Terror of Mechagodzilla
1975 film by Ishirō Honda

Terror of Mechagodzilla (メカゴジラの逆襲, Mekagojira no Gyakushū; lit. 'Mechagodzilla's Counterattack') is a 1975 Japanese kaiju film directed by Ishirō Honda, written by Yukiko Takayama, and produced by Tomoyuki Tanaka and Henry G. Saperstein, with special effects by Teruyoshi Nakano. Distributed by Toho and produced under their effects subsidiary Toho–Eizo, it is the 15th film in the Godzilla franchise, serving as a direct sequel to the 1974 film Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla and the final entry of the franchise's Shōwa era and the last to be directed by series co-creator Ishirō Honda before his death in 1993. The franchise would be rebooted nine years later with The Return of Godzilla, beginning the franchise's Heisei era.
Terror of Mechagodzilla stars Katsuhiko Sasaki, Tomoko Ai, Akihiko Hirata, and Gorō Mutsumi, and features Toru Kawai, Kazunari Mori, and Tatsumi Nikamoto as the fictional monster characters Godzilla, Mechagodzilla 2, and Titanosaurus, respectively. The film was released theatrically in Japan on March 15, 1975, to mostly positive reviews. It was released in the UK in June 1976 under the title Monsters From an Unknown Planet. It received a limited release in the United States in 1978 by Bob Conn Enterprises under the title The Terror of Godzilla. The film remains the least financially successful entry in the Godzilla franchise to this day.
Plot
Following Mechagodzilla's and the Simeons' defeat by Godzilla and Okinawan guardian monster King Caesar, Interpol agents search for Mechagodzilla's remains at the bottom of the Okinawan Sea in the hopes of gathering information on the Simeons.
The public source identifies “Terror of Mechagodzilla” as 1975 film by Ishirō Honda. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Terror, Mechagodzilla and film.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1211778. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1975, 1974, 1993 and 1976.
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This entry incorporates text from “Terror of Mechagodzilla” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.