12. King Kong Appears In Edo
That's the literal translation of the title Edo Ni Arawareta Kingu Kongo (1938), alluding to the period of Japanese history spanning 1603-1868. This copyright-buster - but then the Japanese were not huge respecters of international law at the time - is a legendary lost film, of which 38 seconds of supposedly surviving footage (disputed as a hoax) apparently survives on YouTube. The giant apeman is far closer to an evolutionary missing link than a gorilla, echoing the criticism that the original Kong had definite non-simian characteristics. The back-projected actor in a monster suit foreshadowed the Japanese film industry's later 'kaiju eiga', which began with Gojira (Godzilla, 1954).