Tag: Akira Takarada
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King Kong Escapes (1967)
Why yes, this is my favorite King Kong movie. Is my enthusiasm showing? Well, I’ll do my best to tuck it back as we explore this rarely-mentioned, esoteric bit of late-60s kaiju eiga. It’s about as far from Kong’s first adventure as you can get without being Mighty Joe Young…but that just means this movie’s […]
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Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster (1966)
Twelve years after his debut, Godzilla found himself riding an international wave of giant monster movies, Japanese or otherwise. The previous three films flooded Toho Studios with an admirable amount of cash and an (arguably) even larger amount of prestige. Rival studios began fielding their own monstrous challengers to Godzilla’s crown, but no one really […]
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Godzilla vs. Monster Zero (1965)
There is no human achievement more complex, daunting or inspirational than the “conquest” of outer space. I put “conquest” in sarcastic quotes because we really haven’t conquered jack shit. We’ve played golf on our nearest satellite and left a plaque for the cockroaches to find. By the standards of SF in the mid-60s, we’re way […]
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Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964)
The international success of King Kong vs. Godzilla ensured it would be a major moment in the careers of its two top-billed stars and the director behind both of them, Ishirô Honda. Prior to directing the original Gojira ten years earlier, Honda specialized in slice-of-life dramas with the occasional break into that new, Hot Genre […]
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Godzilla (1954)
On March 1, 1954, fallout from the United States’ Castle Bravo nuclear test on Bikini Atoll rained down on the 140-ton tuna boat Daigo Fukury Maru contaminating its twenty-three man crew. All suffered from acute radiation sickness and one eventually succumbed. According to the Japan Times, his last words were, “I pray that I am […]