Calling something weird in the Toho universe is nothing special. You can can't even call something bizarre and elicit a response. Yet, that's the only way to possibly describe Dogora. This is easily Toho's strangest kaiju film ever, and that works with and against the film.
This one comes from the venerable team, the true monster masters of Eiji Tsuburaya, Ishiro Honda, Akira Ifukube, and Shinichi Sekizawa. You know the talent is here if you're even remotely familiar with the Japanese monster industry. The sad thing is Dogora is bogged down with pitiful pacing, involving jewel thieves and international agencies trying to track them.
It ends up the jewels are being sucked up by Dogora, a cell in space mutated by radiation from Japan. This leads to some fantastic, yet far too short, scenes of destruction, as the creature sucks up the carbon in both coal and diamonds. This leads to three problems.
The most obvious is that it's not possible to be scared by a monster that eats coal. Godzilla brings people down with an atomic death ray; Dogora eats stuff that ends up in stockings at Christmas time. Sure, this beast sucks up buildings and the occasional military vehicle. That doesn't mean you're terrified of it by the time the film works its way into battle.
The second is that Dogora, in its first form, is actually quite beautiful. These are some of Toho's best effects ever, completely unlike anything seen in their other films or even real life. It's a beautiful eggshell white squid that's mesmerizing to watch in action. Even as it takes out an entire bridge, it's impossible to see a creature that looks like this as evil.
Once that form is taken care of, Dogora switches forms into many tiny Dogoras (Dogori? Dogoresses?). This turns them into bobbing ball of light in the sky. They serve the same purpose, only they look unbearably cheesy. Studio stills and lobby cards show two of the giant sized creatures taking apart boats and Paris. None of that is here, and the single fully formed beast is on screen for about 10-minutes out of a 90-minute movie.
Does that add up to an unwatchable mess? Not really. There's some well done suspense as the mystery slowly builds to what Dogora actually is. There's no glimpse of the creature until close to the hour mark. It's all explained with a lumbering pace by the key scientist, played by Nobuo Nakamura. He's a Toho staple, ending up in the Frankenstein series (Frankenstein Conquers the World, War of the Gargantuas). Composer Ifukube gives his all as he always does, and you can hear his style from the era here.
Article comments