I’m sure some of you know this story, but I’d never heard of it. Nezura was meant to Daiei’s entry into the Kaiju market then at a peak due to (obviously) Toho. The film was going to be about giant rats, which probably isn’t that surprising to you given the still image above. The production, however, was a disaster. I guess they thought the trainable domesticated rats didn’t look scary enough, so they got the bright idea to capture and use zillions of actual sewer rats. So the feral rats ran around infesting the neighborhood, had trillions of kids, bit people and were themselves infested with fleas and ticks. Things got so bad that they literally had to burn down the production building because it was overtaken by the bugs. Still, the abandonment of the project led to Gamera, so that’s pretty good.
They are actually making a movie about this, but it looked kind of flat and cheap to me (from the trailer). Still, a fascinating story.
