Barnes & Noble

Everybody loves Godzilla, the irradiated giant monster that first terrorized, then defended Japan throughout the Cold War and beyond. The first official Western entry to the series, Godzilla, King of the Monsters, was recut from Inoshiro Honda's original blockbuster Gojira. Interspersing English-language scenes starring Raymond Burr as an American reporter, the film follows a dinosaur -- resurrected by underwater nuclear testing -- as it emerges from the sea to flatten Tokyo. The result is a massively entertaining peek at postwar nuclear paranoia. As a living, fire-breathing embodiment of the A-bomb, Godzilla inflicts random acts of carnage and radioactive destruction on the populace. The metaphor extends to Burr's detached Americanism and to the ironic use of another doomsday weapon to destroy a monster created as a nuclear side effect in the first place. The menacing Godzilla is ultimately just a guy in a rubber suit stomping on models while actors speak in laughably dubbed dialogue, but that's the fun part. If you know only the recent American version, you owe it to yourself to check out the real thing. Amy Robinson

All Movie Guide

Filmed in 1954 as Gojira, this grandaddy of all Japanese giant-reptile epics was picked up for American distribution two years later, at which time several newly filmed inserts, featuring Raymond Burr as reporter Steve Martin, were rabetted into the original footage. In both the Japanese and American versions of Godzilla, the story is basically the same: a 400-foot amphibious monster, brought back to life by underwater nuclear testing, goes on a rampage in a tinker-toy Tokyo. An eccentric scientist (Takashi Shimura) does his best to destroy the beast with his heretofore discredited invention, the Oxygen Destroyer. Though Godzilla is apparently disintegrated in the climax, this didn't prevent Toho Studios from grinding out an endless series of sequels with the title character becoming less destructive and more lovable with each subsequent film. Hampered by a low budget which precluded stop-motion animation, special-effects wizard Eiji Tsuburaya was forced to rely upon an actor (Haru Nakajima) in a rubber Godzilla suit. Incidentally, the name "Gojira," a combination of "gorilla" and "kujira," is Japanese slang for "big clumsy ox" and was allegedly the nickname of one of the Toho stagehands. Hal Erickson

Product Details

• UPC: 796019797856
• Source: CLASSIC MEDIA
• Time: 1:18:00
• Sales Rank: 8,507

This DVD is also available as part of a box set:

• Gojira/Godzilla, King of the Monsters