Reptilicus (US-Denmark 1961)

The movie has a cult following in Denmark. It was Denmark's only giant monster movie. AIP re-shot a lot of it English for the American version.

The Japanese realized they could get around the time and nuisance of stop motion animation by using a guy in a rubber suit in their Godzilla movies. The Danes did them one better and used a marionette.
 
I don't know what the next step would have been. Perhaps a sophisticated hand puppet. CGI has rendered all this obsolete although there was a filmmaker who demanded that his computer-generated monsters be made to look like stop-motion models.

With a combination of green screens, puppets and cheap digital effect, I wonder how cheaply you could make a giant monster movie. You think it could be done cheaply enough that you could make a movie of your town and a few surrounding communities being destroyed by a giant puppet and sell a few thousand DVDs to local residents? Wouldn't people pay to see their own town being destroyed in a horror movie?

"Look! There's our house! Ha ha ha!"