Everyone knows that the better Godzilla movies are metaphors. By that measure, director Yoshimitsu Banno’s 1971 eco nightmare is the best Godzilla movie. The king of the monsters takes on a shape-shifting pile of sludge as Japan faces its own environmental culpability for polluting the world, all with an incredible psychedelic jazz soundtrack. Sure, it may have the obligatory annoying kid who thinks Godzilla is secretly his friend, but it also has a scene in a disco in which everyone wears cardboard fish heads for no discernable reason. Kaiju mayhem has never been so groovy, man. – Richard Whittaker
