The On March 1st, 1954, a Japanese fishing boat called Lucky Dragon 5 became contaminated by nuclear

fallout from the United States testing thermonuclear weapons in the ocean nearby.

The crew suffered acute radiation syndrome and one member of the crew eventually died of radiation sickness.

This came less than a decade after the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima,

so Japan's nuclear fears and anxieties were at an all-time high. Meanwhile at this time Japanese film

studio Toho were developing their own monster movie inspired by the success of

films like King Kong and The Beast from 20,000 fathoms.

Toho producer Tumuyuki Tanaka conceived an idea based on the Lucky Dragon Five

incident about a giant ancient creature under the sea which is

awoken by nuclear testing. That movie, of course, became Godzilla.

released later that year, it did indeed become as successful a monster movie as King Kong, but with its own very unique tone,

tapping into those feelings of fear, anxiety, guilt and sadness of post-war Japan.

And while Godzilla went on to become one of the biggest cultural icons of all time,

spawning countless sequels, remakes and spin-offs and its own genre, Kaju, the original movie still remains unique and one of the most effective and devastating monster movies ever made. Join me as we continue our series on Nature in horror movies and we discuss

Ashiro Honda's monumental monster movie, Godzilla.

Welcome back to the evolution of horror.

My name is Mike Munzer and as ever I am your host.

In this podcast we explore and dissect the history and the evolution of the horror genre one

sub-genre at a time. We are currently in the middle of our 10th season called

Nature Bites Back and this is part three. In this week's episode as that intro suggested

we are going to be discussing one movie and that is the classic

Godzilla from 1954.

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