7 Dollar Popcorn Presents the 7 Dollar Popcorn FILMuary Spectacular: 28 Days of Movie Mayhem Day 23: Rodan

How in the hell is 5.1 surround a special feature? For that matter, how is mono? Unimpressive special features like this can only mean one thing...it's 7 Dollar Popcorn Presents the 7 Dollar Popcorn FILMuary Spectacular: 28 Days of Movie Mayhem Day 23 in which we finally check out the 3rd Ishiro Honda movie that I own; Rodan!

Rodan is, of course, like a pteradon or something. I don't know, some sort of big bird monster. There are actually 2 Rodans. A male and a female. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

It's starts with nuclear testing, as these things typically do. And an ominous warning about consequences or something.

We shift to a mining village. Things are tense in the mine and no one is sure why, but when the mine floods everyone is justifiably freaked. There's a dead guy with weird wounds floating in the water. No one knows what happened to him.

"What the hell happened to him?"

Two more oddly killed people later, Shigeru goes to hang with his lady friend where he is accosted by a giant caterpillar. He runs out of the house and comes back with a fucking army.

"You don't know, I could turn into a beautiful butterfly someday"

They realize that the bug is what's been killing folks in the mine and take an army and 2 machine guns to try and kill it. Shigeru manages to kill one with a coal cart, but there's a second caterpillar. And in trying to kill it the mountain collapses. It's a mad search for Shigeru. Unfortunately, it's a useless search because Shigeru is wandering aimlessly in the crater left from the collapse. Luckily some scientist are investigating the collapse themselves and find him.

"This bandage...did something happen to my hair?"

Shigeru has amnesia. Which means he doesn't remember anything. Not what happened. Not his name. Not even the broad is supposed to marry.

Something in his expression just says "I'm fucked"

Soon a UFO appears. When pressed to identify it, the pilot gets killed leaving behind a bloody helmet, but no wreckage. What could have done this?

Rodan: My wings don't need to flap bitches.

Right. Rodan. Big fucking flying dinosaur. Gotcha.

Rodan: Not a giant rubber chicken.

There are actually two Rodans. They're just hatched little babies! The caterpillars were in the cave as food for them. And now, it's time to do that thing that giant monsters do...

"If I see one more store with eggs on sale, I will fuck you bitches up."

Destroy shit. The army decides to try and blow up the mountain where the Rodans live in an attempt to kill them. Right. They're going to attack a volcano. A volcano that has never done anything to hurt anyone. Poor volcano. All because the Rodans decided to set up shop there.

"Maybe we should give them some privacy?"

The Rodans escape the collapsing volcano, but die in the ensuing eruption.

Rodan is a cheesy giant monster movie from the 50's. It is not in any way of the same caliber as Honda's Gojira. That's ok though. They can't all be social critiques. That said, Rodan is 72 minutes of cheesy goodness. The flock moves at a great pace and due to it's short running time, there's always something happening. This is the kind of movie you want to watch at one in the morning when you can't sleep because if you can't sleep, you might as well watch something mindless. I'm giving Rodan 7 caterpillars fattening up on miners so that the giant flying reptiles have a good meal when they finally hatch because you can't terrorize a Japanese mining town on an empty stomach out of 10.