Godzilla

Godzilla (Gojira, 1954) is Ishiro Honda's landmark Japanese horror film you can watch online on iFILM. Fishing boats vanish off Odo Island, leaving only garbled radio calls about pillars of fire rising from the sea, and the country slides toward panic.

A team led by paleontologist Kyohei Yamane reaches the island and finds the cause: a prehistoric reptile some fifty meters tall that the locals call Gojira. Roused by hydrogen-bomb testing, the creature wades toward Tokyo, flattening buildings and melting power lines with its breath. Scientists argue over whether anything can stop it, and whether the weapon built to kill it might be worse than the monster itself. Akira Takarada, Takashi Shimura and Momoko Kochi lead the cast.

Honda wasn't filming a simple monster. Nine years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, his irradiated beast was a direct stand-in for the bomb, and the dread feels earned. This black-and-white Toho picture launched the longest-running franchise in cinema and invented the kaiju genre outright. Stream Godzilla (1954) online on iFILM.