Yoshirō Kitahara

Finally released outside Japan for the very first time, these unique riffs on H.G. Wells' classic character (though undoubtedly also indebted to Universal's iconic film series) are two of the earliest examples of tokusatsu (special effects) cinema from Daiei Studios, later the home of Gamera. Eight years after The Invisible Man Appears, Mitsuo Murayama's exciting The Invisible Man vs. The Human Fly tells the story of a series of mysterious murders where the only clue is strange buzzing noise at the scene of the crime... could this be linked to secret wartime experiments in shrinking humans to the size of insects? And can a scientist who's just invented an invisibility ray be the one to stop it?

A snow witch takes the life of a sculptor during a blizzard but spares his apprentice on the condition that he never reveal what happened.

The initial entry in the Gamera series was Daiei Studios' first successful attempt at making a massive scale kaiju movie. Hibernating under the Arctic, the turtle monster Gamera is awakened by an atomic bomb test. The behemoth creates chaos when it arrives in Japan and an ambitious plan must be hatched to try and stop the rampage.

What do you get when Noriaki Yuasa, director of Daiei Studios' much-beloved Gamera series, makes a monochrome film adaptation of the works of horror manga pioneer Kazuo Umezu (The Drifting Classroom)?

A monstrous demon dog spawns, bringing chaos to Japan with its lethal tongue and destructive beams. Fortunately, Gamera intervenes to restore peace.

The iconic fire-breathing turtle faces off against a bat-like monster with a thirst for blood when it's awakened by volcanic activity on Mount Fuji.