Big Blue Dinosaur has been described as Japan's chief cultural export. This one an almost universal favorite, GODZILLA VS THE THING. In the film, a hurricane has demolished much of Japan's coastline, and also washed up on the beach a gigantic egg. The egg is put on display in a massive incubator, which seems a bad idea when your egg is the size of a football stadium... Anyway, it turns out the egg belongs to Morthra, giant insect monarch of a tiny island. The natives are desperate to get the egg back before it hatches and unleashes havoc. In the meantime, it's discovered that Godzilla has also been tossed about by the hurricane and ended up buried under an industrial complex. When Godzilla suddenly emerges, he sets his sights on Mothra's egg... It's hard to find a Godzilla movie with better production value and overall polish. If you need an introduction to the franchise, you could do a lot worse than start here. The American version even features a sequence with Godzilla that wasn't used in the Japanese prints! Made the rounds on video and television some decades ago under the title "Godzilla vs Mothra" and the title has frustratingly enough stuck with it.
