The movie was released by Toho Co., Ltd. in Japan on October 27, 1954. Its original Japanese title is Gojira (ゴジラ). The name “Gojira” is often said to be a portmanteau of gorilla (“gorira”) and whale (“kujira”).

The film’s director was Ishirō Honda, who co-wrote the screenplay. The special effects were supervised by Eiji Tsuburaya, a pioneer of Japanese tokusatsu cinema. Composer Akira Ifukube created the score and contributed to the design of the monster’s iconic roar.

The roar of Godzilla was created by rubbing a pine tar coated glove over the string of a double bass and then slowing the playback.

The monster suit, worn by actor Haruo Nakajima, weighed approximately 200 lbs (90 kg) or more. Inside the suit, temperatures reportedly reached up to 60 °C (140 °F) under the hot studio lights.

The film was inspired in part by the real world “Lucky Dragon No. 5” (Daigo Fukuryū Maru) incident, in which a Japanese fishing boat was exposed to nuclear fallout during US testing at Bikini Atoll in 1954.

The monster’s awakening and rampage serve as an allegory for nuclear destruction and Japan’s experience with atomic bombs.

Toho originally intended to make a Japanese Indonesian co-production titled In the Shadow of Glory, but when that plan collapsed, the idea for a giant monster film was conceived mid flight by producer Tomoyuki Tanaka.

Three different concept models for Godzilla were created: one with fish scale skin, one with wart like bumps, and one with crocodile like skin. The third design was chosen.

The release of the film in the United States as Godzilla, King of the Monsters! in 1956 featured new footage with actor Raymond Burr added and significant edits. In that US version about twenty minutes of new footage were added and about forty minutes were removed from the Japanese version. Many Western audiences did not see the original Japanese version until 2004.

In the Italian release of the US edit, a colorised version was created in 1977 called “Cozzilla,” which combined eighty minutes of footage from Godzilla with additional monster movie footage.