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I wrote this a while back for Slice of Sci-Fi as part of a “sci-fi that scared me” topic they requested material for. Mennenga said he liked it and was going to use it, then nothing. With Halloween right around the corner I thought you guys might appreciate it;
The only science fiction film to ever truly scare me was the original ‘Godzilla’ directed by Ishiro Honda. It was the 1970’s and I was five at the time. I hadn’t yet seen any of the other campier installments of the franchise. Already a fan of the original ‘King Kong’ I was looking forward to seeing a similar movie with a giant dinosaur. I remember finding most of the movie exciting but not that scary. Yes tanks and planes were engaged in fierce combat with this giant beast and soldiers were dying, but I came from a family of veterans I knew that sometimes soldiers lose their lives. The one scene that got to me though, that really shook me to my bones came during Godzilla’s attack on Tokyo. The city was aflame and fire-engines started to race to its aide, then without warning Godzilla turned his attack on the firefighters and set the trucks ablaze. This is where I was taken aback with horror and fear, like many five years olds, fire fighters were really cool and they could do no wrong. They were heroes just like soldiers and police, except that they never took one life to save another. They went into the places of danger where other people were fleeing from, and no one, no one at all ever tried to hurt a fire fighter. Yet, here they lay, their trucks destroyed and those who survived helpless to stop the city from burning to the ground. I felt as helpless as they did at that moment; I thought it was unfair that Godzilla had destroyed their means to protect the city, as an adult now I realize that was probably Ishiro’s intent. He wanted viewers to feel the same hopelessness that the Japanese felt during the U.S. firebombing of its cities; well for me then he nailed it. Time goes on though and as I grew up the effects of the original film tapered away, that was until one morning in September of 2001.
I was working as a beat reporter with the New York Rangers and young parent in 2001, spending late nights in the Garden’s press room to file my stories and then getting up early every day to get the kids off to school. On the morning of September 11th I had returned home from completing my parental duties and was looking forward to some down time when my Editor-In-Chief called. I was the only staff member he could get through to at that hour and he wanted a second set of eyes. I flicked on the TV to see what he and most New Yorkers saw that day, one of the towers ablaze and the headline of a plane crash. I wasn’t too shocked at initially, it wouldn’t have been the first time a plane had crashed into a New York skyscraper. The most notable until that moment had been the 1945 crash of a B-25 into the Empire State Building. My editor knew that too, but still posed the question, “do you think it was intentional?” As he completed his question we saw the second plane hit and knew what was going on. I excused myself from the conversation and went into parent mode running out to pick up the kids from school as quickly as possible. When that task was finally done and my children were safe in their room watching Barney tapes I turned back to the TV to find out what had developed. At this point the towers had collapsed and many stations had gone black since the Towers were also home to several of the broadcast antennas. I finally stopped at a station with images of fire engines smoldering, mangled and covered in rubble. The anchor was talking about how the firefighters hadn’t been able to evacuate the towers in time and that the body count was rising. At that moment I was five years old again, fantasy had become reality in the worse way possible. Dozens and dozens of fire trucks lay in ruin, so many first responders lost and the rest standing there with the same helpless frustration as the characters from the film did. I now not only understood Ishiro Honda’s film but could finally feel what Ishiro must have felt when his cities were really on fire and his first responders could do nothing but stand there and helplessly watch. Since 9/11, I no longer treat the Ishiro’s first film as a campy kids film like the rest of the series, instead I hold it up as a more serious attempt to capture the nightmare of his reality and now mine as well.
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Knowing is half the battle......!!!
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