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Japanese Title: San Daikaiju Chikyu Saidai no Kessen (“Three Giant Monsters – the Greatest Battle on Earth”)
Toho Studios’ Official English Title: Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster
Other American Titles: Ghidrah, the Three-Headed Monster (original release)
Noteworthy International Titles: Alien Monster (British); Gojira, Mosura, Kingu Gidora: Chikyu Saidai no Kessen (Japanese Champion Festival release, “Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: the Greatest Battle on Earth”)
Director: Ishiro Honda
Producer: Tomoyuki Tanaka
Screenplay: Shinichi Sekizawa
Music: Akira Ifukube; “Shiawase Wo Yobou” (“Let’s Call for Happiness”) composed by Yasushi (Hiroshe?) Miyagawa, with lyrics by Tokiko Iwantani
Special Effects: Eiji Tsuburaya
Japanese Release: 12/20/64
American Release: 9/13/65, 9/29/65 or 9/30/65; reports vary
U.S. Distributor: Continental Distributing / Walter Reade-Sterling
Review Copy DVD Distributor: Classic Media
Running Time: 92 min./ 85 min. (American version)
Monsters: – Godzilla (Japanese: “Gojira”)
- Rodan (Japanese: “Radon,” a contraction of Pteranodon – PteRAnoDON – a sort of pterosaur) – A colossal, red-brown pterosaur, with a small, two-horned head and a spiky front
- Mothra (Japanese: “Mosura”) – One of the caterpillars, this time
- Ghidora (Japanese: “Gidora”; will later be called “King Ghidorah,” presumably after a coronation of some sort; also called “Ghidrah” and “King Ghidora”) – A huge, golden dragon, with three heads perched on the ends of long necks, a forked tail, and vast, fanlike wings
- The Shobijin (“tiny beauties” in Japanese)
Principal Cast: – Godzilla – Haruo Nakajima
- Rodan – Masaki Shinohara
- Mothra – Katsumi Tezuka
- Ghidorah – Shoichi “Solomon” Hirose (previously “King Kong” in King Kong vs. Godzilla)
- Shindo – Yosuke Natsuki
- Naoko Shindo – Yuriko Hoshi (previously “Junko Nakanishi” in Mothra vs. Godzilla)
- Professor Murai – Hiroshi Koizumi (previously “Tsukioka” in Gojira no Gyakushu, “Dr. Miura” in Mothra vs. Godzilla)
- Princess Maas Doulina Salno – Akiko Wakabayashi (previously “Tamiye,” a minor character in King Kong vs. Godzilla; known to American audiences as “Aki” from You Only Live Twice)
- Dr. Tsukamoto – Takashi Shimura (previously “Dr. Kyohei Yamane” in Gojira and Gojira no Gyakushu)
- Detective Okita – Akihiko Hirata (previously “Dr. Serizawa” in Gojira, “Mr. Shinagawa” in King Kong vs. Godzilla)
- Malness – Hisaya Ito
- The Shobijin – Emi and Yumi Ito

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It is often claimed that persons who report encounters with cryptozoological creatures “just want attention.” It’s an odd claim – while such people certainly do get attention, it is very rarely of a sort that rational people would desire. Take Doug Wilhide, the subject of a front-page story in the Minneapolis Star Tribune on June 2nd, 2000. The previous day, that same paper had published a letter he’d written them, claiming to have seen an alligator in Lake of the Isles, a scenic body of water in Minneapolis’ Uptown area. Now, this was an unusual claim, to be sure. But it probably didn’t automatically deserve the headline, “Is the ‘alligator in Isles’ story a croc?” Or the Peter Pan references contained within the article. And there certainly wasn’t any reason to tell us that Wilhide’s daughter and fellow alligator-spotter, Anduin (whose name, in these multicultural times, gave pause to nobody), was named after a river in Lord of the Rings. Unless we were meant to think, “Jeez! Only weirdoes read Lord of the Rings!” Which we most likely were, in those pre-Peter Jackson days.

Trouble was, his story wasn’t really all that incredible.

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As a boy, I spent three years as a member of the Cub Scouts (the junior organization to the Boy Scouts of America). This afforded me many opportunities to be deep in the woods with large groups of other young boys. And thus I was able to observe the tendency of young boys, when deep in the woods, to become convinced that said woods were populated by animals that were, shall we say, not entirely accepted by conventional science.

One such animal – and I use the term rather loosely – was the Bull Weevil. The Bull Weevil, I was told with great gravitas at the beginning of one camping trip, was a horrible, maneating beast; it had eerie, luminescent red eyes, and terrible, hideous fangs and talons. Apart from these features, however, it was essentially humanoid. It was therefore, basically, an ogre, a bogeyman of the forest, just waiting for its opportunity to turn a rather commonplace scout camping trip into a morbid, supernatural tragedy.

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There was a Jackalope on my block when I was a boy.

But first, some background:

The word “Jackalope” – referring to an antlered rabbit – was coined by the American pioneers; it was a creature of their tall tales. Though on a basic level, according to these tales, the Jackalope was simply a species of rabbit that sported deerlike antlers, its attributes would be…embellished from story to story. Sometimes it was said that male Jackalopes would become incorrigible during rutting season, attacking anything whatsoever in order to impress the females; bison, taking pity on the rabbits, would step out of their way when thus attacked. Sometimes it was said that Jackalopes loved alcohol, and would raid human camps for it. They couldn’t live in holes like other rabbits, due to their antlers; they had no fear of predators for the same reason. And so on. Some storytellers went so far as to ascribe anthropophagy (man-eating) to the species, though one imagines that the Jackalopes would have a bit of difficulty taking their prey. The pioneers, it seems, had what you might call “fertile imaginations.”

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