Director: Jun Fukuda Screenplay: Jun Fukuda Story: Takeshi Kimura, Shinichi Sekizawa
Cinematography: Yuzuru Aizawa Music: Riichiro Manabe SPFX Director: Teruyoshi Nakano
Cast: Katsuhiko Sasaki, Hiroyuki Kawase, Yutaka Hayashi, Robert Dunham, Kotaro Tomita,
Wolf Otsuki, Shinji Tatagi, Hideto Odachi, Tsugutoshi Komada, Kenpachiro Satsuma
I’ve never been known for having my finger on the pulse of good taste, so I suppose it’s only to be expected that one of the (and perhaps the) most universally reviled of all Toho Company’s beloved Godzilla franchise would also happen to be one of my personal favorites. The first of the series to be released domestically through Cinema Shares and the only of them to retain its original Toho-given English title*, Godzilla vs. Megalon was a staple of UHF television programming in my youth – I can at least claim to have come by my bias naturally.
It seems important to note that Godzilla vs. Megalon initially had nothing to do with Godzilla at all. Toho had conceived the project as the solo debut of the robot Jet Jaguar (the result of a creative children’s contest held by the company the year before), a concept they abandoned out of fear that the new character would be unable to carry a feature all his own. The shooting schedule was eventually slashed to a mere three weeks and the screenplay altered to include both Godzilla (in his first new suit since 1968) and his previous foe Gigan. Whether or not Toho’s scheming worked is difficult to assess, but one thing is for certain – Godzilla fought Megalon to the lowest audience turnout ever seen for the franchise up to that point**.
