Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#144798
of 909177 performers
Top 25%
Susumu Kurobe represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 62 years in, and Susumu is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Susumu Kurobe appears in 4 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Susumu. Destroy All Monsters is the clearest case: a film rated 6.7 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, versatility, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for documentary, action, science fiction. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Ishirō Honda, Jun Fukuda, Susumu Kurobe helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
Destroy All Monsters (1968) as Kilaak Controlled Staffer (uncredited) · Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964) as Assassin with Mustache (uncredited) · Son of Godzilla (1967) as Meteorological observation plane captain
Career snapshot
Ranked #144798 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
4
1964–2026
Career length
62 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.7
Destroy All Monsters
Average Nutevio score
5.0
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.0
Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster
Most frequent director
Ishirō Honda
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Ishirō Honda
Most common genre
Science Fiction
3 titles
Average runtime
1h 33m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.5
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
1960s
6.6 average MV
The 1960s are where the work and the material meet. Destroy All Monsters, Son of Godzilla, Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1960s
6.6
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1960s
6.8
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1960s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Destroy All Monsters, Son of Godzilla, Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster.
Most productive era
1960s
3 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 1960s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Action | 6.72 films | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance · Career peak
1964Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Assassin with Mustache (uncredited). 6.7 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
The current state of the argument, as Self.
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
4 of 4 films
as Kilaak Controlled Staffer (uncredited)
Directed by Ishirō Honda
as Assassin with Mustache (uncredited)
Directed by Ishirō Honda
as Meteorological observation plane captain
Directed by Jun Fukuda
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
Kilaak Controlled Staffer (uncredited)
Destroy All Monsters (1968)
Performance score6.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Kilaak Controlled Staffer (uncredited) gives Susumu Kurobe a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Assassin with Mustache (uncredited)
Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964)
Performance score6.6
Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Assassin with Mustache (uncredited) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Self
THE ORIGIN OF ULTRAMAN (2026)
Performance score6.5
THE ORIGIN OF ULTRAMAN asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Meteorological observation plane captain
Son of Godzilla (1967)
Performance score6.5
Son of Godzilla asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Meteorological observation plane captain is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Kilaak Controlled Staffer (uncredited)
Start here. Destroy All Monsters is the clearest statement of what Susumu Kurobe does — accessible, 89 minutes, and rated 6.7 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Susumu at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964)
Same director as Destroy All Monsters, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Son of Godzilla (1967)
Keeps the science fiction register of Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster but asks for a colder reading of it.
THE ORIGIN OF ULTRAMAN (2026)
A deliberate change of key after Son of Godzilla — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Ishirō Honda
Director
2 films together · 6.7 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Destroy All MonstersJun Fukuda
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Son of GodzillaSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster
as Assassin with Mustache (uncredited)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Son of Godzilla
as Meteorological observation plane captain
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster
as Assassin with Mustache (uncredited)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Destroy All Monsters
as Kilaak Controlled Staffer (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Destroy All Monsters
as Kilaak Controlled Staffer (uncredited)
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Susumu Kurobe has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Career Achievement
Awarded
62 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
Science Fiction Legend
Awarded
3 catalogue titles in science fiction, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster
as Assassin with Mustache (uncredited)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster
as Assassin with Mustache (uncredited)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Son of Godzilla
as Meteorological observation plane captain
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Son of Godzilla
as Meteorological observation plane captain
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster
as Assassin with Mustache (uncredited)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster
as Assassin with Mustache (uncredited)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster
as Assassin with Mustache (uncredited)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
THE ORIGIN OF ULTRAMAN
as Self
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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