Join us at the Rio Theatre on Monday, January 29 for a very special #MonsterMonday double bill featuring a 70th Anniversary screening of the 4K restoration of director Ishirō Honda's original 1954 Kaiju classic GODZILLA (a.k.a. "Gojira") with the 2023 blockbuster GODZILLA MINUS ONE/MINUS COLOUR.

GODZILLA is the undisputed roaring granddaddy of all monster movies. It’s also a remarkably humane and melancholy drama, made in Japan at a time when the country was reeling from nuclear attack and H-bomb testing in the Pacific. Its rampaging radioactive beast, the poignant embodiment of an entire population’s fears, became a beloved international icon of destruction, spawning almost thirty sequels.

One of the longest-running series in film history began with Honda's grim, black-and-white allegory for the devastation wrought on Japan by the atomic bomb. As his visual metaphor, Honda uses a 400-foot-tall mutant dinosaur called Gojira, awakened from the depths of the sea as a rampaging nuclear nightmare, complete with glowing dorsal fins and fiery, radioactive breath. Crushing ships, villages, and buildings in his wake, Gojira marches toward Tokyo, bringing all of the country's worst nightmares back until an evil more terrible bomb -- capable of sucking all the oxygen from the sea -- returns the monster to its watery grave. The original 1954 film is chilling, despite some rather unconvincing man-in-a-suit special effects, and brimming with explicitly stated anti-American sentiment.

"Seen afresh in this cut, with Honda's pulp poetry restored, this ballad of destruction reveals itself as one of the most exciting, enjoyable and moving of them all." (Time Out)

#MonsterMonday, January 29
Doors 6:00 pm | Movie 6:30 pm *Start time subject to change. Please arrive on time.

Single Film GODZILLA film tickets.

GODZILLA "Gojira" (Ishiro Honda, 1954 / 96 mins / PG / Japanese with English subtitles) When a seemingly indestructible fire-breathing monster is created as a result of the testing of American nuclear weapons, the government takes help from a reclusive scientist to kill the monster.