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 Motoyoshi Oda • 1955 • Japan

Toho Studios followed the enormous success of the original Godzilla with this sequel, efficiently directed by Motoyoshi Oda as a straight-ahead monsters-on-the-loose drama. An underrated standout among the Showa Godzilla films, Godzilla Raids Again introd...

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 • 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 • 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 • 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 Jun Fukuda • 1966 • Japan
Starring Akira Takarada, Kumi Mizuno, Chotaro Togin

The first Godzilla film directed by Jun Fukuda, who would go on to direct four more, is fast-paced and light in tone, and builds to a riveting race-against-time finale. On a secluded island in the South Sea...

Directed by Jun Fukuda • 1967 • Japan

In director Jun Fukuda’s second Godzilla outing, secret weather-control experiments create a radioactive storm and Godzilla must rescue monster hatchling Minilla from the giant mutant insects that result. Featuring a buoyant score by Masaru Sato and impressi...

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 Yoshimitsu Banno • 1971 • Japan
Starring Akira Yamauchi, Toshie Kimura, Hiroyuki Kawase

Intended to address the crisis levels of pollution in postwar Japan, GODZILLA VS. HEDORAH finds the King of the Monsters fighting an alien life form that arrives on Earth and steadily grows by fee...

Directed by Jun Fukuda • 1972 • Japan
Starring Hiroshi Ishikawa, Yuriko Hishimi, Minoru Takashima

An alien invasion prompts a tag-team battle between Godzilla and Anguirus, the planet protectors, and King Ghidorah and the new monster Gigan, a cyborg with scythe-like claws, an abdominal buzz saw,...

Directed by Jun Fukuda • 1973 • Japan

Nuclear testing unleashes mayhem on the undersea kingdom of Seatopia, causing a series of environmental disasters that nearly wipes out Rokuro, the schoolboy protagonist at the center of this film. To exact revenge, Seatopia unleashes Megalon, a gigantic bee...

Directed by Jun Fukuda • 1974 • Japan

Godzilla’s evil twin Mechagodzilla first reared its head in this Jun Fukuda–directed film. A robot designed by aliens to conquer Earth, the enduringly popular villain has since been resurrected by Toho Studios several times. With the help of earnest directio...

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...