Giant Phantom Monster Agon
A kaiju miniseries delayed by Godzilla concerns.
A black-and-white Japanese kaiju miniseries from 1964, Giant Phantom Monster Agon was produced by Nippon Television and broadcast on Fuji TV for a week in January 1968. Known abroad as Agon: Atomic Dragon, it was later condensed into a feature film by Toho in the mid-1990s.
Quick Facts
- Genre
- Kaiju
- Creator
- Shinichi Sekizawa
- Developer
- Akira Ajiyoshi
- Writer
- Shinichi Sekizawa; Kôzô Uchida (Eps 3 & 4)
- Director
- Norio Mine (Eps 1 & 2); Fuminori Ohashi (Eps 3 & 4)
- Starring
- Shinji Hirota
- Asao Matsumoto
- Nobuhiko ShimaShima
- Akemi Sawa
- Shin'ya Irie
- Composer
- Wataru Saitô
- Country
- Japan
Facts from the source article.
Plot
During a powerful typhoon, a transport vehicle carrying uranium is forced to stop on a mountain pass due to a landslide. A second landslide sends the vehicle over a cliff into the sea. The storm leaves hundreds dead and many homeless. At the City News Division, reporters field calls about the disaster. The next day, the National Atomic Energy Center and police investigate the crash site. Detective Yamato asks Dr. Ukyo about radioactivity readings; the doctor confirms elevated levels and wonders if the vehicle was washed out to sea. Goro arrives and demonstrates knowledge of both Yamato and Ukyo, as well as the special uranium called Uran X. Strange roaring noises are heard from a nearby cave, which a police officer calls the Tengu's Great Trumpet Shell, a cave that funnels air to produce sound. Goro rushes into the cave but runs back out, claiming a one-eyed monster appeared. A strange light emerges, but it turns out to be a young boy named Monta with a flashlight. Monta reveals he found the flashlight among rocks from the transport vehicle. Suddenly, a Geiger counter pointed at the ocean registers off-scale readings, and a large reptilian creature slowly surfaces from the sea.
Production
Filming of Giant Phantom Monster Agon was completed in 1964, but Toho Studios blocked its broadcast, arguing the monster too closely resembled Godzilla. It later emerged that Shinichi Sekizawa, writer of several Toho kaiju films, and Fuminori Ohashi, an apprentice of special effects head Eiji Tsuburaya, were involved. Convinced the two had not intentionally copied Godzilla, Toho allowed the series to air in 1968. The series was filmed in black-and-white with a sepiatone tint, and featured a unique musical score by Wataru Saitô. Toho re-edited the four episodes into a feature-length film for VHS in the mid-1990s. The Agon monster suit, with modifications, was later reused in the tokusatsu series The Space Giants, first as a generic dinosaur and later as Giant Fire Monster Aron.
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