SMOGTOWN

We decided against including cinematic interpretations of ecological damage like this in our book, Smogtown: the Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles, because air pollution is too serious and deadly to think post-apocalytpic, B-horror movies would add much gravitas. But a blog is different. And the early-1970s saw no retreat in Southern California’s demoralizing smog crisis, or air pollution’s crush on other large metropolitan cities around the world. We all know that escapism have political undercurrents. A dermatoligically-challenged space monster, sired by man’s inability to coexist with nature, says something about society’s guilt and fear, about unleashing consequences beyond people’s capacity to beat the monster back whence it came. Godzilla or the catalytic converter — who are you going to trust to get the job done?

From an Internet Movie Database description of this 1971 film …

A pollution monster named Hedorah comes from outer space. First it terrorizes sea, then it goes on land where it encounters the big G. After it’s after the fight with Godzilla it retreats, only to reappear again in a flying form, it’s starts to kill people. Then it takes on it’s final form, that’s when the Big G comes and the battle that decides the fate of the world begins. Written by Spaceroach … By this time, Gojira, defender of the Earth, has become a national phenomenon, akin to the Loch Ness Monster, especially with children, ingrained into the Japanese conciousness. 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.