Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, from 1974, was among the first Godzilla pictures I ever saw, so I was never till now in a position to appreciate what a massive shift in the series it represented. In particular, what a jaw-dropping change it meant for director Fukuda Jun, whose four preceding Godzilla projects had all been largely frothy, juvenile affairs with far too much emphasis on James Bond-style thriller mechanics. The optimist […]

It’s impossible to say that 1973’s Godzilla vs. Megalon represents the flaming-out of the Godzilla franchise, or dropping off a cliff, or any other colorful metaphor you like for a movie series just plain giving up. After all, it came out just a year after Godzilla vs. Gigan, a movie which doesn’t leave very much space for any more plummeting. And surely we have not forgotten Son of Godzilla, or […]

After having been quite horrified by the outlandish weirdness (even by the standards of Japanese pop culture!) of 1971’s Godzilla vs. Hedorah, series producer Tanaka Tomoyuki had one demand, and that was for the next year’s movie to be a sane and normal Godzilla movie like all the other Godzilla movies. And by God, but that’s exactly what he got: Godzilla vs. Gigan is about as derivative as the franchise […]

We can pussyfoot around, or we can be frank: Godzilla vs. Hedorah, from 1971, is the god-damn weirdest of all Godzilla films, and it puts in a superlative argument for being the god-damn weirdest giant monster movie that Toho ever put its name to. This is a truth largely unrelated to judgments of good and bad – Godzilla vs. Hedorah essentially transcends such judgments, anyway. It was the first and […]

Wanna know what it looks like when the bottom falls out of a movie franchise? Because it looks like

1964’s Mothra vs. Godzilla is a film of great significance for its franchise and its genre. From a marketing standpoint, it was the first time that two previously unconnected daikaiju from the Toho bestiary were pitted in battle against each other; as such, it sets the tone for the next eleven years of Godzilla films far more than the earlier King Kong vs. Godzilla, which despite being the first of […]

King Kong vs. Godzilla arrived in Japanese movie theaters in 1962 (and American theaters, in a considerably different incarnation, in ’63) after a strange and tortured path through Development Hell that stands up with the greatest making-of stores in cinema history. As you’d expect, when the two greatest giant monsters were put onscreen together for the first and only time, involving not just the usual studio politics bullshit, but two […]

While Godzilla was Toho’s most expensive film of 1954, it was also the studio’s highest-grossing film of 1954, and that meant the same thing in a reconstructing Japan as it means in 21st Century America: sequel! I can’t think of anything to say about Godzilla Raids Again that is more telling than this one fact: it opened less than six months after the first film did. This incredible, damn near […]

I do not know, and I doubt anyone could say for certain, when the first movie was recut for foreign distribution. Certainly, it is not a remotely new practice. The last twenty-odd years of Harvey Weinstein holding court and chopping movies apart frequently for no more apparent reason than to make sure everyone was talking about him have resulted in a lot of attention paid to this somewhat dubious practice, […]

There are many ways to begin speaking about 1954’s Godzilla, the film that introduced one of the most iconic figures ever put to celluloid, but I shall chose to start the same way that the movie does: over black, with the sound of crashing noise and something that sounds like the scream of an elephant raping a lion. As the titles appear, this repetitious cacophony is replaced by a throbbing […]

In 2014, the world will rejoice and celebrate as one of the most iconic figures in all cinema turns 60 – it is birthday time for Godzilla, greatest of all building-sized movie monsters. To commemorate this event, the first Godzilla movie in a decade will be coming out in May, titled simply, and cleanly, Godzilla (though I’m sure they’ll find some way to fuck it up; they want to start […]

Our 7th Annual Oscar Ballot Contest 2024 is LIVE! If you think you know which films, actors, directors, and creatives are going to win the gold statuettes at the 96th annual Academy Awards on March 10th, you can win a $25 gift card to your favorite movie theater OR Amazon credit to purchase your favorite flick, in our ballot contest. Every year, readers compete to see who can guess the […]