The War of the Gargantuas (1966) on Netflix
A green-haired giant attacks ships and the coast of Japan, and a surviving sailor says the creature ate his crew. Dr. Paul Stewart and Akemi Togawa are asked to identify the monster.
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- IMDb6.1/104,145 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Trailer
Plot summary
A giant octopus attacks a fishing boat at sea, and a green-haired humanoid monster attacks the octopus and then the boat. One sailor survives and tells the police that the creature ate the crew. The story brings Dr. Paul Stewart and Dr. Akemi Togawa before the press: five years earlier the two scientists kept a baby Frankenstein for study, but they insist their creature was gentle and lived in the mountains. Another boat is then attacked, villagers spot a green Frankenstein off the coast, and a mountain guide reports a sighting in the Japanese Alps. Stewart and Akemi find giant footprints in the snow, while their colleague Dr. Majida takes tissue samples from the wrecked boat.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The War of the Gargantuas (1966)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Russ Tamblyn clashed with director Ishirō Honda while making the film, often doing the exact opposite of what Honda instructed, according to Seiji Tani, Honda's new chief assistant.
- Manga artist Hajime Isayama said the film's two monsters inspired the Titans in his best-selling manga Attack on Titan, remembering watching it as a young schoolchild on a TV at a public hall during an evacuation drill and being scared by a scene of one hairy monster uprooting a tree to hit the other.
- Tab Hunter was originally cast as the scientist Dr. Stewart in the film, but he was replaced by Tamblyn during pre-production.
- Tamblyn's original dialogue soundtrack was lost during production, so he was called back to re-dub his lines; with no script he improvised them from the footage's lip movements because he could not remember his original lines.
- Quentin Tarantino's 2004 film Kill Bill: Volume 2 took inspiration from the film, including a miniature shot of Tokyo made for it and the fight between Uma Thurman and Daryl Hannah, which Tarantino dubbed the "War of the Blonde Gargantuas".
- Guillermo del Toro cited the film and its predecessor Frankenstein vs. Baragon as two of his top five favorite kaiju films, and said the film influenced the opening of his 2013 movie Pacific Rim.
