Ishiro Honda had no involvement with this film as director. Those chores went to Jun Fukuda and the budegt was a lot less than previous entires as well.
Hence this takes place on an island instead of Tokyo or another Japanese metropolis. The story revolves around a young man who steals a yacht in order to begin the search for his missing brother whom he knows is still alive after he disappeared at sea.
On board the yacht are two other young men and a criminal who was hiding on the yacht to begin with. They get caught in a storm and make it to an island. On this island they find themselves hunted by a sinister group of men called The Red Bamboo, who are trying to get world domination.
In order to do this they capture and enslave natives and get them to work for them making a strange berry juice that holds off a huge sea monster living in the ocean around the island.
Our heroes wake up a sleeping Godzilla who soon battles the very large crawfish named Ebirah and destroys him and the Red Bamboo. This isn't the worst of the lot by any stretch of the imagination, but it does take getting used to when you are used to Godzilla smashing big cities.
The cast includes Akira Takarada, Jun Tazaki and the gorgeous Kumi Mizuno. Mothra actually appears in this film as well, but does nothing until the end when she saves her native people. A fun film, but a very different entry up to this point.
This is the 7th in the Showa-Era series and the presentation is again excellent. The deep rich colors a nicely realized in this print from Criterion.
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