Magma's Bio

Maguma is a fictional kaiju (giant monster) featured in the Japanese science fiction tokusatsu film Gorath, released by Toho in 1962. Based upon the real-life walrus and named after the molten rock found beneath the ground, the Maguma suit was designed by special effects director Eiji Tsuburaya, and worn by stuntman Haruo Nakajima, who frequently performed kaiju in Toho films of the era, most notably their most famous monster character, Godzilla. The character is the only monster in the film, which primarily features a runaway collapsed star (the "Gorath" of the title) on a collision course with Earth and the efforts by the military to combat it.

One of those efforts was to place several rockets in Antarctica and other parts of the world, designed to push the Earth out of the runaway star's path, and, once the threat had passed, push it back. The movement causes numerous disasters around the world, and the heat from the ignition had an unexpected consequence—releasing Maguma from his icy prison. As it ravaged the nearby military bases with its sharp tusks and large fins, the plans to evade the incoming star were temporarily put in peril.

However, Maguma was ultimately shot down by a laser from an incoming VTOL, and the rockets reached their destination and destroyed the incoming star. The sequence featuring Magma only makes up approximately six minutes of the finished film, but is an integral part of its structure and played a key role in the film's advertising, being a centerpiece of the poster.

Even so, the character was a late addition, added only after insistence by producer Tomoyuki Tanaka. This was largely the result of the wild success of Toho's kaiju eiga (monster movies), as opposed to their mystery, horror, or science fiction offerings like Gorath and its predecessors The Mysterians and Battle in Outer Space.

However, when Gorath was released in the United States, dubbed into English, by Brenco Pictures, the distributors found the character's appearance comical, even dubbing him "Wally the Walrus" (most likely inspired by Wally Walrus, an antagonist from the Woody Woodpecker cartoons popular at the time). As such, they removed the sequence for their cut of the film, and it has never been restored to the English-language edit, which was aired several times on television throughout the 1960s and '70s.

It should be noted, Maguma was originally to appear in the 1968 Toho film Destroy All Monsters, but was cut, along with Ebirah, to add in Anguirus and Minilla