I remember watching Godzilla vs Hedorah for the first time when I was five years old and it was the only Godzilla movie that terrified me and gave me nightmares for lord knows how long. Now ironically, it became one of my favorite movies of all time (alongside the Dark Crystal).
shareIt didn't scare me at all but sure made me laugh out loud. I love that part when you see the smog monster sucking the polluted air out of a smoke stack. As if that wasn't an obvious drug reference.
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LOL! Actually, I didn't think that (I watched this again last night), but you're right, given the hippie feel of the rest of the film.
As for the original question, I wasn't even allowed to see this movie upon its release, though I remember being obsessed with the commercials for it. I think I may have had nightmares due to the TV ads alone -- I was five or sixw at the time. Now, of course, it's hilarious, but it also one of the bloodiest of the G-films, with Hedorah's eye getting poked out. Yikes!
Robb
When I was about six or so. I had a VHS copy given to me by a (very) odd friend of the family. The scene with the decaying person made me scared.
Now I look back on it, it is actually pretty hilarious. My friends and I were laughing nearly the entire way through last time we watched it.
This is the film that changed my taste in cinema completely, at a young age. I had always wondered why i love films with garish, bright colors and weird music. I thought it started with Dario Argento's "Suspiria." But when I saw Hedorah again so many years later, i realized the powerful impact this crazy film had on my current world vision!
share I saw this one when I was nine and it hold the distinction of being the only Toho Godzilla films I saw at the theater and the first that I saw in color(I grew up with a black & white television. It also was the most surreal out of all of the Big G movies I had seen up to that point.
The Toho producers must have studied the Maurice Binder title sequences from all the James Bond movies because the tile sequence was a cheap knock off of them.
I saw this on TBS the Super Station in 1972. I was seven years old. First Godzilla I saw all the way thru. It dogged my young mentality. Over the years it is my fave Zilla film.
shareIt scared me. I always loved Godzilla films, but Hedorah's slimy shape-changing abilities reminded of me of the Blob. And the Blob still sends shivers through me, 30 years after I first saw it.
Like you, I now really like G vs H; it has a unique atmosphere that I haven't found elsewhere in any kaiju franchise.
P.S.: I think The Dark Crystal would have been better as an animated film. I always loved Brian Froud's designs and illustrations, but human-looking dolls and puppets like the Gelflings still creep me out.
"You may have come on no bicycle, but that does not say that you know everything."
The only part of this movie i remembered from my childhood was the scene with the kitty on the staircase after Hedorah invades that amazing psychedelic club. I do remember being scared by that when i was a little kid. i just watched G VS. H again this afternoon and man, this movie is just an absolute classic...
I'm trying to determine why these old Godzilla movie work so well. They shouldn't work at all: a man inside a rubber suit stomps on miniature buildings and wrestles with other men in rubber suits? How and why does that not set off the part of my brain that would normally reject such completely ridiculous things? It's the same with the shark in Jaws. I know it's fake, yet i'm still terrified by it. This level of suspension of disbelief is usually only reserved for animation. And by animation i mean Roadrunner & Coyote cartoons.
I don't really have an explanation for it, except to say it must be some sort of weird paradox (possibly combined with nostalgia) that totally defeats the pessimistic side of my nature and let's me commit fully to what i'm watching. Or maybe i just want to believe that Japan is this magical place that's continually getting invaded by giant moths, birds, three headed monsters and evil space aliens with ulterior motives.