Director
Yoshimitsu Banno
Cast
Akira Yamanouchi, Toshie Kimura, Hiroyuki Kawase, Keiko Mari, Toshio Shiba
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Janus Films
One of three Godzilla films showcased during Fantasia’s inaugural 1996 edition, GODZILLA VS. HEDORAH, aka GODZILLA VS. THE SMOG MONSTER, rocked the Imperial during an unforgettable midnight screening. Flash-forward to 2021 and the Godzilla franchise remains a foundational part of Fantasia’s DNA; this particular episode a high point of the series’ Shôwa-era period for presciently addressing the ongoing climate crisis (here framed as rising levels of pollution in postwar Japan – the country’s industrial waste becoming the lifeblood for the invading alien Hedorah!). Uniquely helmed by Yoshimitsu Banno at the tail-end of Japan’s counterculture movement, the film looks and feels like no other in the franchise. At once somber, psychedelic, political and endlessly goofy, GODZILLA VS. HEDORAH is a trip.
Showings
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