Gojira · Ebira · Mosura Nankai no daikettô

This is the second Godzilla movie to this point that wasn't directed by Ishiro Honda (first being Godzilla Raids Again), and was directed by Jun Fukuda. Fukuda chose Masaru Sato to compose the music instead of Akira Ifukube, and overall contributes to the lighter touch. Shinichi Sekizawa's screenplay continues on the trend of humanizing the monsters, and Ebira's pose before the battle is a caricature of the then popular professional wrestler Toyonobori, and Godzilla rubbing his index finger on his nose is a caricature of Yuzo Kayama's character in Wakadaisho series which usually played at same time as the Godzilla movies as a double feature. The cinematography is noticeably brighter and the characters are also bit more easy going than Honda's version of Godzilla movies.

Ryota (Tetsu Watanabe) who lost his brother in the South Pacific in a fishing boat accident believes in the prediction made by a spiritual medium in Mt. Osore that his brother is still alive. He comes out to Tokyo to look for a way to get to his brother. There he meets few college students and later a thief named Yoshimura (Akira Takarada) in a sailboat they've snuck into. While everyone's asleep, Ryota sets sail to the south pacific to search for his brother. In a stormy sea the sailboat runs aground on an island occupied by a gang who calls themselves the "Red Bamboo". Red Bamboo is kidnapping the residents of Infant Island (Mothra Island) as slave labor to further their cause. Dayo (Kumi Mizuno) a girl from Infant Island escapes into the jungle and meets Ryota and Yoshimura's crew. There they hide in a cave to escape Red Bamboo's pursuit. Unbeknownst to them, that cave contained a hibernating Godzilla. Yoshimura comes up with a novel plan to wake Godzilla and turn it against the Red Bamboo.

In this movie, the fairies that talks to Mothra also changed from The Peanuts (Emi and Yumi Ito) to another twins Pair Bambi (Yuko and Yoko Okada - born 4/19/1944 Nagoya Japan). They were already 15 year veteran in the show business when they stared in this movie. Originally, Noriko Takahashi was to play the part of Dayo, but fell ill to appendicitis so was changed to Kumi Mizuno at the last minute. Mizuno who was 29 at the time played the role written for a 19 year old girl. Takahashi 6 month earlier played a similar role in Tsuburaya Production's Ultra Q series as a native girl who lost her brother to a giant octopus.

In the mid to late sixties, Godzilla movie started to slide to a lighter stories. This movie took the formula one step further from the previous Godzilla move the "Monster Zero", and continues the humanization of Godzilla and the monsters. Jun Fukuda's directing isn't up to par with Honda's and the props look cheezy by comparison which took away from the story, but most likely the movie was intended for kids and this was part of their production plan. The good in this movie was Akira Takarada and Kumi Mizuno that brought character to acting. Overall the movie succeeded because these two characters kept the focus. Good entertainment from the '60s Toho studio.

This movie was set on an island, where all the mayhem, action, destruction, battles and drama take place. A group of teenagers go sailing in search for a long lost brother and gets shipwrecked on an island. The island inhabitants are a band of people called the Red Bamboo, who are secretly making nuclear bombs in order to conquer the world. Islanders from Infant Island were kidnapped as slaves and the teenagers try to do everything they can to save the islanders and stop the terrorists. To add to the excitement, who would have guessed Godzilla would be seen sleeping in a cave on the island and that an over-sized Shrimp (Lobster or Crab in some reviews) is supposed to be guarding the island? A lot of humor in this movie, especially the lines "I thought you studied science?" with an answer "But I didn't pass the first year, one thing's for sure."

A pretty native girl, played by Kumi Mizuno, is attracted by Godzilla, who gave a little love relationship to her-a love relationship more associated with King Kong (since the story of this movie was originally written for King Kong). Masaru Sato's music score is catchy and Jun Fukuda did a great directing job. Shinichi Sekizawa gave us an exciting story and Eiji Tsuburaya gave us cool special effects. And, Mothra has a cameo in this movie and her tiny twin priestesses also made an appearance.

Overall, it is a unique and exciting Godzilla entry with plenty of monster appearances and action, which is a plus!

Grade A

This is a most unusual Godzilla flick. To be exact a low budget affair with no big city to destroy with Godzilla doing his battle on an island. The story line is a little James Bond-ish, but we know Godzilla is the reason we are watching. The story line is of no real concern as long as Godzilla does his thing.

A group of young men take out on a sailboat in attempts to find a long lost brother shipwrecked and thought lost at sea. The would be rescue party ends up shipwrecked themselves on an island that is guarded by Ebirah, a giant mutant lobster-like creature, thus GODZILLA vs THE SEA MONSTER(USA title).Also on the island is a militia base that is producing nuclear bombs to overtake the world with. Godzilla is awakened from his nap in a cave to take on the sea monster and destroy the evil soldiers and their bomb factory.

My favorite scene is where Godzilla and Ebirah appear to be playing ping pong with a boulder during their showdown. Actually this is one of Godzilla's easiest foes to whip. Maybe to help in cutting production costs.

The low budget was due to the fact that at the time TV viewers were lowering movie theater attendance. This did not seem to effect the popularity of this particular Godzilla outing.

This was obviously made because Toho wanted to discover new plot elements for their kaiju film formula, which was falling into something of a predictable rut (humans fight humans, humans fight monster, monster fights monster, sayonara). But simply limiting the amount of time the monsters appear on screen offers no improvement.

"Sea Monster" is one of the weaker entries in the original Godzilla series. Much of the film is directed as light comedy, a mild satire on the James Bond films. Actually, the comedy works pretty well; it's never knee-slapping laugh-out-loud, but it finds and sustains a level of humor most viewers should find fairly easy to live with.

The monsters here are almost tossed in for deus-ex-machina plot devices, saving the day at the last moment. To be sure, it's amusing to see Godzilla sit around pondering what to do with the woman he's just saved from bad guys, but there really isn't much for him to do here. He zaps a giant vulture, pulls the claws off a lobster and smashes a nuclear power plant - and that's about it. For a minute towards the end, it almost looks like things will get complicated by a battle between Godzilla and Mothra, but this doesn't really amount to much either.

For Godzilla completists, it's a relatively harmless sub-par entry - it certainly doesn't scrape the same bottoms as "Godzilla's Revenge" or "vs. Megalon". But if you are not yet a Big G. fan, this should not be your introduction to the series.

Entertaining fluff, nothing more.

This is actually on of my favourite Godzilla films. While on one hand it has one of the worst enemy monsters, Ebira (although it also has Mothra, but he only appears at the end and doesn't really do anything) it also has a neat story. It's not as cool as the original, but I think it sure as hell beats the cheezy alien stories which are so ridiculous and unbelievable that even their cheeze value is threatened. As well, most Godzilla movies spend *way* too much time and focus on the monsters fighting and rampaging (Godzilla vs. Gigan is a perfect example of this), but this one had more of a plot. The takeover didn't seem as implausible and it was more tongue in cheek. It's also one of the best dub-jobs I've *ever* seen in a Godzilla movie (or any of the other similar ones).

Overall: this is one of the more fun Godzilla films. It's still silly, but in an enjoyable way. It's not ruined by being overly stupid and it's cheeze factor is definitely amusing. 6/10.