Bigger, badder, and more durable than Hollywood's greatest action heroes, Godzilla emerged from the mushroom cloud of an H-Bomb test in 1954 to trample Tokyo. More than forty years later, he reigns as the undisputed king of monsters, with legions of fans spanning several generations and countless international boundaries.But despite his icon status, Godzilla has been consistently maligned by critics and sci-fi purists who insist that a man in a rubber suit, stomping through intricately built miniature cities, is mere cheap camp. The vast contributions to the horror cinema made by Godzilla's creators - director Ishiro Honda and SFX director Eiji Tsuburaya among them - have gone largely unnoticed in the West, and relatively little information on Japan's greatest film star has ever been published in English. Until now.Godzilla: The Unauthorized Biography is the first authoritative guide to the Godzilla legend published in America. This thoroughly researched volume includes in-depth production details on all 22 Godzilla movies produced by Toho Co. of Japan between 1954 and 1995, including several "unmade" features, plus the upcoming May 1998 big-budget U.S. Godzilla remake by the producers of Independence Day. The book dispels the myths and illuminates the mysteries of Japan's enigmatic monstar, and is loaded with background information, trivia, and interviews with the people who created Godzilla - then and now.