The Criterion Collection

Godzilla was truly ripped from the headlines, premiering in Japan exactly eight scant months after the U.S. detonated an H-bomb in the Marshall Islands on March 1, 1954—which led to the contamination of the crew of the Lucky Dragon No. 5 fishing trawler, a tragic event that provided the basis for the beginning scenes of the film.

The special-effects crew nicknamed Godzilla “Goji”—part of the Japanese phrase gozen goji, or “five a.m.”—because they consistently toiled through the night and daybreak to pull off their cinematic magic.

The first Godzilla suit ever made weighed over 220 pounds, a burden so massive that Godzilla suit performer Haruo Nakajima claims to have drained a cup of sweat out of the suit after each day of performing.

Having been weaned on special-effects spectaculars (and not-so-spectaculars), I tend to spot FX shots, whether I want to or not, pretty easily. Even so, I had no idea this image from Godzilla was a composite of actors on location in the foreground and a matte-painted sea in the background. (On the left is a still image from the original location footage—notice the trees in the background—and on the right is the final image, with the matte composited where those trees once stood.)

When I was eight or so, I was unhealthily fastidious about my Godzilla drawings, making sure the plate tips were curved just so, the fingers numbered correctly, the body widened out at the base the right way. But I pulled out a green marker for all of those and, well, it turns out Godzilla’s bumpy dermis always had a gray base (sometimes with a hint of blue or black, depending on the movie) until 2000. Oops.

Godzilla was truly an international hit, and some fascinating variants popped up in other nations, particularly in Italy, where director Luigi Cozzi had the genius idea (genius, I tell you) to mondo-up Godzilla, King of the Monsters with psychotronic tinted color, thumping Italo-disco music, and documentary footage of real death and destruction. I’m still dying to see a great edition of 1977’s Godzilla, il re dei mostri. Somebody put that one out, per favore!

Postwar Japan’s film industry suffered from a shortage of building materials, so the resourceful model-building crew often used sugar wafers to construct their soon-to-be-demolished architectural miniatures.

Godzilla’s sonic-iconic roar was conceived by composer Akira Ifukube, who realized that a manipulated recording of a leather glove rubbing a loosened contrabass string would provide a perfectly monstrous tone.

Godzilla special-effects director Eiji Tsuburaya created miniature-driven battle scenes for the 1942 film Battle of Pearl Harbor and the Malay Coast, and the sequences of Zero fighter planes attacking were so convincing that occupying American forces in Japan believed they were seeing documentary footage.

Godzilla director (and Stray Dog assistant director) Ishiro Honda was a close friend of Akira Kurosawa’s and was heavily involved with his last five films, from contributing uncredited cowriting to directing key sequences in works like 1990’s Dreams.

Curtis Tsui is a producer at the Criterion Collection.