The man who gave the world Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra, and more, Ishiro Honda was the wizard behind the Japanese monster-movie (kaiju eiga) craze that thrilled legions of international fans in the 1950s and ’60s. Turning the trauma of nuclear attack into larger-than-life pop spectacle, Honda created ferociously entertaining special-effects extravaganzas that doubled as resonant metaphors for the devastation of World War II. This tribute to Honda’s ever-imaginative artistry features the creature features for which he is best remembered as well as lesser-known cult favorites like the psychedelic horror freakout MATANGO.
This introduction by filmmaker Alex Cox was recorded in 2019.
Directed by Ishiro Honda • 1954 • Japan
Starring Akira Takarada, Momoko Kōchi, Akihiko Hirata
GODZILLA (a.k.a. GOJIRA) is the roaring granddaddy of all monster movies. It’s also a remarkably humane and melancholy drama, made in Japan at a time when the country was reeling from nuclear attack and...
Directed by Ishiro Honda and Terry O. Morse • 1956 • United States
Starring Raymond Burr, Frank Iwanaga, Akira Takarada
This 1956 feature film, codirected and edited by Terry Morse, is the famous American reworking of the original GODZILLA. It combines footage from the original 1954 production w...
Directed by Ishiro Honda • 1957 • Japan
Starring Kenji Sahara, Yumi Shirakawa, Akihiko Hirata
Comic-book colors and charmingly retro, space-age special effects are among the highlights of this pure-pleasure science-fiction fantasia in which a band of aliens arrive on Earth seemingly in peace. Bu...
Directed by Ishiro Honda • 1958 • Japan
Starring Kozo Nomura, Ayumi Sonoda, Koreya Senda
Following in the wake of Godzilla and Rodan, Toho and director Ishiro Honda unleashed Varan, another monstrous manifestation of nature’s wrath. When they travel to a remote region of Japan to investigate the...
Directed by Ishiro Honda • 1963 • Japan
Starring Tadao Takashima, Yoko Fujiyama, Ken Uehara
The imaginative work of legendary special-effects artist Eiji Tsuburaya is on display in this giddily entertaining science-fiction spectacle. Fearful that the humans who live on the Earth’s surface have b...
Directed by Ishiro Honda • 1963 • Japan
Starring Hiroshi Koizumi, Kumi Mizuno, Kenji Sahara
Leaving behind the kaiju genre for which he was best known, Ishiro Honda took a detour into hallucinogenic science fiction with this disturbing psychological survival thriller that stands as perhaps the d...
Directed by Ishiro Honda • 1964 • Japan
Starring Robert Dunham, Yosuke Natsuki, Yoko Fujiyama
With DOGORA, Toho and director Ishiro Honda unleashed one of their wildest and weirdest creatures: a giant, jellyfish-like tentacled terror who descends from outer space and proceeds to consume the Eart...
Directed by Ishiro Honda • 1964 • Japan
After laying waste to an alien civilization on Venus, the three-headed, lightning-emitting space monster Ghidorah brings its insatiable thirst for destruction to Earth, where fierce foes Godzilla, Rodan, and Mothra must join forces in order to deal with th...
Directed by Ishiro Honda • 1964 • Japan
Godzilla faces off against the benevolent insect monster-god Mothra in this clash of the titans, a crossover battle between two of Toho Studios’ most popular monsters—the last in which Godzilla would figure as a malevolent villain rather than a fearsome he...
Directed by Ishiro Honda • 1965 • Japan
Starring Tadao Takashima, Nick Adams, Kumi Mizuno
The legend of Mary Shelley’s mythic monster gets an offbeat update in this wild and weird, East-meets-West kaiju oddity. Fifteen years after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, an American scientist (...
Directed by Ishiro Honda • 1965 • Japan
Aliens from Planet X make an irresistible offer to the people of Earth: let them borrow Godzilla and Rodan to help defeat King Ghidorah, and in return they will provide a cure for all known human disease. But the aliens’ duplicity is soon revealed, as they...
Directed by Ishiro Honda • 1966 • Japan
After escaping a laboratory, two giant ape-like humanoids battle it out over Tokyo.
Directed by Ishiro Honda • 1968 • Japan
The original Godzilla team of director Ishiro Honda, special-effects supervisor Eiji Tsuburaya, and composer Akira Ifukube reunited for this kaiju extravaganza, which features no fewer than eleven monsters. Set in the remote future of 1999, when the people...
Directed by Ishiro Honda • 1969 • Japan
Director Ishiro Honda returned again for the first Godzilla movie expressly for children. Economizing by reusing effects shots from other films in the series, All Monster Attack tells the story of Ichiro, a lonely latchkey kid who finds solace in his dream...
Directed by Ishiro Honda • 1970 • Japan
Starring Akira Kubo, Yukiko Kobayashi, Atsuko Takahashi
Amoeba-like aliens crash-land on a far-flung island in the South Pacific. Their plan to conquer Earth? Generate towering versions of native sea creatures. Soon, a supersized squid, a colossal crab, an...
Directed by Ishiro Honda • 1975 • Japan
In Godzilla’s last gasp of the Showa era, aliens retrieve Mechagodzilla’s remains and rebuild it with the aid of an unhinged biologist (a scenery-chewing Akihiko Hirata), in hopes of defeating Godzilla for possession of planet Earth. This film marked the r...
