Ebirah, Horror of the Deep (Japanese: ゴジラ・エビラ・モスラ 南海の大決闘, Hepburn: Gojira Ebira Mosura Nankai no Dai-kettō, lit.
Godzilla, Ebirah, Mothra: Big Duel in the South Seas) is a 1966 Japanese kaiju film directed by Jun Fukuda and produced and distributed by Toho Co., Ltd.
The film stars Akira Takarada, Kumi Mizuno, Akihiko Hirata and Eisei Amamoto, and features the fictional monster characters Godzilla, Mothra, and Ebirah.
It is the seventh film in the Godzilla franchise, and features special effects by Sadamasa Arikawa, under the supervision of Eiji Tsuburaya.
[1][4] During its development, Ebirah, Horror of the Deep was intended to feature King Kong, but the character was replaced by Godzilla.
After Yata is lost at sea, his brother Ryota steals a yacht with his two friends and a bank robber.
However, the crew runs afoul of Ebirah, a giant lobster-like creature, and washes ashore on Letchi Island.
There, the Red Bamboo, a terrorist organization, manufactures heavy water for selling weapons of mass destruction and a yellow liquid that keeps Ebirah at bay, presumably controlling him.
In their efforts to avoid capture, Ryota and his friends, aided by Daiyo, a native girl, come across Godzilla, who previously fought Ghidorah and is now sleeping within a cliffside cavern.
The planned movie, Operation Robinson Crusoe: King Kong vs. Ebirah (ロビンソン·クルーソー作戦 キングコング対エビラ Robinson Kurūsō Sakusen: Kingu Kongu tai Ebira), was to be a co-production with Rankin/Bass, who was about to debut their animated program, The King Kong Show, in September of that same year.
According to Toho Special Effects Movies Complete Works, Jun Fukuda was approached about an untitled US–Japanese King Kong co-production on April 21, 1966.
Rankin-Bass was equally dead set on the creative team being Ishiro Honda and Eiji Tsuburaya.
[citation needed] Director Jun Fukuda notes that producer Tomoyuki Tanaka was not particularly active on this production, with the exception of being involved with the budget.
Daiyo was originally to be played by Noriko Takahashi, from Frankenstein vs. Baragon (1965), but fell ill with appendicitis during production was replaced with Kumi Mizuno at the last second.
Sadamasa Arikawa lamented that Toho likely did this due to his inexperience and TV history, noting that "Toho couldn't have made too many demands about the budget if Mr. Tsuburaya had been in charge" and that he "was also doing TV work then, so they must have figured I could produce the movie cheaply."
In an interview, he was quoted saying, "Toho sent me a copy of the VHS tape edition of Godzilla vs The Sea Monsters when it was released.
Haruo Nakajima wore a wet suit under the Godzilla suit for every scene that required him to be in the water, which took a week to complete the water scenes, Nakajima stated, "I worked overtime until about eight o'clock every day.
[1] The American version of the film was released directly to television by Continental Distributing in 1968 under the title Godzilla versus the Sea Monster.
Ebirah (Japanese: エビラ, Hepburn: Ebira) is a kaiju film monster taking the form of an enormous monstrous lobster.
In Ebirah, Horror of the Deep, a terrorist organization called the Red Bamboo had set up a base of operations on Letchi Island.
When a small group of people stranded on the island saw the monster Godzilla sleeping in a cave, they woke it so it could fight Ebirah.
The day after, a Red Bamboo ship appeared, but they unknowingly used a placebo and not the real fruit extract.
In the Millennium era, Ebirah makes an appearance in Godzilla: Final Wars as one of the many controlled monsters of the Xiliens, a race of extraterrestrial beings.
However, they are no match for Godzilla, who blasts them out of the water with its atomic ray and the duo crash into a building, where Ebirah's claw stabs Hedorah's eye.