Ghidrah on Paper

7.31.2026

One of my all-time favorites growing up was Ghidrah, The Three-Headed Monster, also known as Three Giant Monsters: Earth’s Greatest Battle (三大怪獣 地球最大の決戦). Ghidorah’s debut in Japan was on December 20, 1964. Ghidrah landed in the U.S. ten months later on September 29, 1965, released by The Walter Reade Organization and Continental Distributing. Almost ten years later Ghidrah was released on Super 8mm in 1973 for home viewing pleasure. I enjoyed reruns on local television during the 70s and 80s. In the late 80s I bought it on VHS and later on DVD, Blu-ray and 4k UltraHD in the 2000s. There is so much to love about this movie. What I love most is Godzilla transformation into a good guy. But I don’t have much memorabilia for Ghidrah.

Japanese and U.S. theatrical posters

“What Ever Happened to Godzilla? News of Deserving Lizard” by George Christian (August 10, 1965 edition of The Houston Post, p 36)

Six days earlier on August 4th, Walter Reade-Sterlink ran this ad in Variety Magazine announcing it had 1,062 bookings across the country. Variety Magazine is “an American trade magazine founded in New York City in 1905 as a weekly newspaper reporting on theater and vaudeville.”1 Several days ago I purchased it to build up my Ghidrah collection. The ad is full page, 11-9/16 inches by 16-1/16 inches. Variety was predominantly black-and-white. But vibrant spot colors was occasionally used for full-page and double-page ads. Bright red, orange or yellow were used to highlight titles, slogans, etc.² This ad is a great example.

Ghidrah The Three-Headed Monster ad in Variety Magazine (August 4, 1965, p 27, See Back)