kaiju
Before Frankenstein Conquers the World, there had been no official collaboration between America’s Hollywood and Japan’s Toho studios, which had each been churning out their own giant-radiation-induced-monster films.
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Them! is undeniably underrated. It is a wonder to me that it is not on the AFI 100 list. Strangely, Warner Bros. is said to not have had much confidence in this film, abandoning plans for it to be both in color and 3D, two popular gimmicks of creature films at the time. Despite this, Them! has forged a legacy as a prime example of the giant, radioactive monster craze of the 1950s and would go on to be Warner Bros.’s most successful picture of 1954.
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Just nine years after the U.S. nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the film Godzilla was officially released. Separating these two events are seven years of American military occupation of Japan, the testing of hydrogen bombs off the coast of Japan (by both Americans and Soviets), and a dramatic reshaping of Japanese culture, owing much to the American efforts to remake Japanese society.
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The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms could be called the cinematic atomic bomb that awakened the giant cinematic monster and kaiju in the 1950s. It was an unassuming film in many respects, but The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms helped to chart the immediate course for 50s horror, with classic films like Them! And Godzilla following it.
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