2021 marks the 50th anniversary of the release of Godzilla vs. Hedorah, a.k.a. Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster, and to celebrate the occasion Toho has released a 5 minute short film through the official Godzilla YouTube Channel that shows a rematch between our hero Godzilla and the slimy pollution monster Hedorah. You can check it out in the embed below!
Directed by Kazuhiro Nakagawa, who has directed a few other Godzilla shorts in recent years, this take on Godzilla vs. Hedorah uses the classic “suitmation” style to bring the battling kaiju to the screen. The suits worn by the performers in the short were previously used in the making of 2004’s Godzilla: Final Wars (you can watch that HERE).
Directed by Yoshimitsu Banno from a script he wrote with Takeshi Kimura, the original Godzilla vs. Hedorah has the following synopsis (courtesy of IMDb):
Gojira, defender of the Earth, has become a national phenomenon, akin to the Loch Ness Monster, especially with children, ingrained into the Japanese consciousness. However, the Japanese people still don’t realize that destroying the earth will summon the millennias-old protector. A young boy finds a dangerous monster that thrives on toxic waste that he names Hedorâ, a pun on the Japanese word for sludge, “hedoro.” In his dreams, he wishes for Gojira to defeat Hedorâ and, hopefully, persuade people to stop polluting the earth. Gojira, coincidentally, fights the monster because of the destruction to the environment.
Hedorah is quite a nasty enemy, always changing form while releasing poisonous gas and corrosive sludge. When tasked with making a Godzilla movie, Banno wanted to deal with a real world issue in the same way the original film was an anti-nuke statement. That’s why he chose to make a monster that would be the living embodiment of pollution.
The rematch between Godzilla and Hedorah a fun way to spend 5 minutes:
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