In the third edition of my look at the influences behind Monsters Vs. Aliens, I turn my attention to one of the pivotal inspirations behind Insectosaurus.

The obvious choice for this entry would be Mothra, or even Godzilla, but in truth there’s another Japanese monster movie that looms large over Monsters Vs. Aliens, and that is エイプリルフール, or roughly translated, Larvasari. Never officially released outside of Korea, this film has only been shown in a handful of international film festivals after its original theatrical run, and is considered by many to be one of the most obscure kaiju films.

In Larvasari, a young girl being escorted to her arranged marriage is abducted by a secret organization that detains those people afflicted with mutation caused by nuclear radiation. When Korea is attacked by the armies of a lost undersea kingdom, the girl and her fellow mutants are turned loose in order to summon the legendary kaiju Larvasari, which only they can control via telepathy.

Lavasari was produced by special effects maestro Eiji Tsuburaya in 1961 as a test run for his own company, Tsuburaya Productions. Knowing that this would put him in direct competition with his employers at Toho, Tsuburaya had his protégé Yoshi Takeuchi helm the project in Korea. Toho discovered the deception, and made an agreement with Tsuburaya that he could both keep his position at Toho and run his own production company so long as he devoted his independent efforts to television exclusively. Larvasari was pulled from Korean theatres in the second week of its run.

Without Tsuburaya at the helm, and with a limited budget, Lavasari suffers in comparison to most of Toho’s output. Where it excels is in keeping an interesting pace throughout even the human moments, cribbing from The Chrysalids a few years before Stan Lee would do the same with The X-Men, with different yet equally intriguing results. And while the action choreography may be lacking, Larvasari is especially noteworthy for including cameos of both Godzilla and Rodan fighting under the control of the misunderstood inhabitants of Mu, yet another reason Larvasari has been unjustly buried by Toho.

While Larvasari is an entertaining enough monster movie, its true worth is in being a precursor to future science fiction classics like Blade Runner and The Terminator, though its scarcity makes it so difficult to find that it’s probably not worth the effort to track down a copy. Until Toho decides to crack open the vault and make this available beyond grainy bootlegs, I wouldn’t recommend Larvasari to anyone but Godzilla completists.

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Recommended If You Like: Frankenstein vs. Godzilla, Godzilla vs. The Space Monsters, Godzilla vs. Gigamoth