In the early scripts, this was a Jet Jaguar vs Megalon movie, and Godzilla wasn't going to appear. The studio ultimately felt that the movie needed the star power of Godzilla if they were ever going to make a profit, so they wrote Godzilla into the final fight. Gigan appears in the movie because the suit was fairly new, and still in good enough shape to be reused. The movie also needed a second evil monster, since Godzilla was now included for the finale. If memory serves, the Godzilla costume used is also a leftover from Godzilla vs Gigan (1972).
A thing I only realized recently (thanks in part to Big Action Bill's history videos) is that *this particular* Godzilla movie is unusually high-profile in the US because of a massive publicity blitz for a theatrical release here in 1976, three years after it flopped in Japan. It even got a prime-time network airing with wacky host segments, starring John Belushi wearing a Godzilla costume! I can only guess at the reason, but based on the posters, I think that the distributor was trying to ride the coattails of Dino De Laurentiis's "King Kong" remake and this was just the first kaiju movie he could get his hands on. So "Godzilla vs. Megalon" has an outsize influence on what Americans think a Godzilla movie is like. It explains a bunch of dim and confused childhood memories I had.
If memory serves, the version of Godzilla vs Megalon that was hosted by John Belushi was also edited down to only an hour. Less than an hour really, factoring in commercials and Belushi.
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In the early scripts, this was a Jet Jaguar vs Megalon movie, and Godzilla wasn't going to appear. The studio ultimately felt that the movie needed the star power of Godzilla if they were ever going to make a profit, so they wrote Godzilla into the final fight. Gigan appears in the movie because the suit was fairly new, and still in good enough shape to be reused. The movie also needed a second evil monster, since Godzilla was now included for the finale. If memory serves, the Godzilla costume used is also a leftover from Godzilla vs Gigan (1972).
A thing I only realized recently (thanks in part to Big Action Bill's history videos) is that *this particular* Godzilla movie is unusually high-profile in the US because of a massive publicity blitz for a theatrical release here in 1976, three years after it flopped in Japan. It even got a prime-time network airing with wacky host segments, starring John Belushi wearing a Godzilla costume! I can only guess at the reason, but based on the posters, I think that the distributor was trying to ride the coattails of Dino De Laurentiis's "King Kong" remake and this was just the first kaiju movie he could get his hands on. So "Godzilla vs. Megalon" has an outsize influence on what Americans think a Godzilla movie is like.
It explains a bunch of dim and confused childhood memories I had.
If memory serves, the version of Godzilla vs Megalon that was hosted by John Belushi was also edited down to only an hour. Less than an hour really, factoring in commercials and Belushi.