Godzilla vs. Hedorah

The most experimental and divisive Godzilla film, in which the king of monsters battles Hedorah, a shape-shifting creature born from industrial pollution and sludge. Director Yoshimitsu Banno lards it with psychedelic animated interludes, a lounge theme song about saving the Earth, and genuine environmental horror, including graphic human deaths.

Producer Tomoyuki Tanaka reportedly hated it, but it has been reappraised as a fascinatingly weird artifact of its ecological moment. Godzilla flies in this one, using his own atomic breath, to the eternal delight and confusion of fans. Nothing else in the series is like it.