INTRODUCTION: The ATV Thursday Picture Show
Let’s start with a time and place.
It is Thursday 3rd February 1977, another grey day in the already grey West Midlands. Your writer (just three weeks past his 10th birthday, and utterly obsessed with monsters) is stuck at home with a Cold, being looked after by his Gran. In an effort to cheer him up (then as now a near-impossible task) she consults her newspaper to see what’s on telly. “Here Sim, this sounds like something we could watch—a monster film on at teatime”. [Adjusting her glasses] “Twenty past four, ‘The ATV Thursday Picture Show—Ebirah Terror of the Deep’. How d’you like the sound of that?”
Despite feeling sniffly, I perked up a bit—I had no idea what this was, but anything involving a Terror from the Deep was probably worth a try. 85 minutes later, as the News began at 5.45pm (Hattersley’s Jobs Pledge Ends Bread-Van Drivers’ Dispute), I was transformed—UTTERLY transfixed by what I’d just seen. A mere four weeks later, ATV obligingly screened Ebirah’s immediate follow-up, Son of Godzilla, in the same slot, and after that I was simply beyond help. I was a Godzilla fan. And let me tell you, being a Godzilla fan in the West Midlands in the late 1970s was a challenging experience. As I now intend to exhaustively document. Wait! Come back!
The author in Jan 1979 (with his 12th birthday presents) and Feb 1980 (with his very first film poster).
The peculiar appeal of Kaiju Eiga (Japanese monster movies) for Western audiences is a topic of lively debate amongst fans. Their inherent and unmistakeable Otherness undoubtedly represents a large part of their enduring fascination—a quality I think my restless ten-year-old self instinctively responded to. Although to begin with the films slavishly imitated traditional American models, within a few years they had deliriously mutated into something far more whimsical—a uniquely quirky reflection of a truly alien culture. Subsequent Western attempts to dilute this Otherness via dubbing and radical re-editing could never entirely mask the crazed sensibility of the originals, though it did conveniently provide the means for the frequently butchered results to be widely critically ridiculed. But there’s no point focusing on this lazy xenophobia: if you think Godzilla films are quite outrageously childish and silly, well that’s fine—so do I. The difference is I happen to think this is a GOOD THING.
To try and illustrate this point, we can briefly consider the origins of the genre. The original 1933 King Kong (featuring classic effects-work by Willis O’Brien) was reissued internationally by RKO in 1952, going on to become a major money-spinning hit all over again. It quickly inspired various cash-in imitations, including Warner’s The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953), in which a giant prehistoric dinosaur accidentally re-awakened by atomic testing goes on the rampage in New York. With similarly impressive effects by O’Brien’s protege Ray Harryhausen, Beast made Warners a cool $5m on an investment of just $400k, and other producers around the world looked on enviously.
Japan’s Toho Studios (est.1937) employed two influential producers: Sanezumi Fujimoto and Tomoyuki Tanaka. Fujimoto specialised in “women’s pictures” (essentially romances and light comedies), while Tanaka in contrast tended to handle the crime thrillers and war movies. But in early 1954 the latter was facing a serious problem. An ambitious proposed co-production with Indonesia, Beyond the Glory, had been scuppered in a petty diplomatic dispute, and Toho were suddenly confronted with a yawning gap in their autumn schedules. On the plane back from Jakarta, Tanaka had a stunningly original brainwave for a new project—a drama in which a giant prehistoric dinosaur accidentally re-awakened by atomic testing goes on the rampage in Tokyo. He even had a strikingly original title: The Giant Monster From 20,000 Miles Beneath the Sea, later pragmatically changed to the slightly pithier ‘Gojira’. The rest, as they say, is history.
Tomoyuki Tanaka and Ishiro Honda on the set of Battle in Outer Space. One of the very few photos where Tanaka actually appears on the verge of cracking a smile.
For years afterwards Harryhausen harboured a personal grudge against Toho, feeling Godzilla’s success was based on a quite shameless rip-off of his own work. And in this he was supported by most Western critics, who relentlessly compared the Japanese man-in-suit effects unfavourably with his and O’Brien’s painstaking stop-motion animation. But while Harryhausen’s exquisite craftsmanship remains indisputable, the vehicles he chose to showcase it became steadily more predictable and conservative. With a couple of offbeat exceptions (Twenty Million Miles to Earth and First Men in the Moon) ALL Harryhausen’s films feature either conventional giant animals, or dinosaurs, or increasingly rote variations on Greek / Arabian mythology. By the time of the hugely expensive and extremely tedious Clash of the Titans (1981) he was reduced to leadenly repeating himself, a frustrating waste of a justly iconic talent.
As for O’Brien, one representative (though possibly apocryphal) story holds that when, in June 1963, his widow Darlyne first saw Toho’s version of his most famous creation in King Kong vs Godzilla, she immediately burst into tears. If true, this may simply reflect the rawness of her loss, as O’Brien had then only been dead six months. Either way, as crude propaganda the story neatly encapsulates the contemporary Western view of Japanese fantasy cinema: as a shoddy, insulting pastiche of superior US originals, so bad as to be capable of reducing a brave American widow to tears. Even twenty years later the situation had barely improved—the 1980s were dominated by the witless ‘Worst of Hollywood’ fad pioneered by Harry and Michael Medved’s twin bestsellers The Fifty Worst Movies Ever Made (1978) and The Golden Turkey Awards (1980), which got much mileage out of sneering at cheap 50s sci-fi and foreign arthouse classics the authors apparently had difficulty understanding. One of their ‘Fifty Worst’ nominees was Godzilla vs the Smog Monster (1971), a film so fantastically, unrestrainedly wild it effectively exists outside conventional criticism altogether, though this didn’t stop the Medveds pointing and hooting at it.
And with the swimming / flying / waddling / smoke-sucking / acid-spraying / mud-spitting Smog Monster, we neatly return to our suggested distinguishing quality of Otherness. It is vital to grasp that monsters, for the Japanese, represent something quite distinct from their more neutral, objective Western interpretation. Japanese culture is strongly driven by the concept of Animism—the attribution of a living soul to plants, inanimate objects and natural phenomena, or (more generally) the belief in a supernatural power that organizes and animates the material universe. For their creators (and original audience), Godzilla and co. are not merely giant prehistoric animals, they are forces of nature, personifications of disaster, angry gods and/or super-weapons. You do not need a degree in Cultural Studies to draw a direct line between Hiroshima and Godzilla, and even the silliest of the later Kaiju (and many are very silly indeed) will have vestiges of this serious subtext clinging to them.
The Guv’nors on the set of Destroy All Monsters. From left: Honda, Tsuburaya and Tanaka.
In other words, these films were not created for a literal Western mindset (which can generally only cope with monsters that are either giant animals, or dinosaurs, or increasingly rote variations on Greek / Arabian mythology), they were the product of a proudly ancient culture, fiercely insular, dominated by little-understood folklore and traditions, traumatised by a devastating Wartime defeat, and (up to 1952) humiliatingly occupied by a deeply-resented foreign army. All the Japanese really had left at this pivotal point in their history was a stoic sense of beleaguered national identity. The emergence of ‘modern’ Japan is now generally dated to Tokyo’s landmark hosting of the 18th Olympic Games in October 1964, when the country first presented itself to the world as a peaceful, economically confident and forward-looking nation, newly open to outside influence and ideas. But one practical side-effect of the Games was a huge mass-purchase of television sets by Japanese families keen to watch the historic event for themselves. Within ten years the unstoppable rise of TV had decimated Japan’s once-mighty film industry, and the first wave of Kaiju Eiga drew to a ragged close in the mid-70s, with the last of the original Godzilla series being released domestically in 1975.
However, all this is by way of preamble. The purpose of this essay is not to present yet another potted history of Japanese fantasy cinema (which has already been done to death elsewhere—see the closing bibliography for the best examples). Instead, it seeks to consider the early impact of these films IN BRITAIN—which ones actually made it over here, how we viewed them at the time, and what their ultimate legacy was. For a generation of piss-taking, beer-swilling, fish-and-chip munching Brits reared on the classic adventures of O’Brien and Harryhausen, what was our collective national response to this invasion of Monsters From An Unknown Culture?
The men who brought Godzilla to the UK. Top row: Phil and Sid Hyams of Eros, Frank Poole of Rank, and Nat Cohen of Anglo-Amalgamated. Second row: Nat Miller of Orb, George Walker of Eton, Mike Myers of Miracle, and Ron Lee of Lancair.
About seventy or so fantasy films were produced in Japan 1954-75, of which thirty gained a UK theatrical release 1957-77 (eleven of the fifteen original Godzillas, plus nineteen further random entries). Most came via market-leader Toho, though the other four major Japanese Studios—Shochiku, Toei, Daiei and Nikkatsu—also contributed. [The sixth studio, the short-lived Shintoho (1947-61) never got anything released in the UK]. To try and discuss this mass of material in a systematic fashion, we can break it down into three separate headings: (A) Theatrical Releases—(i) Godzilla and (ii) Friends—(B) Television Screenings and (C) Other Media Appearances.
First however (although the developing Production context will be sketched in as we proceed), it seems quite inadequate not to at least namecheck the key individuals who created these films in the first place. With that in mind, the following twelve unassuming geniuses deserve far greater recognition than they have thus far achieved in the West…
The Men Who Made Godzilla—Chief Creative Personnel at Toho:
Tomoyuki Tanaka (1910-97) Producer of the entire original series (and creator of the character)
Ishiro Honda (1911-93) Director, tending to favour a more formal documentary / scientific slant
Jun Fukuda (1923-2000) Director, with a notably lighter action / comedy approach
Shinichi Sekizawa (1920-92) Writer, generally of more upbeat/satirical themes, especially for children
Takeshi Kimura (1911-88) Writer, generally of more serious, often political / psychological themes
Takeo Kita (1927-2005) Art Director/Production Designer
Eiji Tsuburaya (1901-70) Special Effects Supervisor
Teisho Arikawa (1925-2005) Special Effects Supervisor (Eiji’s deputy, supervising from mid-1960s)
Teruyoshi Nakano (b.1935) Special Effects Supervisor (following Arikawa’s departure in 1970)
Akira Ifukube (1914-2006) Composer (often with Honda) of distinctively heavier / classical themes
Masaru Sato (1928-99) Composer (often with Fukuda) of brighter, more jazz-influenced themes
Haruo Nakajima (1929-2017) Stuntman/actor, played Godzilla (and many other monsters) up to 1972
Haruo Nakajima takes a fag-break on the set of Godzilla vs the Smog Monster.
Theatrical Releases Part One—Godzilla
There were fifteen Godzilla films in the original sequence. The first two appeared in Japan within five months of each other (over winter-spring 1954-55), but the character then disappeared entirely for seven years until the surprise smash-hit of King Kong vs Godzilla unexpectedly rebooted the franchise in 1962. Having hit on a winning formula, Toho thereafter supplied a new instalment every year until the series finally ran out of steam in 1975. The following table makes all this clearer (though as noted four of the films never actually made it into UK cinemas):
The first point to make is that the US releases obviously influenced the UK ones in terms of established business-ties between their various distributors—in this context, the US ‘majors’ (Warners, Universal etc, plus key independent AIP) will hopefully need no introduction. However, three important (but lesser-known) American names should be briefly mentioned.
Walter Reade Jr (1916-1973) established Continental Films in 1954, initially focussing on the Arthouse sector. After sustaining heavy losses (on the early French classics of Jacques Tati amongst others), he refocussed on more commercial fare, double-billing Ghidrah with the British spy-spoof Hot Enough For June (renamed Agent 8¾) in 1964, then later selling both Ebirah and Son of Godzilla direct to US TV. His biggest success came with the revolutionary Night of the Living Dead in 1968, but he died (in a Swiss skiing accident) just five years later.
Henry ‘Hank’ Saperstein (1918-1998) purchased the ailing UPA (United Productions of America) in 1960, initially to get his hands on their lucrative Mr Magoo franchise. He was also involved in TV-syndication, and in his own words “My salesmen came to me and said ‘We gotta have action films, science fiction, monsters something like that—stations are dying to buy’… I decided to look into Toho… but do it the right way. So I took a night course at UCLA in Japanese culture, traditions, history, what have you, to learn how to deal with the Japanese”. This investment paid off, and via UPA Saperstein became the first Westerner to establish a close working relationship with Toho, initially buying Godzilla vs Mothra in May 1964 before co-financing Frankenstein Conquers the World and Monster Zero the following year, then subsequently being involved in the distribution / overseas sales of most of their other films up to the end of the 1970s.
Mel Maron (b.1932) was one of Saperstein’s proteges, initially a sales-manager for MGM who went on to join UPA in the mid-60s. By 1970 he’d set up his own distributor, Maron Films, splashily releasing all kinds of cheapjack international exploitation, and when Saperstein’s relationship with AIP soured, Maron obligingly double-billed Monster Zero and War of the Gargantuas for him in 1971. His next major venture, Cinema Shares (1975-80) also successfully handled three of the later Godzillas, further highlighting his brazen old-skool showmanship: the opportunistic retitling of Godzilla vs the Bionic Monster invited an indignant lawsuit from Universal, while his poster for Godzilla vs Megalon depicts the monsters in unlikely battle atop the Twin Towers (an image borrowed by Paramount just eight months later for their ill-fated King Kong remake).
‘Alright lads, let’s try one more run through then I’ll take you both for a pint’. Tsuburaya choreographs on the set of King Kong vs Godzilla.
Before moving on to the individual films themselves, one final—but unavoidably central—topic must be confronted: the dubbing. Obviously in an ideal world foreign-language films wouldn’t be dubbed at all, but rather subtitled. However we don’t live in an ideal world, but one of pragmatic commercial realities. And—at least for non-Arthouse material—dubbing is simply the only way to attract a wide audience, particularly in America. But for dubbing to be effective it must fluently match both the sense of the original line, AND the lip-movements of the onscreen speaker. Some languages are more problematic than others in this respect, and the forceful, staccato rhythms of Japanese are a particular challenge for smooth visual translation into coherent English. Often the only way around the problem is to introduce clumsy artificial pauses, which inevitably mangle any vestiges of naturalistic delivery. Take this infamous speech of Dr Yamane in Gigantis the Fire Monster for example: “Gentlemen, who is there among us who knows the way to destroy Gigantis? There is no way, none that I happen to know of, not one. I’m afraid there is no weapon to kill the monster. I brought with me a film. It shows what such a monster did to Tokyo. I remember the terrible sight in the city of Tokyo. You shall see what the monster did…” and so on. In its original Japanese, this downbeat scene makes perfect, sombre sense. In its Westernised version, the only possible response is compulsive giggling.
For the earlier Kaiju, US distributors generally organised their own dubs, often via David Horne’s Titra Sound in New York or sometimes (Loren) Ryder Sound or Glen Glenn in Hollywood. But from around 1966 Toho also began producing their own rival ‘international’ dubs, initially via William Ross’s Frontier Enterprises in Tokyo. Frontier’s versions are generally considered inferior to the US ones, for the simple reason Titra & co employed professional actors, while Ross in contrast was obliged to use any native English speakers he could find around Tokyo, including ex-pat businessmen, students and musicians. As budgets were squeezed yet further in the 1970s, Toho shifted their international dubbing to Ted Thomas’s even cheaper Axis International studios in Hong Kong, with even quirkier results.
Ted Thomas around the time he set up Axis International in the early 60s: ‘Hey Angilas, there’s something funny going on—you’d better check… hurry up!”
Thomas (b.1929) grew up in rural Cheshire, attending Naval training schools in Cumberland, the Isle of Man and Shotley, Suffolk before joining up full-time in 1947 as a radar instructor (and later Intelligence officer), posted all around the Med. He finally ended up in Hong Kong in 1955, and a couple of years later bought himself out of the Navy to work for radio station RTHK as a broadcaster (a hobby he’d already been pursuing in forces’ radio). When one of Run Run Shaw’s producers introduced him to film-dubbing in 1962 he set up Axis to handle the business, eventually employing a dozen or more regular collaborators including several fellow Brits. But he still did much of the work himself, and personally supplied Godzilla’s briefly-heard voice in War of the Monsters, irritably ordering Angilas about. The fact that a Cheshire farm-boy is responsible for Godzilla’s sole recorded utterances should be a matter of outstanding National Pride.
Later cut-price US distributors like Cinema Shares were obliged to use the cheap Axis dubs (being unable to afford their own) but prudishly censored their occasional gutsy profanities—“You’re a hard bitch!” (from War of the Monsters) and “Damned Earthmen!” (from Monsters From An Unknown Planet)—in order to obtain the vital MPAA ‘G’ children’s rating (which by then covered 90% of the potential audience). Frontier / Axis dubs can also be heard in the original UK releases of Ebirah, Son of Godzilla, Gappa, Goke, Matango and Cosmic Monster amongst others. Many fans deride their frequently outlandish mix of accents, but thanks to Thomas’s input—“I was always quite keen on doing funny, quirky voices”—the unexpected appearance of, for example, a distinctive West Country burr in downtown Tokyo (in War of the Monsters) is all part of their insouciant charm.
And with that defiant observation, we can at last sequentially consider the films themselves.
(i) Godzilla King of the Monsters 1957
Art by John Kaye.
Following the mysterious destruction of several ships in coastal waters, a group of Japanese scientists [accompanied by a US news-reporter in the International version] discover that a giant prehistoric monster has been awakened (and irradiated) by H-bomb tests, furiously attacking Tokyo to cause massive destruction and loss of life. One of the scientists has developed an oxygen-destroyer capable of wiping out all life in the world’s oceans, and is eventually forced to use this terrible weapon to stop the monster, though the guilt of what he has done (combined with the personal humiliation of simultaneously losing his fiancee to a love-rival) leads him to commit suicide immediately afterwards.
As noted in the introduction, Gojira was planned from the start as a major blockbuster, being one of the most expensive films made in Japan up to that point, and shot over several months in summer 1954 on a budget of Y62m. To put this into context, at that time £1 = Y1k, so the budget in British terms was perhaps £62k—Hammer’s contemporary (1956-57) offerings The Curse of Frankenstein and Dracula cost an equivalent £65k and £82k respectively. But this is hardly a fair comparison, as the yen at that point went far, far further. Gojira shot continuously over 120 days with months of pre-and-post production, while the Hammer horrors in contrast rarely exceeded basic six-week (30 day) schedules.
Gojira is a dark, gloomy, serious film, completely removed in tone from everything that followed. It was a smash-hit in Japan, and had obvious potential to be exploited internationally, though it might reasonably have been expected that its bitter anti-nuclear message would be diplomatically softened for overseas audiences. However, although there are some inevitable glosses, its Americanisation in fact remains remarkably faithful to the uncompromising spirit of the original.
Five men essentially brought Gojira to the West: Edmund Goldman, Harold Ross, Richard Kay, Joseph Levine, plus Toho’s American attorney Paul Schreibman. Goldman initially bought the US rights (via Schreibman) in late 1955 for $25k, realised he needed outside help to make the most of his acquisition, and so drafted in Ross & Kay, who in turn brought in Levine (founder of established Arthouse distributor Embassy Pictures back in 1934). This quartet pooled resources to fund a radical recut (scripted, directed and edited by Terry Morse) which cleverly interpolates Raymond Burr into the action as a US news-reporter covering the story, aided by Frank Iwanaga as a translator who interprets the (mostly undubbed) original Japanese dialogue for him. Of course, these ‘translations’ often bear no resemblance to what the Japanese cast are actually saying, but sharp editing keeps the coherence, and an artful re-jigging of the early scenes (to create a new, flashback structure) adds unarguable pace and excitement to what was originally a gradually-unfolding mystery. Embassy opened the newly-retitled Godzilla King of the Monsters across the US in April 1956 to excellent business, and it was only a matter of time before a British renter picked it up for a UK release.
Eros Films had been founded in May 1947 by exhibitor-brothers Phil and Sid Hyams, whose family had owned cinemas in London since the Silent days. A couple of years earlier they had sold some of their showcase examples to the Rank Organisation (then in the process of assembling a Gaumont ‘super-chain’) and Eros were thereafter closely linked with both Rank and their main US associate Universal-International. At the beginning of May, Anglo-American (the distribution-wing of British National) had closed down, and the Hyams snapped up both their offices at 111 Wardour Street and most of their key staff. Over the next fourteen years Eros released about 500 features and countless shorts, being easily the busiest and most significant independent UK renter of the 1950s, handling British ‘quota’ material alongside cheap US imports and innumerable reissue-packages from all the Hollywood majors.
But by the late-50s, things were in decline. Audiences were defecting to television, and reissues were losing their appeal. Eros could not afford prestige ‘A’ features, so increasingly focussed on exploitation—notably cheap horror and sci-fi double-bills—to keep things going. In August 1956 (ie within three months of its US release) they submitted Godzilla King of the Monsters to the BBFC, who awarded it an ‘X’ (Adults Only) certificate, excluding under-16s. Six months later in Feb 1957 Eros released it paired with Universal’s House of Dracula (1945)—the latter, despite being twelve years old, was previously unseen in Britain due to the unofficial Wartime ban on horror films. This programme did excellent business around the provinces, and in London ran for several weeks that June at the popular Berkeley Cinema at 30 Tottenham Court Road. This had started life in 1913 as the Carlton, becoming the Berkeley in 1948. Four years later in 1952 it was bought by Kenneth Rive’s Gala group and effectively used as Gala’s London showcase, programming Rive’s and other distributors’ foreign pick-ups for adventurous West End audiences. In this capacity it played host to several subsequent Kaiju over the years, up to its final closure and demolition in August 1976—the current Odeon TCR now stands on approximately the same site.
Godzilla’s two West End homes: the Gala Berkeley (scene of his June 1957 debut) and the Carlton Haymarket (which premiered King Kong vs Godzilla in Nov 1963)
Such was the interest created by Godzilla’s London appearance that on 20th June (midway through its Berkeley run) The Times ran an appreciative article “Japan’s Highly Organised Film Industry” namechecking both Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again (Toho’s international title for the sequel) despite the fact that the latter would not actually appear in the UK for another three years. And just one month later (on 20th July) under the heading ‘Sign of the Times’ the same paper’s letter-column contained the following philosophical query: “Sir, is it a symptom of the disordered times in which we live that among the films offered for the entertainment of North-East London patrons are: Godzilla King of the Monsters, The House of Dracula, The Man Without a Body, Half Human, The Curse of Frankenstein, The Incredible Shrinking Man, Appointment With a Shadow, Nightmare, and The Night Holds Terror? I rejoice that most, if not all, of these monstrosities are foreign. Yours &c. Arthur Super, 49 Clapton Common, E5”.
Despite Mr Super’s (a great name if ever there was one) generous championing of half Eros’s then-current release schedule, the object of his scorn was in fact already wobbling. Under a rapidly-changing sequence of MDs the firm staggered on for another four years, releasing fewer and fewer films of steadily more dubious provenance, until in April 1961 a meeting of the company’s creditors revealed a staggering trading-deficit of £433k (about £9m in today’s terms). And that was the end of them.
Eros’ sophisticated 1957 schedules included such classics as…..
Luckily we do not have to solely rely on Arthur Super’s critical skills to gain an insight into how Godzilla and his successors were received in Britain over the next two decades. For that, we can turn to the Monthly Film Bulletin. For almost sixty years, 1934-1991, the MFB was essentially the UK’s main film-periodical of record, originally launched by the newly-formed British Film Institute as a guide to assist local cinema managers in deciding what to book. Its format (and approach) developed over time, but for the majority of its life (up to a disastrous makeover in 1982) it was a terse, reliable and clear-sighted guide to shifting exhibition trends in British cinema. The MFB’s thirty individual reviews for the films under discussion in this essay can be quoted in full (and credited where known—early ones were often anonymous) to help build up an overall picture of how our most engaged and sympathetic critics came to view Toho’s emerging output.
John Gillett’s typically acerbic Feb 1957 notice started the ball rolling: “Godzilla, an enjoyable example of Japanese science-fiction, proves to be a formidable prehistoric monster somewhat akin to the West’s King Kong. Estimated to be 400 feet tall he breathes radioactive fire and has a marked predilection for eating trains. His terrible rampage through Tokyo is quite convincingly staged, and provides a field day for the team of Japanese special effects experts. The story itself though is unremarkably developed, characterisations and acting owing much to the tired conventions of their Western counterparts. Also, despite the spectacular underwater finale, the closing scenes come as something of an anti-climax. It seems certain, however, that apart from contributing to contemporary monster mythology, the film’s purpose encloses a veiled protest against the H-bomb and its promoters—certain passages of dialogue and the dirge-like song of deliverance performed by a children’s choir seem imbued with a deeper symbolic meaning. This version is considerably shorter than the Japanese original; the American dubbing is generally inexpert and the film has obviously been drastically re-edited. Raymond Burr’s name is not included in the Japanese cast list, and it appears that most of his scenes have been.cut in separately. In any case, his linking comments are singularly fatuous, though they occasionally introduce a note of unconscious humour to the proceedings”.
And where do you go from there? To the quickie cash-in sequel of course….
(ii) Gigantis the Fire Monster (1960)
Two pilots scouting for fishing grounds along the Japanese coast are brought down on a remote island where they witness an epic battle between Gigantis (Godzilla) and Angilas (a spiny-backed armadillo), two giant prehistoric monsters re-activated by atomic testing. A victorious Gigantis devastates Osaka before moving on to Hokkaido, but is subsequently trapped on an ice-covered island where our pilot-heroes—one of whom climactically sacrifices himself—bravely aid the military in burying the monster under a massive avalanche.
Godzilla’s Counterattack (to give it Toho’s original Japanese title) is the classic rushed follow-up to a blockbuster. It has effectively the same plot as the original, though with a second monster now added for novelty value, and another noble hero sacrificing himself at the climax. Honda was absent on this occasion (likely busy elsewhere), and the direction handed to Motoyoshi Oda, a reliable second-string journeyman. The results are adequate but essentially uninspired. Nevertheless, the film was quickly picked up in the US by the AB-PT Pictures Corp, who planned an ambitious release via Republic. The intention was to strip out all the Japanese effects-work and build a completely new American film (to be called The Volcano Monsters) around it. Writers Ib Melchior and Ed Watson were hired, and press-announcements made (in May 1957), but before the project could get any further AB-PT promptly collapsed. The rights to the film were immediately snapped up by a consortium including several of the original Godzilla KotM team (notably Kay and Schreibman), who—looking for a fast return on their investment—unceremoniously dropped all AB-PT’s ambitious reshoot plans and instead commissioned a slapdash US dub of such poor quality it essentially kills what minor merits Oda’s original version possessed. To add insult to injury, Schreibman inexplicably felt that marketing the film as a sequel would “confuse audiences” so had it retitled Gigantis the Fire Monster for release by Warners in May 1959.
Motoyoshi Oda (on the right in the headscarf) sets up a scene for Godzilla’s Counterattack.
Gigantis turned out to be one of the very last films released in the UK by Eros, double-billed with lurid Italian melodrama Nights of Temptation (starring Belinda Lee as Lucrezia Borgia) in April 1960. The only bit of good news was that three months earlier the BBFC had very sensibly awarded it an ‘A’ certificate, meaning that interested children could actually go and see it (providing they first persuaded an indulgent adult to accompany them). The anonymous MFB review however neatly nails the irretrievably compromised results: “The film bears some resemblance to Godzilla but is a less expensive and polished job. The Japanese miniature work is sometimes obvious, more often extremely good. Scenes of the dinosaur-like monster crunching his way through houses, traffic and high-tension wires are genuinely effective. But the finale is unsatisfactory—one is left wondering what will happen when the ice melts—and the film spends more time with the humans involved than with Gigantis. The American dialogue is generally ill-chosen, and newsreel and other padding decreases the tension. Even so, one suspects that the original script was rather chaotic.”
By the time that withering assessment was penned the film was already five years old, and its writer’s idle speculation about “what will happen when the ice melts” was soon to prove strikingly prescient….
(iii) King Kong vs Godzilla (1963)
Art by Bill Wiggins.
A Tokyo pharmaceuticals company hears rumours of ‘Kong’ a giant monster gorilla living on a remote South Seas island, and resolves to capture and transport it to Japan as a publicity stunt. Meanwhile, a UN submarine investigating strange ice-floes drifting towards the Japanese coast is destroyed when a glowing iceberg suddenly disintegrates to reveal a newly-reawakened Godzilla. Kong escapes his captors and the two monsters cause independent chaos on the mainland, until an audacious plan is hatched to bring them together on Mount Fuji where they can fight and hopefully kill each other. Their epic battle causes an earthquake which topples both into the sea, with Kong finally emerging victorious to return peacefully home.
King Kong vs Godzilla was a pivotal film for Toho in many ways, ironic when it wasn’t even originally their project. Willis O’Brien suffered many disappointments over his long Hollywood career, eventually trying to raise independent finance for an idea of his own, provisionally entitled (amongst several variations) King Kong vs the Ginko. O’Brien’s outline had Carl Denham (hero of the 1933 original) bring Kong to San Francisco, where it fights the Ginko (a giant patchwork-monster created by Dr Frankenstein’s grandson) at the Golden Gate bridge, before both creatures topple into the bay at the end. O’Brien sold this idea to producer John Beck, who promptly removed him from any further involvement and instead commissioned writer George (‘Them!’) Yates to develop a new screenplay. But—unable to raise any interest in the US—Beck eventually took the package to Toho. Tanaka saw the potential, but insisted on replacing the Ginko with Godzilla. RKO agreed to licence their King Kong character, and Universal co-produced in return for US distribution rights. With a generous budget and extensive promotion KKvG was an unprecedented smash-hit in Japan (and subsequently internationally), dramatically shifting the tonal approach of Toho’s entire output from that point and—on a more practical level—ensuring they churned out a new Godzilla sequel every year until 1975.
The central point about KKvG (at least in its original Japanese version) is that it is basically a satirical comedy. The series’ first two films, both written by Takeo Murata (from story-outlines by Shigeru Kayama, an established sci-fi author) are serious, downbeat works. Gigantis has SOME comic-relief, but effectively mirrors Gojira in being a metaphor for the terrors of living in wartime and the struggle to find courage in a crisis—the approach in both is essentially realist. King Kong vs Godzilla on the other hand is little more than a gleefully silly joke.
The man more or less single-handedly responsible for this shift in emphasis (though Tanaka clearly approved and encouraged it as increasing the films’ commercial appeal) was new scriptwriter Shinichi Sekizawa, a figure still almost totally unknown in the West. We can pause briefly here to examine his background, not merely out of sympathy for an unjustly neglected writer, but because his idiosyncratic approach arguably defined and dominated Toho’s output from this point. In other words, the reason Godzilla became an international icon is principally down to one man you’ve probably never even heard of.
Shinichi Sekizawa – Toho’s Mr Happy.
Sekizawa (1920-1992) started out as an animator at the Kyoto Animation Studio working alongside celebrated manga artist Osamu Tezuka: “Drawing comics back then probably helped me imagine all the stories in my head, to visualise stuff” as he later put it. Drafted into military service in the South Pacific 1941-46, Sekizawa’s war was spent homesick and half-starved on a series of swampy, insect-infested islands. Once home his enthusiastic appetite and general joie de vivre were an obvious reaction to these privations, and he was judged resolutely non-political by his Toho colleagues. However this assessment was based on natural comparisons with his immediate counterpart, fellow sci-fi scriptwriter Takeshi Kimura, a dour card-carrying Communist whose screenplays were in contrast frequently OVERTLY political. “[The pair] were completely different,” Honda once commented, “If the story was very positive or even childish it would go to Mr Sekizawa. If it was negative, or involved politics, it would go to Mr Kimura. I really can’t compare the two because they were so different…” Sekizawa himself always attributed his comic-sensibilities to his Kyoto-born Kansai heritage (the Kansai dialect is considered the most conducive to humorous dialogue in Japan).
In fact it’s perfectly feasible to suggest that Sekizawa’s subsequent sardonic refusal to take ANYTHING very seriously was itself a deeply-felt political response to wartime authoritarianism. Nevertheless, there’s no doubt the two writers had diametrically opposed outlooks. One reported exchange goes like this: Kimura: “Do you really enjoy writing this stuff?” Sekizawa: “Of course, I think it’s a lot of fun!” Kimura: [glumly] “Not for me…” Kimura in fact insisted on submitting most of his work for Toho under the pseudonym Kaoru Mabuchi—Kaoru, being a gender-neutral name in Japan, reflecting his desire for anonymity (similar, in reverse, to Joanne Rowling being obliged to publish under the initials JK). But Sekizawa’s bubbling enthusiasm, his surreal sensibilities, his delight in gags and wisecracks proved infectious, and turned Toho’s fantasies into a steadily more bizarre Theatre of the Absurd. Indeed the developing tension between Honda’s desire to keep at least SOME element of seriousness to his films in the face of Sekizawa’s increasingly ridiculous screenplays is one of the defining qualities of the series.
Takeshi Kimura – Toho’s Mr Grumpy.
Sekizawa returned to film-making in 1948 at Beehive Studios as an Assistant Director, but was later shifted into scriptwriting after turning in a finished screenplay (for Profile of the City, 1953) in an unprecedented four days flat. His first sci-fi assignment was writing and directing Shintoho’s Fearful Attack of the Flying Saucers (1956), following which he was put onto developing a new TV series, Agon the Atomic Dragon, in which nuclear testing unleashes a giant fire-breathing monster. Toho promptly sued for plagiarism and got Agon shut down, but kept Sekizawa out of further mischief by hiring him to write their own Kaiju, of which the first was Varan the Unbelievable (1958—see below). Sekizawa was thus kept incredibly busy for the next sixteen years, penning screenplays in all conceivable genres alongside lyrics for hit pop-songs and TV theme-tunes. At his peak in the 60s he was churning out up to six scripts a year, though he found coming up with new ideas an increasing chore and occasionally admitted to getting bored with Godzilla. He retired in 1974 (following Godzilla vs the Cosmic Monster) to work part-time as a railway photographer (he adored trains and built a large HO-scale model layout at home). One of his last creative jobs (clearly a personal labour of love) was assembling a handful of soundtrack LPs in the early 1980s documenting various classic Japanese rail-trips, including ‘Journey to the North’ (1982)—evocatively creating a soundscape ‘tone poem’ of the long haul from Kitakyushu up to Aomori.
Above: Sekizawa’s “Journey to the North – Steam Locomotive (Tone Poem)” LP (Toshiba/EMI 1982).
Having said all that, it must be immediately conceded that very little of his satirical flair survives in the radically recut US version of King Kong vs Godzilla. Beck felt the original “too Japanese”, and removed over twenty minutes of Sekizawa’s best gags to be replaced by stultifying new footage (written by Paul Mason & Bruce Howard and directed by Thomas Montgomery) in which Michael Keith plays a UN news-reporter having the plot periodically explained to him by an American scientist played by Harry Holcombe. These bland inserts slow the pace of much of the resulting film to a crawl, and critically almost entirely eliminate the sense of it being an obviously self-aware spoof. The frequently buffoonish conduct of its two monsters was thus highlighted by most Western critics as evidence of crude Japanese incompetence, rather than deliberate comical intention. However this disdain did not hurt the film’s box-office performance, and when released in the US by Universal in June 1963 it made a small fortune which still represents the high-point of Godzilla’s commercial success in the West.
As noted, Rank had been historically tied to Universal since the mid-1930s so handled the UK release just five months later in November (double-billing it with B-Western The Raiders, starring Judi ‘Jack the Giant Killer’ Meredith as a feisty Calamity Jane). As befitted the UK’s most powerful domestic distributor, Rank issued an ideas-packed eight-page pressbook full of energetic promotional gimmicks for the country’s more adventurous (or simply insane) cinema managers:
“On the 30th anniversary of King Kong the jungle giant meets the sea’s mightiest monster in Universal International’s KING KONG VS GODZILLA. The earth literally shakes as the monsters trample across the world to grapple in mammoth battles in Nikko, in Tokyo and finally on top of Mount Fuji. Older picturegoers have never forgotten the day King Kong made his historic stand on America’s famous Empire State Building, and most of them will recall how Godzilla rose ravaging from the sea. But nothing seen in either picture can match what happens when both monsters meet in this film. From the Arctic, Godzilla rises out of the frozen deep. In the tropics, King Kong breaks out of a troubled rest; and from this moment on the battle rages. KING KONG VS GODZILLA is fine, meaty hokum that will appeal to every showman in the country. The technical effects—all-important in a production of this kind—are some of the best ever seen on the screen, and the many battle sequences are terrifyingly realistic. Being a Japanese production, the film offers no real star names for you to work on. But rest assured this is only a minor handicap. KING KONG VS GODZILLA is such a glorious eyeful that with a tiny spark of ingenuity on your part, the whole town will be alert with the knowledge that there is only one place to get-away-from-it-all and be entertained into the bargain—and that is YOUR theatre……..”
This was followed by over a dozen separate promotional ideas, including FOYER DISPLAY—a large-scale map of the world, with coloured ribbons marking the monsters’ progress towards one another, flanked by full-size photographic blow-ups of the pair / ACCENTING THE HORROR—hidden loudspeakers playing continuous shrieks and roars as visiting patrons were invited to add their name & address to the back of local doctors’ cards in case of cardiac arrest / CONSTRUCTION SITES—placing large dedicated advertising banners on these with the implication that the monsters had caused all the damage / STREET STUNT—encouraging a local arts college to produce makeshift King Kong and Godzilla outfits, then getting two pliable students to parade around the streets in these on stilts / DO THEY EXIST?—persuading a local archaeologist to offer an informed opinion (in the local press) on whether similar monsters might still be living in remote jungles / BOXING AND WRESTLING CLUBS AND HALLS—more targeted promotional banners, this time containing the monsters’ respective vital statistics: “Standing two full storeys higher than the King but eleven million pounds lighter, Godzilla towers at 164 feet and weights 44 million pounds, while King Kong stands only 148 feet—but tips the scales at a hefty 55 million pounds!”
What all this ballyhoo failed to acknowledge was that back in July the BBFC had reverted stolidly to type and insisted that this quite irretrievably childish film should be rated ‘X’ Adults Only—an irony not lost on the MFB’s reviewer: “In most respects this piece of giant monster hokum (partly made over and dubbed by an American company) is a disappointment, particularly in the variable trickwork: some shots create a near-perfect illusion, while in others the trickery and model-work is all too obvious. What little plot there is suffers from exceptional scrappiness, uncomfortable acting, and a totally disastrous attempt to infuse a comic element. It is strange that thirty years after his creation King Kong should appear in a Japanese film; but the resemblance is only superficial and without any of the “character” which placed the original Kong in a category of his own. The giant octopus is a well-contrived piece of abnormal marine life, but otherwise it is the final ten minutes—during which the two monsters fight (unfairly and anything but squarely)—which provide most of the fun and make the film’s dead wood worth sitting through. The ‘X’ certificate is distinctly hard luck on a film which would probably be enjoyed hugely by schoolboys”.
Despite this, as noted King Kong vs Godzilla marks a distinct turning-point in the series. From now on Godzilla’s adventures would get steadily wilder, even if they never again achieved such a peak of visibility and blockbusting commercial success. (Incidentally fans of the giant octopus—a real one—will be pleased to hear Tsuburaya cooked and ate it after filming, later reassuring the crew it was delicious).
(iv) Godzilla vs The Thing (1965)
Art adapted from the US campaigns by Reynold Brown.
After a violent storm a giant egg washes ashore on the Japanese coast (to be bought by venal carnival showmen), while a previously-dormant Godzilla simultaneously re-emerges to begin his usual rampage—all this witnessed by our heroes, a journalist and his photographer-girlfriend. Mothra (a giant moth, whose egg it is) flies her tiny twin fairy-priestesses to the mainland to try and reclaim it, but they are rebuffed by the greedy showmen. With Godzilla apparently unstoppable, our heroes then travel to Mothra’s island to in turn beg for help, and—although the fairies are initially unimpressed—Mothra herself agrees, but is soon beaten by Godzilla. However her egg then hatches, from which two gigantic larvae emerge who trap Godzilla in a sticky silk cocoon, causing the vanquished monster to topple helplessly over a cliff. Again.
Mothra vs Godzilla (the original Japanese title) is a direct sequel to both KKvG AND the same team’s earlier Mothra (1961)—the latter released in the US by Columbia in May 1962. However, although Columbia-UK submitted a print to the BBFC (to be awarded an ‘A’ cert on 18th May), for some reason Mothra went ultimately unreleased in Britain, and its title-character (and her eccentric back-story) were thus unfamiliar to UK audiences. Setting this quirk to one side, the sequel essentially consolidates the advances made in KKvG, and is now generally considered possibly the best of the entire Godzilla series. Sekizawa’s script, while packed with offbeat humour and whimsical ideas, is more serious in tone than its predecessor and expands the earlier film’s moral themes of unscrupulous Big Business creating problems that monsters have to help solve. His twin-strategies of deliberately writing quirky, engaging human characters while also giving the monsters THEMSELVES distinct personalities—and then playing-off the unlikely interaction between the two—works increasingly well. Technically, the film showcases Toho’s craftsmen working at their absolute peak, and is a near non-stop parade of quite unforgettable images.
Hank Saperstein bought the film (originally referred to as Godzilla vs the Giant Moth in the trade press) in May 1964, immediately selling it on to AIP, who renamed it Godzilla vs the Thing (possibly reluctant to refer to rival Columbia’s property) and released it that Sept with an ad-campaign deliberately obscuring the Thing’s identity (though the artwork vaguely suggests some kind of octopus). AIP’s cut is very close to the Japanese original, and features some of the best dubbing of the entire series. The only major addition is a scene of the US Navy attacking Godzilla with missiles, requested by Saperstein to beef-up America’s narrative involvement and obligingly shot by Toho during production—though the sequence has significantly never been included in any Japanese cut of the film.
AIP had always been distributed in Britain by Anglo-Amalgamated, a brash independent renter set up by ex-exhibitors Nat Cohen and Stuart Levy in 1950. In late 1954 Cohen journeyed to the US in search of cheap product, and was impressed with two ambitious young producers he met named James Nicholson and Sam Arkoff, signing a long-term distribution deal for the UK rights to their output. American International Pictures (as the pair’s company became in 1956) supplied Anglo with a steady stream of classic exploitation material—both US and imported—for the next fifteen years.
Wheeler-dealer Cohen also had close ties with major UK conglomerate Associated British-Pathe (who owned the ABC chain of cinemas, chief rivals to Rank’s Odeon circuit). In 1959 AB-P linked up with Warners-UK to create the powerful distribution combine Warner-Pathe, which Anglo themselves joined in 1962. What all this means in practice is that from 1962 Anglo (and hence AIP) had automatic booking-access to Britain’s influential ABC chain for their releases.
Haruo Nakajima takes a tea break on Toho’s backlot during the shooting of Godzilla vs the Thing
Warner-Pathe’s pressbook for Godzilla vs the Thing is less ambitious than Rank’s for KKvG, being only four pages long. It includes just four short ‘Exploitation’ ideas (squeezed in below the Advertising Blocks), which can be quoted in full: “TEASER ADVERTISING—Arouse interest by inserting teaser ad in local paper such as “Have you seen GODZILLA VS THE THING?” at your local cinema or “Monsters on the loose, for thrills, excitement and terror, see them at the ….. cinema now!” Teaser stickers can also be stuck on your front-of-house doors using various catch-lines / STREET FLOAT—Have a large papier-mache cut out model of Godzilla mounted on hardboard erected on a truck to tour the town. Illustrations of the monsters can be in dayglo to give your display a striking effect. A tannoy announcement giving your theatre details can also be erected on the truck / FILM QUIZ—Have a quiz featuring horror monsters and see how many your patrons can name such as Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, Black Scorpion, Them! etc. Award two seats to the sender of the longest list / BOOK SHOPS—Tie-up with horror stories in general by arranging displays at local bookshops on the angle “For horror and suspense, see GODZILLA VS THE THING at the …… cinema.” Supply stills from the film to help back up the display.”
Anglo submitted Godzilla vs the Thing to the BBFC in July 1965, who yet again awarded an ‘X’ cert, and the film was released in November double-billed with a second AIP sci-fi adventure The Time Travellers (written and directed by Ib ‘Volcano Monsters’ Melchior). The MFB review was even terser than usual: “In spite of some clumsy model shots, Godzilla’s fight with the giant moth and its caterpillar progeny is one of Toho’s better efforts, while the beast’s destructive binge and the ineffectual attempts to bring him to a halt are cleverly and spectacularly staged. Unfortunately nothing else quite matches the special effects. The story is ridiculous, the acting is lamentable, and the two miniature twins’ habit of repeating every line of dialogue simultaneously is intensely irksome; but it is difficult not to like the grubs”.
(v) Ghidrah the Three-Headed Monster (unreleased in the UK)
Japanese reissue (1971) poster
The princess of a tiny Asian kingdom is being pursued by political assassins, and while flying to Japan her plane explodes in mid-air seemingly killing her. But she then resurfaces in Tokyo unscathed, apparently possessed by an alien Intelligence and claiming to be a prophetess from Mars warning of the imminent arrival of King Ghidorah, a giant three-headed flying dragon who has ravaged her planet and will soon destroy the world. Rodan (a giant pterodactyl) and Godzilla then turn up and start fighting, while Ghidorah emerges from a blazing meteorite to attack Japan. Our heroes (a young detective and his reporter-sister) beg (via her twin fairies) the larval Mothra for help, and although alone she proves no match for Ghidorah, she finally manages to talk Godzilla and Rodan into assisting her, and together the three earth-monsters jointly defeat the outer-space menace.
Ghidrah marks a further stage in Sekizawa’s ongoing campaign to deliver ever-more convoluted and surreal plotting. The espionage threads—clearly influenced by the success of Britain’s James Bond series—contain various holes and unexplained motivations that don’t always neatly integrate into the accompanying monster-action (a problem that would crop up more insistently later in the series). There’s a lot going on in this film, and not all of it makes much sense, even on its own crazed level. The monsters meanwhile are being steadily anthromorphised, with Rodan (whose original 1958 appearance will be discussed shortly) reduced to an essentially comic figure, and Godzilla here beginning his key transition into heroic Defender of Earth. Visually the film remains stunning, with King Ghidorah a memorable—and frequently resurrected—villain (though, needing seven separate wires to simultaneously control his various heads, tails and wings, he was apparently a nightmare to operate).
Honda on the set of Ghidrah the Three Headed Monster – look out behind you!
Walter Reade’s Continental Films released Ghidrah in the US in Sept 1965 in a heavily recut and reorganised version which reduced Sekizawa’s already loose screenplay to near-incoherence. However, this proved the last Toho fantasy to be so crudely chopped about in the West, and the films thereafter arrived reasonably intact. No UK distributor picked up Ghidrah, and the film remained unseen in Britain until a short-lived video release by Mountain Films in 1983, followed by a late night (3.25am!) TV screening (of the original subtitled Japanese version) by Channel 4 in Dec 1999.
(vi) Monster Zero (unreleased in the UK)
Japanese international poster 1965
A mysterious alien race—the Xians from Planet X—beg Earth’s help in combating Monster Zero (King Ghidorah) who is currently attacking their world, asking to borrow Godzilla and Rodan to defend them in exchange for a supposed ‘miracle drug’ which can wipe out all known disease. Two heroic astronauts negotiate the deal, but soon uncover the truth: Planet X is desperately short of water, and the duplicitous Xians intend to launch ALL THREE monsters against Earth to conquer us before stealing our H2O. The attack begins, but luckily a geeky inventor has developed a ladies’ handbag-alarm gadget which happens to disable the Xian computers. When our heroes learn this secret they are able to free Godzilla and Rodan from Xian control, and the two earth-monsters once again turn on and defeat King Ghidorah and his alien masters.
Compared to the rambling narrative complexities of Ghidrah TTHM, Monster Zero has a relatively linear and straightforward plot, which first formalises what would soon become a standard Sekizawa trope—extra-terrestrial invasion (generally involving stealth or deception) utilising hostile alien monsters pitted against Earth’s giant defenders. Monster Zero is technically up-to-par, though does feature both the first use of cost-saving stock-footage (from Rodan and Ghidrah TTHM), and a deliberately silly sequence in which Godzilla briefly dances a victory jig (the latter supposedly Tsuburaya’s idea, overriding Honda’s reluctant disapproval). Both would be a sign of things to come.
C’mon, gimme a hug—Tsuburaya on the set of Invasion of Astro-Monster
Monster Zero was the second of three landmark co-productions with Saperstein’s UPA, each of which featured a bonafide imported Hollywood star as part of the deal—Nick Adams in both this and Frankenstein Conquers the World, plus Russ Tamblyn in the following year’s War of the Gargantuas. (Saperstein: “Nick Adams was a pleasure and a consummate pro. Russ Tamblyn was a royal pain in the ass. I guess he thought he was Clark Gable or something”). However, their sponsor encountered unexpected difficulties in getting the trio released in the US. AIP agreed to take Frankenstein (in July 1966) but passed on the other two (it’s possible Saperstein and the notoriously hardball Arkoff may have had a falling-out around this time, though neither man ever subsequently admitted it). Either way, it took four long years for the films to appear in the US, double-billed by ex-UPA staffer Mel Maron in July 1970. Again, no UK distributor picked up Monster Zero, and it remained unseen in Britain until a TV screening (under Toho’s original ‘Invasion of Astro-Monster’ international title) on Channel 4 in July 1990, followed by the first official video release by Polygram in 1992.
END OF PART 1