This is the third giant monster film made by Toho, and is the first to be shot in color, following the success of two previous black and white Godzilla features. This review is based on the longer preferred Japanese language edition of the movie. The story begins interestingly as coal miners working underground in Japan are getting mysteriously slashed to death, and all tensions rise as employees start suspecting each other. The mystery is solved when the workers encounter over-sized bug creatures in the caverns, and ultimately face a flying pterodactyl that hatches out of a giant egg and gets christened "Rodan" (or "Radon" in Japanese). Two Rodans eventually appear in the skies to wreak havoc on Japan, causing destruction in their wake. A pretty good Japanese monster classic, though perhaps bogged down at times with a few too many explosions and filler. **1/2 out of ****

Rodan is one of the early successors to Godzilla... two years later actually. While it was nowhere as successful or as interesting, it still holds up on its own by having fairly good visuals and greater than bland main characters.Probably the best and worst thing about Rodan is that it is incredibly short. It has a running time of little over an hour; which means not much happens during the film. The premise is that Rodan is a giant flying reptile that was stuck in an underground chamber filled with prehistoric insects. The insects escape due to a mining incident and Rodan's wrath is sure to follow. Other than that, there isn't much to the movie. There are a couple nice military action sequences against Rodan and the building destruction is cool to watch. However, the movie doesn't have much to it. The characters aren't incredibly interesting and there isn't too much to talk about.Overall, it is good for people with shorter attention spans or people who don't want to invest much into an older monster classic.

A great monster movie, this time in color. A similar plot to Godzilla sees nuclear testing wake up an over sized Pteranodon. In a sleepy mining village a series of mysterious attacks lead to the discovery of giant killer caterpillar. Greater darkness soon arrives in the form of an extinct beast that can flip jeeps with the swoosh of its wings. The model work is once again astounding from Toho. Even in color this looks great. It mixes live action, puppets, models, for some truly exciting aerial combat. It has less human drama than the first 2 Godzilla movies, but there is still some from the wife of a man believed to be committing the initial attacks. Rodan is great in his swooping and screaming, and the aerial footage means we aren't just getting a repeat of his more famous cousin.

Not quite up to Godzilla or some of the other Toho monsters, Rodan is still a rather cool creature created by said company. Rodan basically a type of flying dinosaur though much different than the most known one a pteradactyl. No this one is a bit more bird like in both its looks and the way it lives. The film starts out with a small town overrun by giant caterpillar type bugs. It soon is discovered that there is a giant flying dinosaur that can cause a lot of damage as it flies the skies, destroying buildings and such and knocking airplanes out of the sky. However, wait there is more! It is soon discovered that there may be more to worry about than the one Rodan creature! The film is rather good and I enjoyed it as a child and it is to me anyway, a better film than Mothra. I never liked Mothra and I never understood the appeal of the giant moth. Rodan is a bit more exciting to watch as it flies at supersonic speeds through the air. There is also a good deal of mystery of this movie as it builds up to what is causing the town so much grief. First, revealing the strange bugs, then revealing Rodan who makes the bugs not look quite so big anymore. The ending is typical for this type of movie as there is always some unique and different way for them to dispatch of said beastie which is probably why so many of us hated the pedestrian way fake Godzilla was killed in the U.S. version of "Godzilla".