Daimajin Trilogy (1966) A forgotten kaiju trilogy with a unique shintoist spin (Review)

There are two telling facts that need establishing first and foremost when discussing Arrow Video’s new release of the Daimajin trilogy. The studio landscape for the monster movie was divided between Toho and Daiei. Toho had the spoils with Godzilla and Mothra, whereas Daiei had Gamera and the Daimajin. Secondly, all three Daimajin movies came out in the same year, 1966 – meaning that they had to be produced simultaneously; or, at the very least, with some production crossover. I don’t know about anyone else, but the prolific nature of both Hong Kong and Japanese industries during the boom eras of the 60s to 70s will never fail to be fascinating for how compact and fast things moved.

Godzilla, Mothra, Gamera, King Ghidorah, all of these are Kaiju or “giant monsters” are largely based on a creature from the animal kingdom albeit contorted and blown up a few hundred feet. Daimajin is also a Kaiju but he couldn’t be more different, for starters I can confidently assign it a gender, whereas his genre-mates are just wrecking machines. Furthermore. The literal transliteration of Daimajin is “giant devil” or “giant demon god” – it is a giant golem in heavy armour carrying a sword and his face green. In other words, a giant man in a suit of armour. If you have any sort of exposure to traditional Japanese customs, which is a fair shot given the website I am writing for, lines can be drawn from this character to Asura who was often depicted in a sumo pose with smoke circling around his person. It’s something that is never forgotten once seen, like the art that inspired Toho’s crashing waves ident. The upshot of all of this is that the Daimajin is the only kaiju where we can see human eyes and the effect is not lost.

The first movie – just called Daimajin – was directed by Kimiyoshi Yasuda. In it, a town is taken over by a proxy for Nobunaga Oda and his first order of business is to brutally subject the prefectures peoples to a life of servitude and threatening the more traditionally religious elements of the community with death if they carry on praying to their great god. A folly as far as these antagonists see it. The serving daimyo (or feudal lord) is killed and the young remnants of his family are forced into hiding. Years later, the kids are now of an age where they would ascend to leadership and at that moment the despots regime of terror and forced construction steps up a notch with the statue that the people pray to destroyed. Or, at least that’s the plan as the statue starts bleeding. From that and a desperate plea from a young princess with nothing to lose, the god takes corporeal form and wreaks bloody vengeance. He becomes the wrathful god protecting his people the only way he knows how. As an actor in an elaborate costume stomping around and destroying a scale of the town only peppered with neat scale photography not a million miles removed from the legendary word of Ray Harryhausen.

Kenji Misumi directs the second movie – Return of the Daimajin, a title that is more than misleading as there are no returning characters and events conspire in a different region of Japan. The three movies are three completely removed events that revolve around an aggressive military force brutally subjugating the locals until they get cocky enough to blow up the altar of the local’s god. Only, shock horror, the god is real and he is gonna kill all those bad guys for overstepping their mark. The only memorable difference between movies one and two is that the latter has the god reside on a small island and the statue is utterly destroyed with dynamite. A creative choice that allows the titular god his very parting of the red sea-moment. The fact that the first two iterations are almost indistinguishable save for location choice results in number 2 being the weakest of the lot.

Kazuo Mori helms the third movie, titled the Wrath of Daimajin, and by my estimation, it is the strongest of three purely on the premise that it is the most unique. The set-up is still the same – military invading force subjugates the locals and forces them to build something, killing anyone who doesn’t agree – only the focus spends a bit more time away from the misery. The labour camps are still present complete with scenes of dissenting voices being thrown into sulphur pools. Only most of the movie is spent with four charming kids walking through the Japanese countryside and over the Daimajin’s sacred land. There is a fire in the bellies of the four young boys as they go on what is effectively a doomed road trip to save their town. The scenes with the kids trying to outrun a group of malicious samurai who have been ordered to kill anything that tries to escape are as tense as these movies get – purely because Mori and his script give you ample opportunity to get to know these kids and care for their fates. Of course, it ends with a furious Daimajin wrecking shop, albeit in the snow-covered mountains and with a mystical attack bird in tow.

The mileage you’ll get from this rare trio of movies depends entirely on how much enjoyment you can glean from a giant golem in armour destroying a rural Japanese town with his sword and strength over and over. Compared to other movies of this type, there is something to be said of the creative choice of implementing Harryhausen style animation in the destruction and the ability to see the creature’s eyes. For one, it allows you to experience the creature emote in a way that these films have never been afforded prior to the current wave of giant monster movies being produced in America. Furthermore, there is something of the slasher subtext to these films. The slasher was a surprisingly conservative style of horror cinema in which those people who engaged in immoral social lives were killed by a blade-wielding maniac. These three movies are the same, undesirable elements seek to use the traditional Shintoist values of the Japanese people and corrupt them for their own ends only for their entire force to be decimated by the wrath of God. Subtext or no text, these films barely stretch beyond 90 minutes and they are all enjoyably low-budget in the way Kaiju films typically are, albeit with their own unique religious spin.

Typically with this era of Japanese cinema getting a Blu-ray release, extras are at a premium due to the language barrier and the distance of time – not this arrow video release. First, we have the newly commissioned art adorning the box by Matt Frank that is both gorgeous and period-authentic. Past that there are video introductions, new interviews, postcards, the unfailing presence of Kim Newman, and video essays – an embarrassment of riches. One feature I have to reference by title alone as it expresses better than I ever could the lengths Arrow have gone to, to give this increasingly obscure and short-lived series a kings treatment. “My Summer Holidays with Daimajin, a newly filmed interview with Professor Yoneo Ota, director of the Toy Film Museum, Kyoto Film Art Culture Research Institute, about the production of the Daimajin films at Daiei Kyoto”. The lengths and respect that has been spent on this release are perfectly summed up in one short sentence. You know if this is for you, and if it is, just know you are being spoiled rotten.

THANKS FOR READING ROB’S REVIEW OF DAIMAJIN TRILOGY

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