Don Kaye May 29, 2019
Giant winged monster Rodan was the second major inhabitant of Godzilla's shared universe.
After Godzilla (known as Gojira in his native Japan) had starred in two enormously successful movies -- 1954’s original Gojira and 1955’s Godzilla Raids Again -- Toho Studios was interested in producing more giant monster movies based around new creatures.
Writer Ken Kuronuma (real name Soda Michio) was tasked with coming up with a screenplay about a winged beast. He combined both the idea of a still-living prehistoric animal (in this case a member of the Pteranodon family), awakened like Godzilla by nuclear testing, with a story he had heard about a Kentucky Air National Guard pilot who was killed as he pursued a UFO in his plane.
The result was Rodan, released in 1956 in Japan and in 1957 in the U.S. as Rodan! The Flying Monster! It was the third major kaiju film of Toho’s initial run,...
Giant winged monster Rodan was the second major inhabitant of Godzilla's shared universe.
After Godzilla (known as Gojira in his native Japan) had starred in two enormously successful movies -- 1954’s original Gojira and 1955’s Godzilla Raids Again -- Toho Studios was interested in producing more giant monster movies based around new creatures.
Writer Ken Kuronuma (real name Soda Michio) was tasked with coming up with a screenplay about a winged beast. He combined both the idea of a still-living prehistoric animal (in this case a member of the Pteranodon family), awakened like Godzilla by nuclear testing, with a story he had heard about a Kentucky Air National Guard pilot who was killed as he pursued a UFO in his plane.
The result was Rodan, released in 1956 in Japan and in 1957 in the U.S. as Rodan! The Flying Monster! It was the third major kaiju film of Toho’s initial run,...
- 5/25/2019
- Den of Geek
We know the greats; movies like Metropolis (1927), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Star Wars (1977).
And there are those films which maybe didn’t achieve cinematic greatness, but through their inexhaustible watchability became genre touchstones, lesser classics but classics nonetheless, like The War of the Worlds (1953), Godzilla (1954), Them! (1954), The Time Machine (1960).
In the realm of science fiction cinema, those are the cream (and below that, maybe the half and half). But sci fi is one of those genres which has often too readily leant itself to – not to torture an analogy — producing nonfat dairy substitute.
During the first, great wave of sci fi movies in the 1950s, the target audience was kids and teens. There wasn’t a lot in the way of “serious” sci fi. Most of it was churned out quick and cheap; drive-in fodder, grist for the Saturday matinee mill.
By the early 1960s,...
And there are those films which maybe didn’t achieve cinematic greatness, but through their inexhaustible watchability became genre touchstones, lesser classics but classics nonetheless, like The War of the Worlds (1953), Godzilla (1954), Them! (1954), The Time Machine (1960).
In the realm of science fiction cinema, those are the cream (and below that, maybe the half and half). But sci fi is one of those genres which has often too readily leant itself to – not to torture an analogy — producing nonfat dairy substitute.
During the first, great wave of sci fi movies in the 1950s, the target audience was kids and teens. There wasn’t a lot in the way of “serious” sci fi. Most of it was churned out quick and cheap; drive-in fodder, grist for the Saturday matinee mill.
By the early 1960s,...
- 3/17/2012
- by Bill Mesce
- SoundOnSight
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