Godzilla vs. The Wolfman, Wait WHAT!?

Even Godzilla had been retired, he was only taking a short break. Toho had no intention of permanently ending the Godzilla series. During the absence of any new Godzilla films being made. Several new stories were submitted by writers and producers but none of these films were ever made. However there was one non-Toho Godzilla film being made around 1983. Former Toho SPFX employee and hardcore kaiju fan Shizuo Nakajima, saddened by the lack of Godzilla films being produced post-1975, set out to make a Godzilla film of his own. That movie would be the lost film called Godzilla vs. The Wolfman since story of the independent film was that a werewolf that appears in Japan grows to gigantic size and gets into a battle with Godzilla. In terms of how the idea of the film was when Shizuo Nakajima was watching the Hammer horror film The Curse of the Werewolf. However Toho found out about this and stopped all production of the film project since that the studio had nothing to do with the film or even approved of Shizuo’s film. With Toho stopping all production of the film, Godzilla vs. The Wolfman remained not only unfinished but also “lost” for over 30 years.

A screen shot of Godzilla battling the Wolfman.

In recent years at a G-Fest XX convention (a convention for anything and everything related to Japanese monster movies) back in 2013, Shizuo Nakajima has made an appearance at various G-Fest conventions and talked about what it was like to work in the movie industry. At time point in time he talked about the Godzilla vs. The Wolfman film and that’s when everything changed. The films existence started out as a mere rumor and some fans saw some images from the film and though that it was early production photos of King Kong vs. Godzilla since the costume used in the independent film looked a lot like the Godzilla costume that was used for the film. With the advent of the internet, Shizuo’s film was made public and both Shizuo and the fans are pushing for a DVD release of the film. Even though Toho stopped production of the movie back in the day, Shizuo says that he has shot enough footage to make a full length feature film. This changes everything since a lot of people who are hard core Godzilla fans had no idea this film even existed. The Toho website and various Godzilla books about film production of various movies and giant monster that got scrapped and Godzilla vs. The Wolfman wasn’t among the list of scrapped films. Nakajima stated that he is in discussion with Toho to have the film be a straight to DVD release with the aim to have the DVD come out during the summer of 2016. Hopefully this and the 1984 Godzilla film get a region 1 DVD/Bluray release in time for the 2016 release of Godzilla Resurgence.