Godzilla: One ill-fated night, Godzilla, a giant radioactive reptile from the sea, climbs out from Tokyo Bay and attacks the city. After wreaking havoc and causing much death and destruction, he’s gone, but the Japanese army puts up a row of electrical towers along Tokyo’s coast to shoot 50,000 volts of electricity through the monster, should he come back again. This is the plot of the original 1954 “Godzilla,” a campy action thriller that has a direct connection to the nuclear attacks on Japan in 1945. The film’s director and co-writer, Ishiro Honda, was allegedly so shocked by the devastation from the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima that he created the monster to act as a metaphor for the devastation. More than 50 years later, Godzilla (whose name is an amalgam of the Japanese for gorilla and whale) is as instantly recognizable as ever around the globe -- the freak monster inextricably tied to Japanese culture and Tokyo for evermore. Source: ArmandSrancho
