Atragon
| Atragon | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Directed by | Ishirō Honda |
| Produced by | Tomoyuki Tanaka |
| Written by |
Shunrō Oshikawa (novel) Shigeru Komatsuzaki (story) Shinichi Sekizawa |
| Starring |
Jun Tazaki Yōko Fujiyama Tadao Takashima |
| Music by | Akira Ifukube |
| Cinematography | Hajime Koizumi |
| Edited by | Ryohei Fujii |
|
Production
company |
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| Distributed by |
Toho AIP (U.S.) |
|
Release date
|
December 22, 1963 (Japan) March 11, 1965 (U.S.) |
|
Running time
|
96 min. (Japan) 88 mins (US) |
| Country | Japan |
| Language | Japanese English (Dubbed) |
Atragon, released in Japan as Undersea Warship (海底軍艦 Kaitei Gunkan?), is a 1963 science fiction tokusatsu film directed by Ishirō Honda and produced and financed by Toho. It is based on a series of juvenile adventure novels under the banner Kaitei Gunkan by Shunrō Oshikawa (heavily influenced by Jules Verne) and the illustrated story Kaitei Okoku ("The Undersea Kingdom") by illustrator Shigeru Komatsuzaki, serialized in a monthly magazine for boys. Komatsuzaki also served as an uncredited visual designer, as he had on The Mysterians (1957) and Battle in Outer Space (1959). visualizing the titular super weapon, among others.
The film was one of several tokusatsu collaborations of director Ishirō Honda, screenwriter Shinichi Sekizawa, and special effects director Eiji Tsuburaya. It features Jun Tazaki, an authority figure regular to tokusatsu, in his largest genre role as the conflicted Captain Jinguji of the multi-purpose warship, 轟天号 Gotengo (or Roaring Heaven). While the name of the ship is recited as "Gotengō" in Japanese, it should be rendered as "Goten" in English; as the suffix, 号 (gō), simply denotes the object as a ship. For the English-language U.S. version, released in 1965 by American International Pictures, the supersub itself was dubbed Atragon, which had been shortened from Toho's own foreign sales title, Atoragon. Confusion over the actual Japanese title of the film by non-Japanese speakers, has led many to assume the original title, 海底軍艦 (Kaitei Gunkan), to be "Undersea Battleship"; unfortunately, the Japanese term for "Battleship", 戦艦 (Senkan), is nowhere to be found in the title. Since 軍艦 (Gunkan) should be correctly rendered as "Warship", therefore, the film should be correctly transliterated as Undersea Warship.
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