea; the commander of the guards orders a cease fire. The fleeing men are stopped instead by a clawed sea creature, the same one that sank the Yahlen. It smashes the canoe, spears the two fugitives with its claw and submerges again. The islanders still on the dock recognise it as Ebirah.

Ebirah looks like a giant orange-red lobster. (“Ebi” could mean prawn or lobster, although I suspect non-Japanese viewers would be more familiar with its use as “prawn” in the context of sushi.) There’s not really much more to say about it.

While everyone else was watching the men trying to escape, one of the female islanders slipped off in the other direction. The guard commander missed this, but his superior officer, holed up in a high-tech office inside the compound, saw it all on camera and orders a search. The woman runs into the four Japanese men in the jungle, and all of them together evade the armed search party. They take shelter from a sudden thunderstorm inside a cave. Here the men learn that the woman, Dayo, is one of Mothra’s people from Infant Island and that the people who are holding the other Infant Islanders prisoner are called the Red Bamboo. She doesn’t know anything about who the Red Bamboo are or what they want. She also reveals that Ryota’s brother Yata is alive and well on Infant Island.

Dayo prays to Mothra for assistance but believes Mothra is sleeping. In a barred cavern inside the Red Bamboo’s compound we see the captive Infant Islanders also praying and singing. Their guards order them back to their work, which seems to consist of crushing the juice out of industrial quantities of a large, round, yellow fruit. Meanwhile on Infant Island, Mothra’s people sing and dance to try to rouse her. What we see of Infant Island is a dusty outdoor clearing ringed with palm trees, with a small stone altar to Mothra in the middle of it and Mothra herself lying inert beyond that. This is the imago form of Mothra, not an egg or larva, and she looks a bit moth-eaten (pun intended). The Shobijin (although once more, they aren't named as such) stand next to the altar. They’ve been recast! They still wear their hair long, but somewhat more bouffant on top, almost a mini-beehive. They wear long floral dresses and have yellow garlands around their beehives. They have a new song, and this time the lyrics are in Japanese.

Yoshimura suggests finding out more about what the Red Bamboo are up to, and the others are persuaded not to stay behind when they discover Godzilla sleeping in a deeper recess of the cave. They sneak into the Red Bamboo compound at night with the help of Yoshimura’s lockpick and find a nuclear reactor inside. Yoshimura surmises that the Red Bamboo are producing heavy water to make atomic weapons. After a couple of close calls with the guards, Nita is captured and Ryota is caught up in the ropes of a balloon that carries him away, while the other three return to the cave.

Nita is thrown in with the captive Infant Islanders, one of whom explains to him that the juice they’re extracting from the yellow fruit acts as a deterrent to Ebirah. This is why the Red Bamboo want more of it produced, and why their ships spray it around as they enter and leave the island harbour. Nita suggests sabotaging their plans by replacing the juice with a dummy batch made only from the leaves of the fruit.

Meanwhile, the balloon has safely carried Ryota all the way to Infant Island. He lands in the middle of a reprise of the earlier song and dance and is reunited with his brother. Yata hasn’t heard about the Red Bamboo (doesn’t he know anything about the abductions?) but the Shobijin describe them as the enemy, operating from their base on Letchi Island. (Is this perhaps meant to suggest “Litchi” or “Lychee”, in reference to the island’s unusual fruits? I admit that that’s a stretch. It could legitimately be rendered as “Retchi”, maybe suggesting to Anglo ears that it’s a wretched place. The American dub gives it the more straightforward name of “Devil's Island”.) Yata and Ryota propose to return to Letchi Island and fight to free the Infant Islanders. The Shobijin send them off with a supply of the yellow fruit juice, which they just happen to have to hand, and tell them to make a large net once they’ve got the islanders clear of the Red Bamboo compound – they’ll find out why when the time comes.

The Red Bamboo soldiers resume their search of Letchi Island for the fugitives. As they close in on the cave, Ichino suggests giving Godzilla a jolt of electricity, using the cutlass they found earlier as a jury-rigged lightning conductor. They know he’s just sleeping and not dead because they can hear his heartbeat (although it doesn't seem as deep or slow as one might expect). After three days of waiting, a storm brews up and wakes Godzilla as planned. This is right around the time Ryota and Yata are nearing the island, and their yellow fruit juice is knocked overboard by the storm, leaving them at the mercy of Ebirah. Fortunately for them, Godzilla and Ebirah are distracted by each other and fight. This first kaiju fight involves some comedic business with large rocks being batted back and forth, before the two monsters tussle in earnest and Godzilla eventually scares Ebirah away. During the fight, a stray rock alerts the Red Bamboo to Godzilla’s presence. They contact their headquarters and ask them to send in the air force.

Godzilla looks a bit like he did in Mothra vs Godzilla (1964), with large, round eyes, a broad, soft mouth and a puffy upper lip. He looks a bit froggy, to be honest – some commentators have suggested that he looks like Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster. His radioactive breath is a bit more misty than usual.

Yata and Ryota find the others in the jungle and lead them on a reckless expedition to the Red Bamboo compound. As they scatter with guards in pursuit, Dayo is cornered by Godzilla, who is now wandering around the clifftops. He takes an apparently benevolent interest in her and settles down in front of her. Just as he’s nodding off and the others are about to run in and rescue Dayo, an enormous bird swoops onto the scene. (Toho refers to this creature as the Giant Condor, although honestly it looks more like a ginger buzzard.) It viciously attacks Godzilla and is swiftly roasted for its trouble. It’s soon followed, however, by the Red Bamboo’s fighter planes. (Online sources suggest these are specifically Shenyang J-6 jets, a type used by the Chinese military, although they could plausibly be knock-offs or stolen.) Our heroes escape as Godzilla swats away the jets. He’s next seen stomping towards the Red Bamboo compound. Conventional artillery doesn’t deter him, although a high voltage electric fence does give him pause (which is in keeping with his previous films but makes his earlier revival by electricity seem even stranger). He soon smashes his way through, prompting the Red Bamboo officers to set the nuclear reactor to self-destruct and evacuate the island. Yata rushes into the compound and is able to free Nita and the captive Infant Islanders.

Stocked up with the false fruit juice, the Red Bamboo ship is unable to elude Ebirah and is quickly destroyed. Godzilla spots Ebirah and is eager for a rematch, which ends when he pulls off Ebirah’s claws. He tauntingly clacks one of the claws as Ebirah swims away. Meanwhile, after a lot more chanting and dancing back on Infant Island, Mothra has finally woken up and is flying to Letchi Island. (And on a small side note, this hardly feels like enough effort to earn Mothra the equal billing she gets with Godzilla and Ebirah in the film’s original Japanese title.) As instructed, the freed islanders have constructed a large raft suspended in netting. Godzilla wades ashore in order to attack Mothra, but Mothra fends him off not just by flapping her wings at him but by actually barging her wing into his chest. She picks up the net and carries the humans off the island. Godzilla jumps into the sea just before the Red Bamboo’s reactor blows up and destroys the island. The survivors are delighted to see that Godzilla also got away, since he helped them defeat the villains.

Actor-watch first. Yoshimura, the criminal with a heart of gold, is played by Takarada Akira, most recently seen as the lead Japanese astronaut in Invasion of Astro-Monster (1965). Tazaki Jun, the Red Bamboo leader, was also in Astro-Monster playing Takarada’s boss and was in charge of the JSDF forces in The War of the Gargantuas (1966). The Red Bamboo guard commander is played by Hirata Akihiko, the eyepatch-wearing Dr Serizawa in Godzilla (1954) – and he’s even wearing an eyepatch in this movie! Dayo, the Infant Islander with the highest billing, is played by Mizuno Kumi, who seems to just pop up in everything around this time.

When discussing Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964), I mentioned the geopolitical interpretations some commentators have made about the Godzilla movies and that I felt there was plausible deniability around Ghidorah being some kind of stand-in for China. I don’t think there’s that deniability in Ebirah, Horror of the Deep. I mean, the name “Red Bamboo” is a bit of a giveaway. It’s never stated outright whether the villains of this movie are supposed to be actually Chinese or some kind of terrorist organisation, but they do have a very convincing military uniform as well as a navy and an air force, and that air force is flying Chinese fighter jets or a very close approximation. The Red Bamboo also have an active nuclear weapons programme, which might not be beyond the kind of villainous organisation you might find in a James Bond movie around this time but was certainly true of China, who’d been testing fission bombs since October 1964. What’s more, Chairman Mao had launched the Cultural Revolution seven months before this movie was released, which might have ramped up Japanese anxiety about the militancy of the Chinese Communist Party.

Relations between Japan and China would eventually be eased somewhat by the “Treaty of Peace and Friendship between Japan and China” signed in 1978, two years after Mao’s death.

The other big thing to say about Ebirah, which is fairly well known already, is that this started out as a King Kong movie. Getting the rights to Kong now involved talking to Rankin/Bass Animated Entertainment, who were developing a King Kong cartoon series that would premiere on American TV in September 1966, and in Japan in the same month as Ebirah’s cinematic release. The tie-in potential was obvious. (Funnily enough, the animation for The King Kong Show (1966-67) was created by the animation wing of one of Toho’s rivals, Toei Company Ltd.) But The King Kong Show, which was similar to but not as polished as Hanna-Barbera’s later animated Godzilla (1978-79), included some distinctive original elements that didn’t mesh neatly enough with the proposed script for Ebirah. Rankin/Bass objected, so Kong was replaced with Godzilla. Toho would go on to make King Kong Escapes (1967), which actively used a couple of those elements from the animated series.

And it’s not hard to spot the joins. Godzilla can usually be found in the sea, not sleeping in a cave. That one of the characters suggests reviving him with electricity, and that this works, is in line with minor plot elements of King Kong v Godzilla (1962) even if it has no precedent in the American Kong canon. Once again the plot involves some sort of fruit juice that sedates kaiju, yellow instead of red this time (although, then again, magical juice also featured in Mothra (1961)). Shots of Godzilla picking up boulders and lobbing them at Ebirah or at parts of the Red Bamboo compound make more sense when you imagine Kong doing it. Godzilla calms down and stares doe-eyed at Dayo in exactly the way Kong would, and exactly the way Godzilla generally doesn’t.

That Godzilla is more heroic than usual here, that he seems to take at least some interest in the different human factions on the island, that he’s so humanly expressive and that the kaiju fights look so much like choreographed wrestling matches doesn’t necessarily add to the list of anomalies. Yes, these are all things that would have suited a Kong movie, but they’re also somewhat true of Godzilla in Invasion of Astro-Monster. Perhaps we might say that Astro-Monster, fortuitously in hindsight, laid some of the groundwork for Godzilla’s shift in personality here.

Ebirah is a movie that seems targeted at a youth audience, as distinct from the child audience subsequent movies are evidently aiming for. There’s all that surf rock in the incidental music for a start, as well as the dancing endurance contest early on. I think our heroes suggest the age bracket the filmmakers might have been aiming for. What fashion there is consists of the young men’s polo shirts and brightly coloured jackets (terrible camouflage when trying to hide from foreign soldiers, by the way) and the hairdos and dresses the Shobijin are wearing, which wouldn’t have looked at all out of place in a contemporary domestic scene in any other Toho movie.

That later Godzilla movies didn’t continue to chase this audience but went instead, and with some blatancy, for younger cinemagoers could be partly a response to the Gamera movies. Daiei had made a bid to break into the kaiju market and enjoyed some success with child viewers, and Toho would certainly have wanted to compete. But their biggest domestic rival wasn’t Daiei – it was their own expert special effects director.

Tsuburaya Eiji is still credited on Ebirah, but he didn’t oversee its tokusatsu sequences himself – he was already halfway out the door and building up his own TV production company. He’d founded Tsuburaya Productions in 1963 as an independent effects company, and in 1966 the in-house productions started in earnest. Ultra Q (1966), which might be thought of as a kind of kaiju-heavy Japanese precursor to The X-Files (1993-2002), aired across the first half of 1966, and Ultraman (original series 1966-67) debuted in the second half of the year. The anthology nature of these shows and the rapid turnaround of TV production meant that Tsuburaya could quickly test and iterate new effects techniques. And if something didn’t work, the viewers at home would soon forget about it and there’d be something different on screen a week later. Kids hungry for novelty could now get their fix of slambang monster violence at home on TV practically every week, so the film studios would have to work harder to get their attention and, through pester power, their parents’ ticket money.

Ultraman was a massive success – there’s been a new Ultraman series or special on Japanese TV in more of the 58 years since than not, and inevitably it spawned some very successful imitators. Toei Company Ltd enjoyed great success with their Kamen Rider (original series 1971-73) and Super Sentai (original series 1975-77) franchises. Toho would be hard pressed to keep up.