Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    LIFE Godzilla
    LIFE Godzilla
    LIFE Godzilla
    Ebook145 pages1 hour

    LIFE Godzilla

    By The Editors of LIFE

    5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    The editors of LIFE Magazine present LIFEGodzilla.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLife
    Release dateMay 31, 2019
    ISBN9781547847013
    LIFE Godzilla

    Read more from The Editors Of Life

    Related to LIFE Godzilla

    Related ebooks

    Horror Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Extinction Rebellion

      May 27, 2022

      Extinction Rebellion
      13 min read

    • Article

      Amityville Horror ends

      Mar 20, 2021

      Amityville Horror ends
      4 min read

    • Article

      Who's Laughing Now?

      Sep 11, 2019

      Who's Laughing Now?
      8 min read

    • Article

      PWI 40th Anniversary

      Jul 3, 2019

      PWI 40th Anniversary
      32 min read

    • Article

      Monster Movie Masterpiece

      Jan 25, 2024

      Monster Movie Masterpiece
      3 min read

    • Article

      Monsters Of The Universe

      Mar 5, 2021

      Monsters Of The Universe
      9 min read

    • Article

      Kaiju Movies

      Mar 3, 2022

      Kaiju Movies
      1 min read

    • Article

      GODZILLA The Showa-Era Films, 1954–1975

      Dec 4, 2019

      RELEASED OUT NOW! 1954–1975 | 12 | Blu-ray RELEASED OUT NOW! 1954–1975 | 12 | Blu-ray Cast Haruo Nakajima, Akira Takarada, Momoko Kochi, Akira Kubo, Beverly Maeda, Nick Adams BLU-RAY DEBUT “Getting to take part in Godzilla vs Megalon was the most won

      3 min read

    • Article

      Scary History: 100 Years Of Monster Movies

      Nov 1, 2023

      Scary History: 100 Years Of Monster Movies
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Last Emperor

      Oct 12, 2023

      The Last Emperor
      4 min read

    • Article

      A Monstrous Burden

      Sep 1, 2022

      A Monstrous Burden
      10 min read

    • Article

      Hiroshima

      Jul 9, 2020

      Hiroshima
      1 min read

    • Article

      Haruo Nakajima, The Original Godzilla Actor, Dies

      Aug 8, 2017

      Nakajima played the iconic giant reptile in a dozen films, donning the suit that he says weighed about 220 pounds and wreaking havoc on model cities and rival monsters. He was 88.

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Making Of Tora! Tora! Tora!

      Oct 5, 2021

      The Making Of Tora! Tora! Tora!
      21 min read

    • Article

      Hopelessly Enchanted

      Nov 3, 2018

      Hopelessly Enchanted
      2 min read

    • Article

      ‘Godzilla Minus One’: How A 70-year-old Monster Stays Evergreen

      Dec 12, 2023

      Godzilla has towered as a colossus of pop culture for nearly 70 years. Across three dozen movies, the titanic lizard has leveled city skylines with its atomic ray. Its destruction leaves audiences in awe, yet often eclipses the human plot. Until now.

      3 min read

    • Article

      The 007 Files

      Oct 16, 2020

      The 007 Files
      6 min read

    • Article

      10 Hidden Gems from the NFB

      Apr 27, 2023

      10 Hidden Gems from the NFB
      9 min read

    • Article

      Defining Moments

      Oct 10, 2019

      Defining Moments
      1 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for LIFE Godzilla

    5/5

    2 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Loved the historical context. Nice to learn the backstory to the Godzilla universe.
    • 5/5
      I have flowed and loved Godzilla since I was a little girl an I still love him to this day at the age of 45. For me Godzilla has always been my favorite monster an like in the stories he has come to be something within our own imagination that helps us to cope with the wars and nuclear bombings that have been eflicted within this world form then up to now ...kinda makes you wonder ???? When will the next movie be an whwre will it end up at?????????

    Book preview

    LIFE Godzilla - The Editors of LIFE

    MORE

    INTRODUCTION

    RUN! IT’S GODZILLA

    How a knockoff Japanese science fiction–horror movie spawned a monster that conquered the world—and is still on a roll (or a rampage) six decades later

    Godzilla (a.k.a. Gojira), 1954.

    In 1954 GODZILLA (GOJIRA IN JAPAN) BEGAN AS A knockoff of 1953’s The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, a cheesy but successful American creature feature. This, to say the least, was an inauspicious start for a film that would eventually thrill audiences around the world, spawn an enduring franchise, and be considered a cinematic classic. How did a movie with such a preposterous premise (an undersea monster ravages Tokyo after being awakened by nuclear tests) become so unexpectedly effective? One reason is that the film’s plot had real-life resonance—it was inspired by the panic that possessed Japan in 1954 after a U.S. nuclear bomb test in the Pacific showered radiation on a fishing boat and the tuna catch that it brought back home.

    The panic was uncomfortably familiar. Nearly a decade before, Japan had become the first country to suffer nuclear attacks (on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki), leading to its surrender at the end of World War II. The fallout from these events proved both literal (radiation sickness, death) and figurative (a crisis of national identity and commerce). As a result, Godzilla’s irradiated beast hit perilously close to home in more ways than one. Far from mere escapism, the film transformed a country’s painful past into a bracing, cathartic cinematic experience, while Godzilla itself became as much metaphor as monster.

    If Godzilla had been nothing more than a ripped-from-the-headlines horror story, it would never have stood the test of time, however. In addition to everything else, the film was an artistic triumph—thanks largely to director Ishiro Honda, who took an inventive, surrealistic, but paradoxically believable approach to his pulp fiction. In the process, he transformed what could have been sheer hackery into something approaching the sublime. Martin Scorsese, John Carpenter, and Tim Burton are among the directors who have acknowledged Honda’s influence.

    Sixty-five years after Godzilla first emerged from the watery depths, the monster has starred in more than 30 films (some wonderful, some execrable, some merely amusing) and inspired innumerable imitations, video games, action figures, T-shirts, pillows, coasters, cookie cutters—even cupcake toppers! But the sexagenarian sea creature is hardly slowing with age: The 2019 Hollywood release Godzilla: King of the Monsters has access to the kind of state-of-the-art effects that the 1954 film’s creators could only have dreamed of. Nevertheless, the first Godzilla remains in its way unsurpassed. For me, there is only the original version, Peter H. Brothers, author of Atomic Dreams and the Nuclear Nightmare, tells LIFE. I will never forget seeing him for the first time when I was seven years old. It was a life-changing moment—awesome and electric. I feel fortunate to have gotten in on the ground floor with Godzilla. With any luck, I will still be around when he turns 75.

    CHAPTER ONE

    THE BIRTH OF THE MONSTER

    1954

    ON MARCH 1, 1954, THE UNITED States dropped Castle Bravo, a 15-megaton thermonuclear device, on the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean’s Marshall Islands, leading to the events that inspired the first Godzilla film.

    AT 6:45 ON THE MORNING OF MARCH 1, 1954, a Japanese fishing boat, the Daigo Fukuryu Maru (No. 5 Lucky Dragon), was cruising toward the Pacific Ocean’s Marshall Islands in search of bigeye tuna when crewman Matakichi Oishi saw a flash of yellow light through the porthole. Wondering what had happened, I jumped up from the bunk near the door, ran out on deck, and was astonished, he later wrote. Bridge, sky, and sea burst into view, painted in flaming sunset colors.

    Oishi had just witnessed the explosion of Castle Bravo, a 15-megaton thermonuclear device, on the islands’ Bikini Atoll. One thousand times more powerful than the bomb that had decimated the Japanese city of Hiroshima nearly a decade before, it was the latest and most destructive in a series of often clandestine tests (code-named Operation Castle) that the United States had begun in 1946.

    Though the Lucky Dragon itself was unscathed, its crew was showered a few hours later by radioactive dust (shi no hai, or ashes of death) from atomized coral. White particles were falling on us, just like sleet, Oishi wrote. The white particles penetrated mercilessly—eyes, nose, ears, mouth. We had no sense that it was dangerous.

    It wasn’t just dangerous—it was potentially deadly. During the boat’s two-week trip back to the port of Yaizu in Shizuoka Prefecture, the crew began suffering from skin burns and radiation sickness. Later, it turned out that 856 Japanese fishing vessels and more than 20,000 fishermen had been exposed to radiation from the test. So had tons of the tuna they had caught—some of which was sold in Tokyo markets and eaten by unsuspecting consumers.

    After this news became public, a tuna panic swept Japan, closing seafood markets and devastating the fishing industry. Tokyo’s enormous fish market sold very few fish for weeks, one U.S. diplomat later recalled. It was a serious economic disruption in addition to being a psychological body blow to Japan. The incident marked the third time that Japan had experienced the deadly effects of nuclear power, and it helped

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1