8 Classic Monster Movies You Never Knew Were Reboots

A giant, heretofore unknown dinosaur is awakened by irresponsible atomic testing and ravages several seaside towns without being seen before finally making landfall in a major city. The military is powerless to stop him, and only a brilliant scientist is able to devise a secret weapon powerful enough to kill the creature. Kaiju fans will recognize that as the plot of the original 1954 Gojira, but it's also the plot of the Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, released a year earlier.

Gojira's producer, Tomoyuki Tanaka, claims that he originally envisioned Gojira as a giant octopus, but come on. Gojira is exactly what you'd come up with if you wanted to copy the Beast as closely as possible but only had enough money for a man in a suit. 

But that's not to say that the Japanese version was a pale imitation. No, Gojira was a new kind of giant monster film. It didn't  simply use radiation to explain the existence of a beast of city-smashing size and disposition. It was a somber meditation on the price of atomic weapons, made by and for the only people on Earth who had paid that price firsthand. It depicted a monster that was less rampaging animal and more vengeful god. 

The Beast is neat and all, but he didn't get two dozen sequels.