Gojira

Gojira (1954)
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047034/]

The Gist:
Gojira is the ultimate participatory film. You have horrible acting, a slow build to the awesomeness that is Gojira, and a large portion of film time purely devoted to Gojira's wanton destruction of Tokyo. In a group setting, which is how I viewed the film, this leads to comments about how Gojira is just acting out his frustrations over his confused identity between sea and terrestrial based monster form (he does look like a rather awkward mix in this one), how Gojira has quote "cute haunches", and how Gojira is "never acting, ever!" when we compare the monster to the horrible performances of the actors. Of course, what is most interesting is that underneath all the gratuitous monster movie mayhem there is a very compelling undercurrent of post-atomic Japanese culture:

1. Gojira is an embodiment of senseless destruction, oozing radioactivity and thereby directly linking him to both the consequences and the symbolic link of atomic warfare.

2. The means that are used to destroy him are so dangerous that the scientist sacrifices himself along with disintegrated corpse of the lovable sea monster before the technology can get into the wrong hands.

Lots of parallels to take from this, ne?