Harryhausen…the father of Kaiju? You bet!

Before there was a certain nuclear Japanese giant lizard, there was a burgeoning monster boom happening in Hollywood. With the great success in the U.S. of early monster films featuring Ray Harryhausen’s ground breaking stop motion techniques, Iwao Mori, the big time producer for TOHO studios, set forth to make Japan’s entry into the giant monster film arena.

The first draft for TOHO’s  monster film was called “The Giant Monster from 20,000 Miles beneath the Sea”, hmm…maybe a little too close to the title of Harryhausen’s 1953 “Beast from 20,000 Fathoms” . Despite the obvious title similarities and influence, TOHO’s beast would eventually morph into the most well known monster of all…Gojira!

…and keep a man named Eiji Tsuburaya busy for quite some time.

Why do I bring up Harryhausen today???  Because today is the release of a few choice Harryhausen monster films on Blu-Ray. I am excited about this because I love these films and grew up watching them…forging my passion for all things monsters! I’ve seen these films sooo many times that seeing them in HD is for me…well…Exciting!

If you don’t have a Blu-Ray player, get one if you can…it’s only a matter of time before we’ll see Japanese kaiju eiga classics appearing in Blu format. If you like films as much as I do, the HD experience is really worth checking out. So what if a recession is coming…bailout shmailout…we may not be able to afford food or gas, but at least you’ll have movies in HD, right???

Oh Yeah…

The Cyclops at the top is new for the Kaiju Art Collection. I used the 2001 X-Plus 12″ figure from my collection for the photograph. Cyclops is from Harryhausen’s wonderful “7th Voyage of Sinbad” Click Here to see a larger verion. I hope you like it!!!