Director Ishirô Honda intended the movie to have a somber ending, but was forced by Toho to add the more cheerful final sequence in which Ichiro goes to school with the children. When the movie was re-released on home video during the 80s, Honda removed this scene, so the movie ends with Ichiro's mother crying due to not being able to spend more time with her son.
While Ishirô Honda considered the original Godzilla was the best, he considered this as one of his own personal favorites. With the death of special effects director Eiji Tsuburaya, Honda felt that there should not have been any more Godzilla films and that the series should have ended to honor Tsuburaya's passing. He was already disappointed with the direction Toho took the series but wasn't able to do anything due to studio mandates. After worked on only a few more films and TV he would essentially retire from filmmaking, only returning when called upon by his old friend Akira Kurosawa.
While prior Godzilla films had begun increasing their appeal to children, this was the first entry made as a family film specifically aimed at children. It marks the beginning of what is known as the Champion Festival Era of Godzilla. Rather than wide-releases, Toho's Champion Festival was a seasonal film campaign for children that consisted of matinee screenings of new films along with popular cartoons, superhero shows, and re-releases of their older films. Every Godzilla movie of the 1970s would made specifically for the Champion Festival while previous entries would be re-edited and shorten to fit the program.
The head of the monster Gabara was created by tweaking the head design of a previous Godzilla suit.
After years of playing mainly villains, this was the first time Hideyo Amamoto was asked to play a somewhat fatherly figure in the person of toymaker Shinpei. However, he was not particularly fond of this role.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content
