1godzillafan's Toku Corner (Ultra Q)

Godzilla, King of the Monsters! is the title of the American edit of the original Godzilla film, which is known almost everywhere else as simply Godzilla.  The Classic Media DVD release of the film titled it by the Japanese pronunciation, Gojira.

Premise:  Boats begin disappearing off the coast of Japan, causing concern from the mainland.  After hearing a report of a giant creature destroying a village on Odo Island, a team is sent to investigate, led by Dr. Yamane along with his daughter Emiko and her secret love Ogata, where they discover the radioactive footprints of the massive beast.  The villagers of Odo Island believe the beast to be "Godzilla," a sea dragon that their ancestors had feared.  Soon enough, the beast surfaces again on the shore of the island, allowing Yamane, Emiko, Ogata, and the villagers to see for themselves that it does exist.  Naming the beast after the Odo legend, Yamane deduces that Godzilla is an ancient beast that was awoken by hydrogen bomb tests, explaining the radioactivity.  Japan soon sends bombing vessels to the sea to destroy Godzilla, and, believing the mission to be successful, life on the mainland returns to normal, until Godzilla surfaces on the shore of Tokyo and destroys the city.  As Japan mourns, all hope seems lost, until Emiko reveals her arranged fiancee, Dr. Serizawa, has been working on a chemical which could possibly kill the monster.

Also, somewhere during all of this, a reporter named Steve Martin (no, not THAT Steve Martin, this one is Perry Mason) is wandering around, speaking exposition into a little microphone.

What's that old film philosophy?  The original is always the best?  As many sequels as Godzilla has had, there might have been one that beat the odds, but even if there are some of us out there who have movies in this series that we probably watch more than the original Godzilla, there is little arguing that in film structure, plotting, technique, cinematography, mood, and theme, the original Godzilla film is probably the strongest Godzilla movie there is.  It's not just a sweaty Japanese guy in a rubber suit wrestling match, it's a real movie, goddammit!

Though, it might be easy to see Godzilla as another in a long line of giant monster movies that were booming during the time period.  The film might not even exist today if Japan hadn't had popular releases of the original King Kong and the then-recent Beast from 20,000 Fathoms in the 1950's.  Beast and Godzilla have more than a few similarities, but the one thing about Beast (which is a film that I also love, I might add), is that while it is yet another movie monster from the 1950's born from fear of nuclear destruction, it is like a lot of its peers, and just uses the atom bomb as an excuse to set spectacle loose on the screen.  Godzilla has a leg up on these types of films because it is made by people who have seen the horror that nuclear weapons can accomplish and attributed that knowledge to the film itself.  That makes Godzilla less of a monster movie, and more of a horrific tragedy, because the movie stops to pause at several points to acknowledge "No, this isn't fun movie magic.  This is horrifying!"



Because of that, the original Godzilla wasn't one that I watched a lot growing up because it was a bit too heavy and not as much fun as its sequels.  That being said, the film's heaviness becomes its appeal as one gets older, and makes the film more interesting to rewatch.  "Like wow, man!  This movie is ABOUT shit!"  One starts to notice the parallels between the events of the film and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and an extra bit of oomph is added by the knowledge that the destroyed boats that set the story into motion were inspired by a then-recent news story involving bomb tests and an ill-fated vessel called Lucky Dragon Number 5.  That's fucking relevance!

Of course, there is that man in a suit factor to the movie.  Special effect director Eiji Tsubaraya initially wanted to do stop-motion as an homage to King Kong, but the production lacked the time and funding, so he just made a monster out of rubber and told some people on the lot to "Hop in!"  While this wasn't the desired aesthetic for the film, I don't feel it to be a detriment.  The way that Tsubaraya, director Ishiro Honda, and cinematographer Masao Tamai shoot the monster makes it fearsome despite its budget limitation.  Godzilla is shot with angles that almost makes it look like it was shot by a documentarian, with that final touch of black and white which adds a lot of darkness to the experience of seeing the man in a rubber suit in action, as does Akira Ifukube's imposing score.  Suitimation became a tradition that lasted decades up to Godzilla:  Final Wars, and even films with an entirely CGI monster, such as the recent MonsterVerse films and Shin Godzilla, use motion capture for that suitimation feel.  The special effects in this film were also highly influential in Japan, inspiring other popular movie monsters such as Rodan, Mothra, and Gamera, while eventually leading to Tsubaraya to shepherd this type of technique into television with the TV series Ultra Q, which eventually transitioned into Japan's most popular superhero Ultraman, which, in turn, inspired further toku TV shows such as Kamen Rider and Super Sentai (better known in the west as Power Rangers).  Without the original Godzilla and its special effects techniques none of these would exist.

Of course, I have some people screaming back at me "Erasing those from time would be a GOOD thing, you nutjob!"  Agree to disagree.  I love this stuff.



Of course, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the American edit of the film, because for about fifty years it was the only way Americans could watch the film without a bootleg.  Sci-fi with giant monsters running rampant were pretty big in America in the 50's, resulting in not only The Beast from 20,00 Fathoms, but films like Them!, Tarantula, The Amazing Colossal Man, The Deadly Mantis, Beginning of the End, and many others.  Godzilla being imported to America was probably only a matter of time, though instead of fully dubbing the film, there was an attempt made to almost fool audiences into thinking it was at least a partially American production, hiring Terry Morse, director of a bunch of cheapies like Fog Island or Unknown World, to direct new footage for the film with American actors.

The lead selected was Raymond Burr, who had just recently had a major success in playing the is-he-or-isn't-he murderer(?) in one of Alfred Hitchcock's many masterpieces, Rear Window, and was a year away from being cast in his most fondly remembered role, TV's Perry Mason.  Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (as it was retitled) is a weird little oddity that he shot in about a day in between those two roles, and yet, he's probably almost as remembered for this role as he is those.  Burr doesn't really do much in this movie, and only exists as an exposition tool in which he asks a translator to explain to him what's happening.  There are rare occurrences in which he interacts with the film's Japanese cast, where he speaks to body doubles who are only shot from behind and never seem to make eye contact with him.  For the instances in which plot points are unleashed and Burr's character couldn't possibly be present for, very dull and static dubbing is used.  The dubbing in this film is especially awkward because the characters also speak in their native Japanese dialects, in which the original Japanese audio is used, and their voices seem to change on a dime.

Even though this version really isn't of any use anymore now that the Japanese version is readily available, and subtitles don't have the same stigma for distributors that they used to, it's worth checking out because it's a fair example of taking a film and re-editing it for another audience.  Despite what nitpicks one might have toward it, the final product is not a disaster, and that itself is kind of interesting.

The 1977 Italian edit of the American version of the film on the other hand...

"The what?" you might ask.  "Why should I care about an obscure re-edit of a re-edit?"

Because I just won't shut up, that's why!

So, let's talk about colorization.  You know, that waste of time thing that some people do because there are casual cinema goers who don't like black and white cinematography (these people and I do not get along).  The intent of colorization is to give the film the illusion of color cinematography so that it looks more appealing to those who want their film to look more...lifelike, modern, or hip, I guess.  Neveryoumind that colorization usually makes the movie look faker and more plastic (that's if it's good colorization), it exists to hand a baby a bottle and to get them to stop crying.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not against colorizing black and white films in general, because while it's a lot of effort for very little (in my opinion), at the same time they can be in an interesting compare and contrast of how effective cinematography can be as is. If nothing else, colorization provides a grand argument of how beautiful black and white
cinematography can be.  But then again, if a black and white film was meant to be in color, the cinematography in general probably would have looked much different in the first place to accommodate the format.  But in general, if someone were to make colorized versions of the first two Godzilla films, I'd be at the very least interested to see them, if only to reinforce my opinion that the black and white versions are superior to this thing that doesn't exist yet.

So, with all of that in mind, what in the absolute fuck is this?





If you have never heard of this version of the movie, consider yourself lucky.  The 1977 edit of the King of the Monsters cut, simply titled Godzilla, was shepherded by filmmaker Luigi Cozzi, best known for crap classics such as Starcrash, Contamination, and the Lou Ferrigno Hercules films, and was created because distributors in Italy were unenthusiastic about releasing a 50's black and white monster movie into the current movie market.  Cozzi decided that for the movie to be marketable, it needed a color makeover.  But instead of the colorization technique that people like Ted Turner would eventually push during the near future, Cozzi used a process called Spectrorama 70, which applied various gels to the frames of the film, but wasn't a traditional color picture by any stretch and more or less just added various colors to the image (usually orange, yellow, and blue).  There seems to be an attempt to try and make certain tones match the picture, such as yellow tones trying to match the faces of various characters (since the characters are Asian, is this racist?), but in the end it looks like glorified tinting with a psychedelic edge that makes the movie a super freakout risk when you're stoned.

The film is kind of funny because of what it is.  Not only do you have those really weird colors laid on top of the film, but you also have the American cut dubbed into Italian.  So it's an Italianized version of an Americanized Japanese film.  That's kind of hilarious in concept.  Robbing the film of what joy it has is the fact that not only does Cozzi needlessly re-edit the film (yet AGAIN), adding more slow motion destruction to emphasize that "Yes, Godzilla very bad," but he takes the tragic tone of the picture to an unneeded extreme by adding actual footage of nuclear destruction, including real life charred corpses (and that's just the movie's opening credits).  Jesus Christ, dude.

The movie is only available to the public in an incomplete version mastered from VHS.  It floats around, so if you're morbidly curious, watch it if you dare.



But whether Japanese or American (fuck the Italian version), the original Godzilla is a movie to treasure, and it's definitely a case where the original film is an absolute powerhouse in a movie series, even if it isn't the most modern.  I myself can't quite rank it number one despite this, because my top three are unbudgeable nostalgic favorites.  I can't deny that technically this film is probably "better" than them, so let's call this the best Godzilla film, just not my favorite.