« Reptisaurus Attacks! | Home | Pride Cometh Before Zombies »

Obscure Godzilla Posters

We’re all familiar with the standard Godzilla posters, beginning with the original Japanese one:

But there are many many others. As an excuse to reveal a poster that Kaiju Search-Robot Avery discovered on the Kong is King messageboard, here is a bunch of less-well-known Godzilla posters, starting with the one Avery found — which advertises the US version by dissing King Kong and offering up a Godzilla who has — very early in his career — clearly let himself go.

Here’s a poster from Belgium for Godzilla vs Gigan, featuring a big pile-up of kaiju, though the one that is supposed to be Godzilla looks more like The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms:

Or this fantastic Polish effort for The Terror of Mechagodzilla — or perhaps Godzilla vs The Yellow Submarine would be more appropriate:

Here we have a rather strange poster for Godzilla vs Megalon, in which… somehow … the two skyscraper-sized monsters end up on either tower of what might be the World Trade Center:

This US poster for Godzilla vs the Thing manages to both obscure what “the Thing” is and to hint that it’s some kind of tentacled Cthulhan monstrosity, even though this nomenclature was a rather silly attempt to obscure the fact that Godzilla’s opponent was a giant moth — a monster that might not appeal to the target 14-year-old US male:

Then there’s this one, a rather snazzy rendering of the main US poster for Godzilla, King of the Monsters:

And finally a recent poster, rather stylish, advertising the British Film Institute’s release of the original Gojira:

Sources:

• Jon’s Random Acts of Geekery
• Kong is King Messageboards
• Conalrad 100