Giant Squid Monster Arkitius Mock-Up

UPDATE: I wasn't digging the original upload, so did this combo-piece for everyone's hungry, willing eyes.

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Believe it or not, but I've only discovered Layers, and how to use them within Photoshop, like only a couple of months ago! And it's made life way, WAY easier for me. Along with the ability to make silly mock-ups, like what your seeing above.

"Giant Squid Monster Arkitius" was a Japanese creature feature intended for 1966. But was dropped by its parent company Nikkatsu, in favor for "Gappa the Triphibian Monster", one year later.

And the story for this unmade Kaiju epic would have involved a giant squid named Arkitius, heroically fighting Nazi villains during World War II!

More information on this abandoned production can be viewed here:


Kaiju Unmade: Giant Squid Monster Arkitius ('66)
Last year, I stumbled upon some four, count them four, unproduced predecessors to 1967's "Gappa the Triphibian Monster". But detailed information was scarce, until I decided to team up with web-masters of Wikizilla, after an initial, now seemingly petty quibble with them.
It's been wonderful to donate my obscure monster knowledge, to ultimately nice folks that can read Japanese. And with extra help from the imperfect, but still useful Google Translator, we've found tons of Japanese blogs confirming many of these lesser-known Kaiju characters.
"Bride of Godzilla" (1956, Unmade) was brought into light under similar circumstances. But with the added assistance of my long time friend and fellow kaiju historian Cam Eion, alias Dramaranger.
Instead of going through all four of the unmade "Gappa" prototypes, let just do them one-at-a-time. And s


I'll be doing a revised version of that same article for my blog in a few days. And in turn, created this more current mock-up, replacing Gezora from 1970's "Space Amoeba" with an actual squid photo.

Unfortunately, as you can tell, the mock-up is played for inaccurate laughs, as there was no mention of lasers coming from Arkitius' eyes. And characters from "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and "Monty Python's Flying Circus" are being used as stand-ins for the Nazi antagonists.

The jungle background is a holdover from the original "Space Amoeba" version, though.

I'm still going to use this image, but will probably have to post a disclaimer, stating that the abandon movie was indeed a thing, despite the fake images accompanying the article.

Thankfully, did a more faithful rendering of "Giant Squid Monster Arkitius", which I plan to incorporate as well.



Hopefully, these two won't be the only Arkitius fan pieces that will be made.