The Godzilla series has steered clear of explicit religious commentary. The monsters are themselves gods in the most classical, even Homeric sense: titanic beings whose infighting and petty territorialism threaten to tear apart the fragile works of man by sheer proximity alone. While Godzilla and friends might be considered godlike in their power and majesty, they aren’t held as manifestations of supernatural or metaphysical forces. In Mothra vs. Godzilla (1963), a Shinto priest shows up to suggest that the appearance of Mothra’s egg is an omen, but that’s the extent of it. No one expects to escape that film’s climactic battle by fleeing to his shrine. They never try to have him shoo away Godzilla with intercessory prayer. Pat Robertson never opines that there’s a titanic lepidopteran closing in on Tokyo because he’s mad about gay marriage.
And yet, for years and years, it was common knowledge in the Godzilla fandom that the big guy once nearly came to blows with the Devil himself as part of a huge international production designed to revitalize the flagging career of everyone’s favorite thunder lizard. This assuredly nutso film would have pitted the King of the Monsters against the Prince of the Powers of the Air in an apocalyptic battle for the fate of the world.
It’s not as implausible as it may seem. Toho, the studio home of the Godzilla franchise, never shied away from mixing their kaiju formula with other popular genres. Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964) combined traditional rubber-suited monsters with 007-style spy sequences; Dogora (1964) melded monster tropes with the popular yakuza genre; and Godzilla vs. MechaGodzilla (1974) included alien invaders straight from the set of Planet of the Apes.
Nor was Toho shy about explicitly teaming up with foreign studios to add more monsters to their burgeoning roster. They pioneered the crossover film by teaming with Universal to have King Kong battle Godzilla way back in 1962, while Frankenstein Conquers the World (1965) looked to bring more traditional western monsters into the kaiju fold. In 1975, a Toho/Hammer co-production would have used the special effects team behind Godzilla’s adventures to bring the Loch Ness Monster to cinematic life. In 1966, Toho briefly considered securing the rights from 20th Century Fox to have Godzilla duke it out with fargin’ Batman. Please try to focus on the remainder of this article, and not the idea of Adam West piloting a titanic Batmech to rain BIFFs and POWs upon Godzilla, thanks.
Now, by the mid-1970’s, the first series of Godzilla films was finally petering out, just as films about demons and the occult were becoming very profitable. With films like The Exorcist (1973) and The Omen (1976) tearing it up at the box office, it would be perfectly in character for Toho to want in, especially if doing so could give their flagship character a much-needed shot in the arm. Think of the possibilities: Christopher Lee hamming it up opposite kaiju veterans like Akihiko Hirata! Velvet-cloaked unsavories carrying off precocious Japanese schoolchildren for sacrificial purposes! Giant monsters awash in bright red Kensington gore! John Saxon! Because if it’s 1978 and you’re making a movie where Godzilla busts up satanic cults, you’re not going to not cast John Saxon.
There was a fairly detailed plot summary, describing the sins of the world taking physical form as — what else? — giant monsters. Godzilla would traverse the world, battling these demonic beasts as he went: first a gargantuan spider, then a great carnivorous fish, and then a monstrous bird. Only then would the real enemy appear: the Devil himself, presumably in the form of a 200’ horned god. We even knew production minutiae like runtime (110 minutes), budget ($4 million), and the producer attached (AIP’s Henry Saperstein). The only problem? The movie, as amazing as it sounds, was never actually planned. At least, not in the strictest sense.
The idea originated in the fan press, specifically Japanese Giants #5. Kaiju historian Ed Godziszewski reported it, and although the magazine printed a retraction in the very next issue, falsehood flies while truth comes limping after. An article about it appeared on the otherwise-reputable fan site Toho Kingdom for years. The germ of the idea seems to have been based on early plans for what would eventually become Return of Godzilla (1984). While the finished film is a moody affair that treats its title character as something more akin to a judgemental hurricane, early plans were in place for a multi-monster spectacular in the vein of the 1970s films. Specifically, Godzilla would fight three different monsters, including a giant fish and a giant bird, which would eventually combine, Voltron-style, into a monolithic beast of evil. A mistranslation somewhere along the line turned this devilish beast into an actual devil, and the story blossomed in rumor from there.
Although Godzilla vs. The Devil was never actually planned, the idea of the Big G battling demonic forces has proved surprisingly resilient. Despite a passing resemblance to the sea-boiling biblical dragon, Leviathan, there’s nothing spiritual or supernatural about Godzilla. Even at his most heroic, he’s manifestly an earthly creature defending his home against alien invaders, never any kind of holy beast. And yet, there’s a reasonably popular creepypasta based on the old Godzilla video game for the classic NES console, in which a possessed version of the game cartridge manifests a being called Red. Red is apparently capable of influencing events in the real world as well as in the game, and he takes several forms, including — what else? — a giant fish.
Stranger still is the official licensed comic book miniseries, Godzilla in Hell. In this bizarre story, the King of the Monsters finds himself trapped in a literal, metaphysical Hell straight out of Milton. He has to contend with piranha-like devil bats, spectral versions of his own defeated foes, and even an off-brand Cthulhu. The five-issue miniseries even explains how and why a semi-sapient atomic dinosaur is serving penance in literal Christian Hell, but I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I spoiled it for you.
Coolest (and most tantalizing) of all is this fan-made trailer, which stitches together footage from a number of period-appropriate films to create a reasonable facsimile of what Godzilla vs. The Devil might have looked Iike. Unless someone out there has a couple hundred thousand dollars, a whole damn bunch of foam rubber and even more free time, it’s probably as close as we’re going to get.
