Godzilla of course is one of the best movie monsters of all times - my favourite certainly - and the early movies contain all the fun you can have (wonderful examples how a little imagination and a rubber suit easily beat today’s combination of a meagre imagination and computer effects). The only problem is that some of those movies contain just a bit too much of “Godzilla (or some other monsters) destroys some city” - after about five minutes you get the idea (no, really!). This is why “Godzilla versus the Sea Monster” stands out, because it is a genuinely good film (needless to say incl. a lot of the usual Godzilla-movie goofiness) with just enough monster fighting to make it a lot of fun (and Mothra stars in it, too!) Another great film is…

“Godzilla versus the Astro Monster”, which has some extremely nifty sci-fi effects. Given the year it was made, the spaceship and its voyage through outer space (incl. the other planets) look very cool (that’s a few years before “2001”). Finally, notheworthy is

“Godzilla versus Hedorah (aka the Smog Monster)”, the eco-message movie of the series. Extremely noteworthy because of the ultimate goofiness that ensues when Godzilla uses his atomic breath to fly after Hedorah. You have to see it to believe it.

One of the things that still amazes me about these movies is the special-effects creator’s inventiveness. Sure, there are strings that hold various bits, but sometime, there are where you don’t expect them - so you don’t notice them even though they’re clearly there: For example, whole scenes might be filmed upside-down, so the wires appear below an airplane, say - and since you’d look for them above the plane, you simply don’t see them. And often you realize that they could have done a more realistic version of certain things, but they kept it a bit unreal, because it’s more fun.