Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster

The film regarded as a turning point in the Godzilla series. A meteorite falls on Japan and something comes out of it: a winged, three-headed creature. Ghidorah burns cities and there is nothing that can stand against it. At the same time Godzilla and Rodan are in Japan and fighting each other. Mothra intervenes and asks something of them: to fight for people this time. That is its importance in the series. For the first time Godzilla stops being the threat and becomes the side defending the Earth, and the series takes a different direction from here. On the human side there is a princess: a woman believed lost who says she comes from Venus and announces disasters in advance. A journalist and a policeman try to protect her. The scenes in which the creatures appear together were made with suits and miniatures; they are counted among the most crowded monster sequences of their period. Ishiro Honda directed; the effects are Eiji Tsuburaya's. One of the series' essential instalments for anyone who likes kaiju films and Japanese fantasy cinema of the 1960s. For a viewer looking for realism, the effects sit inside the limits of their time and the human plot is weak.