Trailer
Plot summary
Kitamatsu is a mining village near Mount Aso on Kyushu. Miners Goro and Yoshi enter a shaft before it floods, and tunneling and safety engineer Shigeru Kawamura goes down and finds Yoshi's corpse, lacerated by a sharp object. More miners and a policeman die in the flooded shaft, and suspicion falls on Goro. That night a giant larval insect attacks the home of Shigeru's fiancée Kiyo, who is Goro's sister, and the authorities stop treating Goro as a suspect. The police hunt the creature, and two officers are killed before it escapes into the mine. Shigeru goes back into the mine with police and soldiers.
Cast
- Akio Koborias Police Chief Nishimura
- Mitsuo Tsudaas Staff Officer Takeuchi
- Ren Imaizumias Sunagawa
- Jun'ichirô Mukaias Military officer
- Ichirô Chibaas Chief of police station
- Tsurue Ichimanjias Haru, Kiyo's neighbor (as Tazue Ichimanji)
Show all 20 cast
- Tateo Kawasakias Tsunesan, miner
- Kanta Kisaragias Suteyan, miner
- Yasuko Nakadaas Female Honeymooner
- Kiyoharu Onakaas Male Honeymooner, Sunagawa's friend (as Kiyoharu Ohnaka)
- Mike Daneenas American Soldier Typing
- Saburô Iketanias News Reader
- Saburô Kadowakias Sunagawa's colleague
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Rodan (1956)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- While filming Rodan flying over the Saikai Bridge, the pulley suspending actor Haruo Nakajima snapped and he fell twenty-five feet; the monster's wings and the water, about a foot and a half deep, absorbed much of the impact.
- Writer Ken Kuronuma based his original story on a 1948 incident in Kentucky in which Captain Thomas F. Mantell of the Kentucky Air National Guard died in a crash while allegedly chasing a UFO.
- The King Brothers Productions' 1957 US release was the first Japanese film to receive general release on the West Coast and make a strong showing at the box office.
- Its US television debut on New York's NBC flagship WRCA-TV got the largest advertising campaign given to a film up to that date, with 10-to-60-second commercials and a contest asking viewers to trace Rodan's outline on the screen.
- Rodan was Toho's first kaiju film to be shot in color, and one of several giant monster films that found an audience outside Japan.
