10 Hidden Meanings Behind Famous Horror Movies

Modern day horror movie watchers might balk at the idea of Ishiro Honda’s Godzilla being scary, or indeed a straight horror movie, but there was once a time when its now dated effects were genuinely frightening. Nowhere was this more true than in post-World War II Japan, a country still reeling from the devastating atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that took place less than a decade before the movie’s release.

The original Godzilla is a not too thinly veiled critique of the potential for the misuse and abuse of nuclear weaponry in the post-war years, with the titular beast manifested as the atomic bomb in movie monster form. It also works as an environmental message in which Godzilla is nature’s fury awakened by nefarious manmade technology, a metaphor as relevant in the 1950s during the USA’s nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll as it is nowadays following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster.

Interestingly, the first US take on the iconic beast Godzilla, King of the Monsters! omitted much of the original film’s political message. Basically an Americanised, patchworked re-edit of the original interspersed with new scenes featuring recognisable Perry Mason actor Raymond Burr, this version excluded Honda’s anti-nuclear sentiment and allusions to US nuclear testing. Though it’s perhaps not surprising that the perpetrators of Japan’s atomic bombing and a country invested in testing at the time would present a different take on nuclear weaponry.