Awkward Vintage Japanese Movie Monsters

The kaiju eiga (literally “monster movie” in Japanese) was born in 1954 with Ishiro Honda’s landmark masterpiece Godzilla. Its immense international success spawned a chain of sequels, numerous imitators, more than a few rip-offs, and a slew of strange, bizarre cinematic creatures arising to threaten the existence of humankind.

And though many of these films have become regarded as camp classics — and some of them aimed to do just that — we must not overlook the frightening and downright creepy creatures that have appeared on Japanese theater screens over the last 63 years…