Reigo: Deep Sea Monster vs Battleship Yamato

Title: Reigo: Deep Sea Monster vs Battleship Yamato
Rating: 3.5/5
Genre: Action/Horror
Starring: Yukijirô Hotaru
Director: Shinpei Hayashiya
Language: Japanese

I seem to be on a winning streak with this third film that, by all common sense I was expecting to be fairly awful low budget schlock; the monster movie, a staple diet for a B-Movie crowd all too often filled with talking about action and little actually happening; the focus on trying to make things plausible and explaining the occurrences – almost universally in a thoroughly awful way – detrimental to what everyone knows is going to be a bit shit, but are hoping for a bit of amusement along the way. These are all traps that he manages to avoid, and whilst far from perfect, allows him to create one of the better examples of the genre done well.

Packing most of the explanations into the opening few minutes, a brief voiceover to some war footage explaining that the Yamato was a huge ship that gets it's ass kicked by the Yanks – there's footage of this eventually too – but on the way to it's impending doom, comes across a really big fish. Picking up an old man who warns them of the fish, they ignore him, screw his daughter and toss him back to wherever he came from. Then when drunk a crewman spots an American floating nearby, who again warns of the giant fish that managed to destroy their craft, it isn't long before they meet the oversized Godzilla guppy themselves, capable of summoning lightning somehow, and of jumping over the battleship and using it's ninja like moves to cause destruction in its wake.

Now, admittedly the subtitles may have not been accurate but so much of this film didn't make sense; the bonefish it swims with that 'soften' it's prey first are forgotten after the first attack (quite sadly too, as the bonefish design looks rather intriguing and the models used pretty detailed, particularly for a film of this kind), and the explanation for it's night time attacks is that it must be a nocturnal creature fearful of the sun that sleeps in deep waters and is attracted to light (which sounds to me like an animal that secretes petrol that's sexually attracted to fire), and if it had spent any more time trying to make sense of it all this could be a problem. Instead it simply allows for the story to quickly move on to what people are really watching for anyway: a dodgy looking monster being a nuisance.

It's self awareness of the bad CGI work and inexplicable plot allows it to keep things frenetic and quick paced; it never shies away from showing the creature he's designed and leaves it open for criticism, but the humour from a good B-Movie is always in that accidental sense, and here the awareness can be a little too obvious. The jokes between the American prisoner who can speak a little Japanese can at times fall flat, and other scenes ordinarily ripe for a good chuckle are played off comically rather than deadpan and serious. Whilst I'm unsure as to whether the ending where we are shown historical footage of the vessel being destroyed by the Americans a couple of days later is meant to be part of the joke as well – a way of jesting 'and after all that work...' – or whether it's simply intended as a convenient way to end the film and tie up any loose ends I can't say for sure. All I can say is roll on the sequel.

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