'Giant Space Monster Dogora') is a 1964 Japanese kaiju film directed by Ishirō Honda, with special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya.
Produced and distributed by Toho Studios, the film stars Yosuke Natsuki, Nobuo Nakamura, Hiroshi Koizumi, and Akiko Wakabayashi, along with American actor Robert Dunham.
When several TV satellites launched by the Electric Wave Laboratory go missing above Japan, people later discover that they collided with unidentified protoplasmic "space cells" of unknown origin.
Komai awakens to find Munakata and his lab assistant Masayo Kirino, and tells them of his case before learning the recently stolen diamonds were worthless synthetics.
Munakata, confident in a remarkable scientific discovery, leaves for the coal mines near northern Kyushu, theorizing it will be the monster's next target.
In retaliation for their nests being disturbed, a swarm of wasps attack Dogora, causing a chemical reaction that crystallizes sections of its body and fall on the city below.
As night falls over Dokaiwan Bay, evacuation orders go into effect as Dogora descends from the sky and absorbs carbon-based materials from various sources.
[2] Desperate for a successful heist, the gangsters track Jackson and Komai, assuming the former hid the real diamonds in a safe-deposit box.
It also contains an ongoing theme of his work: humanity uniting on a global scale to address a threat, which after aliens and a rogue star is now monsters.
In terms of the production crew, the story treatment was set to be turned into a full script by Shinichi Sekizawa while Ishiro Honda would direct and Eiji Tsuburaya would handle the special effects.
For example, the initial attack on the space station and rocket planes was replaced by a short sequence of the creature destroying a modern television satellite.
They had such faith in the idea that they sent the actor, Robert Dunham, to Hollywood to both negotiate a distribution deal for the movie Dogora and kindle interest in a series on the character.
Unfortunately, Dunham accounts how he was given a lowball offer for Dogora while the prospect of more movies on Mark Jackson was dashed when it was noted that he wasn't a name actor and it was hard to gauge his performance with the dubbing.
The process of creating Dogora's onscreen prop was very time-consuming and characterized by trial-and-error in every step, from searching for the correct material to determining the method in which to shoot it.
While the mold was rather expensive, special effects director Eiji Tsuburaya agreed with Murase's decision to use soft vinyl.
However, there was concern that attempting to operate the prop through the normal method of suspending it in the air with piano wire could risk breaking it.
As a result, Dogora's full jellyfish-like form only appears briefly in a single sequence in the finished film despite being heavily featured in marketing and promotion.
An electrical current was sent to the bulb through piano wire, causing it to illuminate and giving the effect of the miniature flashing and emitting light.