DOGORA (Ishirô Honda, 1964)

Jellyfish are not my cup of tea, and if there’s anything worse in the world than slimy jellyfish it is slimy giant space monster jellyfish. But it’s our own fault; that is to say, the radiation that resulted from the A-bombs that the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki have generated disgusting mutations of what were already disgusting jellyfish, and now not even diamonds are safe! The beasts, it seems, crave any kind of carbon, including diamonds and ordinary coal. This is very discouraging for all diamond owners, who cannot maintain their grip on their precious jewels. Can’t we just give the jellyfish our old carbon paper? Might not that kill two birds—or at least two creepy jellyfish—with one stone?
     Written by Shinichi Sekizawa from a story by Jojiro Okami, Uchu daikaijû Dogora is another kaijû from the artist who launched the “big monster” genre, Ishirô Honda. Once again, the center of dismay is Tokyo, where various authorities, including local police, investigate a ring of jewel thieves for missing diamonds. Honda’s marriage of science fiction and crime melodrama is somewhat clunky, but jocular humor—which the English dubbing in the version I saw may have broadened—is thrown in as well in an attempt to smooth the mix. It more or less works.
     It is amazing, given all the slapstick, how heartstoppingly frightening one of the jellyfish is when it ghostily appears in the sky, its tentacles dripping down and demolishing a bridge. Indeed, the infusion of horror gives Dogora an awesome grandeur, as do the long-shots of coal being sucked up into the invisible mouths of these shimmering monsters.
     Not all the conventional stuff on the ground is as sharp, but in the air Dogora becomes magical, its jaw-dropping special effects a delight.