Godzilla - 50 years of mayhem

He has spent 50 years trampling and burning major cities, and taking on the mighty likes of King Kong, The Thing and, er, Bambi.

But as fearsome, flame-breathing Godzilla reaches his half-century, it seems he is ready to swap worldwide carnage for mild-mannered academia.

Experts will descend on the University of Kansas on Thursday for a threeday conference marking the first Godzilla film's 50th anniversary.

The Japanese movie Gojira, the first of 28 movie outings, showed the 25m dinosaur's creation by underwater atomic tests, sending him on a trail of destruction across Japan.

The film was released eight months after the US tested a hydrogen bomb in the South Pacific.

No matter that the awesome beast was really a man draped in a dinosaur suit. Nor that his roar was really the composer running a glove over a contrabass string.

Japanese movie firm Toho embarked on a run of yearly Godzilla releases, adding fresh beasts such as spider Miega, alien Mothra and, in 1969, a gentle deer, in Bambi Meets Godzilla.

British film critic Justin Bowyer said: 'Although the first Godzilla films predate the age of computer effects, they threw down the gauntlet.

'We may laugh at the seams in the costumes now but at the time those scenes would have looked spectacular.'

Prof Bill Tsutsui, of Kansas University, said: 'I would like people to take Godzilla more seriously.'