Son of Godzilla

For the second Godzilla film in a row, Toho produced an island themed adventure with a smaller budget than most of their monster films from this time period.[8] While the a-list crew of talent was hired to work on that year's King Kong Escapes, (Ishirō Honda, Eiji Tsuburaya, and Akira Ifukube), the second string crew of cheaper talent was once again tapped to work on this project as they had done with Ebirah, Horror of the Deep. This included Jun Fukuda (director), Sadamasa Arikawa (special effects), and Masaru Sato (composer). This was the first film where Arikawa was officially listed as the director of Special Effects,[9] although he did receive some supervision from Tsuburaya when he was available.[9]

Son of Godzilla was the first Godzilla film to feature a female writer. Kazue Shiba collaborated with Shinichi Sekizawa on the film's screenplay. The early draft of the film, done by Kazue Shiba, titled Two Godzilla's: Japan S.O.S. (2つのゴジラ：日本S.O.S.!, Gojira: Tsu no Nihon S.O.S.!). The overall plot is the same but Kumonga and the Kamacuras are not in the story.

Sadamasa Arikawa gives instructions to Marchan the Dwarf (Minilla). "Marchan the Dwarf" was hired to play the character partially for his ability to perform athletic rolls and flips inside the thick rubber suit.

Filming took place in Guam[10] and areas in Japan including Gotemba, Lake Yamana, the Fuji Five Lakes region, and Oshima.[11]

Toho wanted to create a baby Godzilla to appeal to the "date crowd" (a genre of films that were very popular among young couples during this time period), with the idea that girls would like a "cute" baby monster.[12] For the idea behind Minilla, Fukuda stated, "We wanted to take a new approach, so we gave Godzilla a child. We thought it would be a little strange if we gave Godzilla a daughter, so instead we gave him a son".[13] Fukuda also wanted to portray the monsters almost as people[14] in regards to the father-son relationship between Godzilla and Minilla, as Fukuda stated "We focused on the relationship between Godzilla and his son throughout the course of Son of Godzilla.[13]

At the time, Sekizawa was already tired of writing the series and likely complained that he had run out of ideas for further monster movies, and director Jun Fukuda heartily agreed. Producer Tomoyuki Tanaka then proposed the idea of introducing a son to Godzilla.

The budget for the film was 260,000,000 yen. When Son of Godzilla was released on December 16, 1967 in Japan, it sold 2,480,000 tickets. When the film was re-issued on August 1, 1973, it received 610,000 attendees, adding up to a rough attendance total of 3,090,000.

The Godzilla suit built for this film was the biggest in terms of size and girth.[15] This was done in order to give Godzilla a "paternal" appearance and to give a parent-like stature in contrast next to Minilla.[16] Because of the size of the suit, seasoned Godzilla suit actor Haruo Nakajima was only hired to play Godzilla in two scenes because the suit was much too big for him to wear.[17] The smaller suit he had worn for the films Ebirah, Horror of the Deep and Invasion of Astro-Monster was used for these sequences.[18] The much larger Seji Onaka instead played Godzilla in the film, although he was replaced midway through filming by Hiroshi Sekita after he broke his fingers.[6]

Minilla was designed to incorporate features of not only a baby Godzilla but a human baby was well.[16] Minilla's face was patterned after the character Chibita from the popular manga Osomatsu-kun published by Shogakukan in Weekly Shonen Saturday at the time. "Marchan the Dwarf" was hired to play the character due to his ability to play-act and to give the character a childlike ambiance. He was also hired because of his ability to perform athletic rolls and flips inside the thick rubber suit.[16]

Outside of the two monster suits, various marionettes and puppets were used to portray the Island's gigantic inhabitants. The various giant preying mantises known as Kamacuras and the huge spider Kumonga.[19][20] Arikawa would usually have 20 puppeteers at a time working on the various marionettes.[6] The massive Kumonga puppet needed 2 to 3 people at a time to operate each leg.[6]

Styrofoam and paraffin were used for the snow falling on Solgell Island.

Many scenes were shot but deleted showing Godzilla being mean or harsh to Minilla. One sequence shows Godzilla leaving Minilla behind on the freezing Sollgel Island and making it to shore before turning back was cut from the final film's ending.[21] A portion of this sequence has been preserved in both the trailer and an outtake reel included with the Godzilla Final Box DVD collection as supplemental material. More deleted footage included Godzilla expecting the newborn Minilla to get up and walk after the Kamacuras have been defeated. Another featured Godzilla head-butting Minilla to make him stop following Saeko. One scene included Minilla being able to fire his own type of atomic breath during his fight with Kamacuras. However, in the final film, the smoke rings and his Godzilla breath were utilized instead. It is unknown who was responsible for these bits being deleted, but it was possibly Tsuburaya since he would not have allowed time and resources to be wasted shooting each such scenes if he was not okay with them in the first place.

Son of Godzilla was distributed theatrically in Japan by Toho on December 16, 1967.[2] The film was released theatrically in the United Kingdom in August 1969, as a double feature with Ebirah, Horror of the Deep.[21][22] Son of Godzilla was never released theatrically in the United States,[2] instead being released directly to television by Walter Reade Sterling as well as American International Pictures (AIP-TV) in some markets in 1969.[2] The American television version was cut to 84 minutes.[2]

In 2005, the film was released on DVD by Sony Pictures in its original uncut length with the original Japanese audio and Toho's international English dub.[2] In 2019, the Japanese version and export English version was included in a Blu-ray box set released by the Criterion Collection, which included all 15 films from the franchise's Shōwa era.[23]