All-out puppet attack! The monster puppetry in Ishiro Honda’s kaiju classics

Long before Jim Henson redefined puppetry on film within the fantastical realms of The Muppet Movie (1979), The Dark Crystal (1982), Labyrinth (1986) and more, marionettes, hand puppets and other types of practical puppetry were readily used as a special effects method designed to bring the uncanny to life. Marionette monsters have existed across more than a century of cinema. From a dragon in Georges Méliès’s The Palace of the Arabian Nights (1905) to the peculiar flying serpent of Poul Bang and Sidney Pink’s atom-age Reptilicus (1961), puppets have brought no shortage of strange and otherworldly creatures into conflict with mankind.

The Japanese giant monster films known as kaiju (literally ‘strange beast’) are more widely famed for their extensive use of ‘suit-mation’ – the practice of highly skilled and stamina-strong stunt performers wearing custom-designed full-body suits to portray monsters and heroes. But these films also made regular use of puppetry during the 1950s and 60s to supplement their fantastical special effects where suit-mation either wouldn’t suffice or proved impractical. 

With Godzilla (1954) screening as part of the BFI’s No Strings Attached: Puppets on Film season, let’s examine key uses of puppetry in kaiju cinema across five films directed by Ishiro Honda and with special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya. 

The eponymous creature of Godzilla was famously brought to life via suit performers Haruo Nakajima and Katsumi Tezuka, but suit-mation represents only one facet of Godzilla’s first onscreen appearance. Stop-motion is also sparingly used – as a fan of King Kong (1933), this was effects maestro Eiji Tsuburaya’s preferred method before lack of budget, time and expertise dictated otherwise. But more frequently throughout the film, a waist-up hand puppet of the would-be King of the Monsters is employed. Indeed, Godzilla’s first ever onscreen appearance – rearing its monstrous head over a hill on Odo Island, as gathered scientists and villagers reel in horror – is realised via hand puppet. 

Godzilla’s famous atomic heat ray is portrayed via puppetry throughout the picture, with a nozzle emitting a concentrated steam of vapour embedded in the puppet’s mouth. Other memorable moments are brought to life via hand puppetry, including Godzilla framed mid-rampage through the bars of a bird cage in the forefront of the shot, the nuclear leviathan’s assault on Ginza’s famed Wako Clock Tower, and its dispatching of a radio broadcast tower (with doomed correspondents reporting to the last). Godzilla itself may be more famous as a suited (and, these days, Academy Award-winning CGI) creation, but the first time it ever appeared on screen was as a hand puppet.

Like Godzilla before them, the dual pteranadon-like monsters of Rodan were achieved via a blend of practical effects techniques: suit-mation (with Haruo Nakajima once again within the monster costume), marionette wirework, and hand puppetry. Close-up shots of the mated Rodan pair assaulting Fukuoka are notably realised via hand puppet. These shots reveal an ability not portrayed anywhere else in the film (and regularly missed by audiences before the digital restoration age): a deadly, concentrated blast of radioactive gas emitted from their mouths, portrayed, like Godzilla’s heat ray before it, via a nozzle in the puppet’s mouth. 

Rodan’s supersonic flight is portrayed throughout the picture with a blend of hand animation and marionette puppetry, reminiscent of Eiji Tsuburaya’s miniature aerial dogfight sequences in the infamous wartime propaganda picture The War at Sea from Hawaii to Malaya (1942). The untimely demise of the pair at the film’s conclusion is portrayed via marionette, with one Rodan deciding to join its mate (trapped in a stream of lava) in death.

Among the most fantastical and otherworldly of Toho’s entire kaiju stable, Mothra features Honda and Tsuburaya’s first creature portrayed entirely without suit-mation. While the eponymous deity of Infant Island’s caterpillar-like larva form was realised via radio-controlled miniature and one of Toho’s biggest suits (with Haruo Nakajima once again at the helm, commanding a team of additional performers within the enormous imitation insect), the awe-inspiring, butterfly-esque adult form is brought to spectacular life completely via marionette puppetry. 

The blindingly colourful goddess proceeds to lay waste to New Kirk City (capital of the amalgamation state of Rolisica), creating hurricane winds that toss suspension bridges and cars as though they were a toddler’s toys. In a break from kaiju tradition, and in a genre-defining change, Mothra survives the picture and departs in victory via marionette.

While Richard Fleischer’s adaptation of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) may have defined monstrous marionette molluscs with Kirk Douglas, James Mason and crew going up against a giant squid, Honda’s Dogora features an entirely unique tentacled terror. The title monster is a truly colossal cosmic creature: a single-celled organism mutated via contact with a radiation pocket over Japan and portrayed entirely via marionette puppetry (manipulated inside a water tank, lending it a floaty, ethereal quality) and sparingly applied hand animation. 

Dogora feeds on carbon, bringing it into conflict with the machinations of a diamond smuggling ring (among them, You Only Live Twice star Akiko Wakabayashi). With its unique mix of criminal gangster intrigue and kaiju action, this 1964 film ranks among Toho’s most unique monster movies, and its eponymous monster is entirely representative of that uniqueness: a truly otherworldly, phantasmagorical and strangely serene luminescent entity eerily occupying the skies above Fukuoka.

Godzilla’s most famous foe is introduced in this crossover monster mash, uniting the King of the Monsters, Mothra and Rodan against the terrible three-headed space dragon King Ghidorah. The extraterrestrial menace is a truly awesome sight: shimmering scales, colossal wings, twin tails and three cackling, lightning-spitting heads crowned upon flailing, elongated necks, all in mesmerising, iridescent gold. Inspired by the mythical eight-headed serpent Yamata no Orochi (memorably brought to life via marionette by Tsuburaya in Hiroshi Inagaki’s epic The Three Treasures in 1959), Ghidorah’s trademark triple heads and necks are manipulated via careful and precise marionette puppetry, working in tandem with the creature’s torso and legs (portrayed via suit-mation by performers Shoichi Hirose and Haruya Sakamoto), with its wings and tails also animated via intricate wirework.

Combined with optical animation rendering the deadly yellow bolts erupting from its mouths, King Ghidorah represents a crowning achievement of Honda and Tsuburaya’s practical effects work, and the pinnacle of puppetry in the golden age of Japanese special effects cinema.

No Strings Attached: Puppets on Film plays at BFI Southbank in August 2026.

BFI Film Classics: Godzilla by Steven Sloss will be published in 2027.