Gorgo x Konga x Anne Hathaway? 12 Godzilla knock-offs that are almost as good as the originals

The model for this British creature feature is clearly Godzilla—the promotional material makes the most out of the destruction of London by a giant monster who bears a striking resemblance to the Japanese original—but the plot actually has more in common with King Kong. After discovering a prehistoric predator in the waters off the Irish coast, treasure hunter Joe Ryan (Bill Travers) sells him to a promoter who offers a fortune for him. Gorgo becomes the star attraction at Dorkin’s Circus in Battersea Park (he’s even referred to at one point as “The Eighth Wonder of the World!”) angering his much bigger mother, who destroys half of London in search of her lost spawn. The film never quite finds the balance between satire and sincerity—it’s too silly to be serious, too straight to be camp—yet it’s acquired enough of a modern following (thanks, in part, to being featured on MST3K) to be considered a cult classic now.

The same year that the British film industry brought us Gorgo, it also released Konga, another unsubtle ripoff of a popular icon. While Gorgo may be an obvious attempt to cash in on the kaiju phenomenon, it still has some value as a watchable monster movie today. Konga, on the other hand, is pure, shameless dreck. For some, that has some appeal of its own. Its one redeeming feature might be Michael Gough as mad scientist Dr. Charles Decker, who returns from a trip to Africa with a baby chimpanzee and the means to create a growth serum from carnivorous plants that somehow turns him into a giant rampaging gorilla. Don’t try to make sense of it, the film doesn’t bother or expect you to. Go into it prepared for a total B-movie cringefest and you won’t be let down.

It’s a common misconception that the giant, fire-breathing, prehistoric turtle known as Gamera is part of the Godzilla franchise. In fact, he inhabits a cinematic universe all his own. This action-packed, black-and-white introduction was the first of what would be a dozen films starring Gamera, created by rival studio Daiei to compete with Toho’s success. Like his popular predecessor, he is awakened by atomic energy and rises from the deep to force a reckoning on humanity. He would later become a protector, and friend to children everywhere. He even had his own . A year after the original film was released in Japan, an Americanized version was released under the title Gammera The Invincible, featuring new footage with English-speaking actors, but it took a few decades for audiences to appreciate and embrace Gamera on his own terms.

Believe it or not, War Of The Gargantuas is the film that as his inspiration for getting into acting (we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he was talking about the spectacle of the monsters fighting and not star Russ Tamblyn’s loopy performance). The film also counts Guillermo del Toro, Tim Burton, and Quentin Tarantino among its small but devoted cult of fans. This Japanese-American co-production comes from director Ishirō Honda and legendary visual effects pioneer Eiji Tsuburaya, who basically invented the kaiju genre, so the parallels are easy to spot. The two creatures referenced in the title—sometimes confusingly referred to as Frankensteins, though they have no connection to either the scientist or the creature from the Mary Shelley novel—clearly made an impression, though they never returned in any other films. The brown-haired, mountain-dwelling Sanda is more of a good-natured protector, while the green-tinted Gaira is a savage, man-eating destroyer from the sea. Naturally, the two were destined to come to blows. There was talk at one point about bringing them back in some form in the Monsterverse, so we’re not giving up hope of seeing them again someday.

Not content to let Japan corner the market on monster movies, Korea got into the act in 1967 with this romp featuring all the tropes of classic kaiju movies. Yongary, as embodied by a performer in a rubbery costume, stomps his way through carefully crafted models of populated cities, intercut with footage of screaming crowds to give you that feeling of mass casualties and general panic. Allegedly based on a creature from Korean legend, he bears a striking resemblance to his Japanese counterpart, with the exception of a nasal horn that can somehow fire lasers. The story follows all the usual beats—a series of earthquakes wakes up an ancient creature who eats oil, breathes fire, goes on a rampage, and… dances? Okay, maybe there’s some deviation from the formula here. It also has a wild ending in which the method the heroes use to defeat him is too bizarre to explain (and too good to spoil). Unlike the Gargantuas, Yongary did return, in the ultra-trashy 1999 bomb Reptilian.

Like the monsters it depicts, the kaiju genre is constantly growing, evolving, and consuming. Take Gappa: The Triphibian Monster, for example. It follows the same outline as Gorgo, which was itself an amalgamation of King Kong and Godzilla. In this one, a Japanese magazine publisher sends a team to a tropical island in search of exotic animals to fill up a planned theme park. There they find a bird-lizard creature the natives call Gappa (it’s actually the name of the entire species, not just that specific one). You can probably guess what happens when they capture him and bring him back to Japan. The twist is that there are two pissed-off parents instead of one, so they’re twice as destructive. “What the hell is a Triphibian Monster anyway?” you may be asking. Who knows! The English title for this film makes even less sense: Monster From A Prehistoric Planet. Nikkatsu, the production company behind the film, only made this one film during the kaiju boom, with suits and effects created by Toho veteran Akira Watanabe. So at least those scenes are pretty cool.

Pop quiz: the Empire State Building is to King Kong as the Chrysler Building is to what movie monster? The not-quite-as-iconic answer is Q—The Winged Serpent, a delightfully cheesy disaster flick about a mythological creature that terrorizes New York City from its nest atop the famous Art Deco skyscraper. Q, of course, stands for Quetzalcoatl, an ancient Aztec god summoned back to life by a deranged priest who also happens to be a serial killer. David Carradine and Richard Roundtree play a pair of detectives who get caught up in a showdown with the creature after a two-bit thief (Michale Moriarty) promises to lead them to its lair in exchange for a big payday. It doesn’t go the way any of them expect, but if you’re familiar with the work of director Larry Cohen (It’s Alive, God Told Me To) you may not be all that surprised by the outcome.

Giant monster movies are often very funny. Sometimes the humor is intentional, other times it’s clearly not what the filmmakers were going for, but you just have to laugh anyway. Big Man Japan came along during an era when Toho was taking a break from making Godzilla movies, and a lot of strange, meta films came along to fill the gap. Conceived as a satire from the get-go, it’s filmed in the style of a mockumentary. Written, directed by, and starring comedian Hitoshi Matsumoto, the film is truly inspired, in every sense of the word. Matsumoto plays Masaru Daisatou, an ordinary guy who happens to descend from a line of protectors with the ability to grow to an enormous size in order to fight off invading kaiju. He’s not exactly a popular hero, though. He has no real friends and his relationship with his wife and daughter is strained due to his day job. The wild range of tone between the slice-of-life scenes from Daisatou’s personal life and silly giant monster fights somehow works, and the final result is like nothing you’ve ever seen before.

Producer J.J. Abrams imagined Cloverfield as an American take on the allegorical aspects of Godzilla, symbolizing the trauma of the 9/11 attacks in the same way that the King of the Monsters evoked the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Released at a time when found-footage movies were still a novelty, its ground-level point of view added a new dimension to the kaiju movie tradition. The camera follows a group of friends (played by Lizzy Caplan, Mike Vogel, Michael Stahl-David, and Jessica Lucas) through New York City while it’s under attack from an unidentified monster the size of a building. It’s hard to explain the level of hype that surrounded this film before it came out unless you were there to experience it (remember Slusho?). The viral marketing campaign is still one of the best ever created, but might have ultimately hurt the film when it couldn’t possibly live up to all that hype. Removed from the context of expectations, it holds up better than you might expect today. It was good enough, at least, to inspire a couple of retroactive tie-ins in recent years.

Guillermo del Toro combined elements from kaiju movies, plus mecha and anime, in his homage to Japanese cinema, Pacific Rim. The film fully embraces its influences—the monsters in the film have different names, but they’re all literally classified as “kaiju.” When they start emerging from a breach beneath the sea and attacking populated areas, humanity fights back. The front line of defense, the giant biomechanical Jaegers, are uniquely designed to accommodate two “drift compatible” pilots joined by a mental link. The cast, including Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, and Ron Perlman, all deliver solid performances, but the film’s real attraction is its elaborate digital effects. Created by Industrial Light & Magic, the visuals take it far from the realm of classic Japanese monster movies, but their spirit is alive and well beneath the surface of the spectacle.

This odd indie drama has such strong Godzilla influences that Toho filed a lawsuit against Voltage Pictures and filmmaker Nacho Vigalondo before its release, forcing them to change the location of the monster attacks from Tokyo to Seoul, and avoid any references to their proprietary monsters in the film. That doesn’t make the connection any less obvious, though. Colossal stars Anne Hathaway as an alcoholic, out-of-work writer who discovers that she’s been controlling a giant monster wreaking havoc on Seoul from her family home in New Hampshire. Just when you thought all the Godzilla symbology had been played out, here’s an entirely new metaphor to parse. Jason Sudeikis and Dan Stevens also give layered performances, especially Sudeikis, whose own true nature unfolds in well-measured reveals. Colossal is more interested in exploring its characters’ damaged psyches than epic, effects-heavy kaiju battles, but the synergy between them is ultimately what’s most compelling about it.

Considering this action film starring Dwayne Johnson is based on a video game series that allows you to take on the role of one of several rampaging monsters based on classic kaiju, the comparisons were already baked in from the start. Rampage brings the mutated monsters from the original game into live action, including George, a giant gorilla, Lizzie, a giant lizard, and Ralph, a giant wolf. It’s pure by-the-numbers, smash-em-up mayhem with some attitude, barely held together by The Rock and his seemingly bottomless well of charisma. He’s just as good at delivering pseudoscientific exposition as he is at one-liners, and sharp enough to know exactly what kind of movie he’s in. Rampage has no lofty ambitions to be smart or groundbreaking cinema. Like the original Godzilla and King Kong movies, it exists merely to transport and entertain us for a little while. Nothing wrong with that.