Gojira was not so much about special effects as it was a display of characteristic Japanese efficiency and stagecraft. The decision to have a "man in a suit" rather than camera trickery was less choice than circumstance. Tight budgets and tighter deadlines contributed to the need for a solution "right now" and director Ishiro Honda managed to take a makeshift monster and turn it into cinematic magic. The scenes of carnage and the monster won't grip modern audiences in the way it did for audiences in the fifties. We're inured to carnage at this point after decades of increasingly realistic gore and computer graphics. If you can squint a little and put your "historical perspective" hat on, you can see Gojira as a masterpiece in context.
These films were close on the heels of World War II. My reader in 2006 has only to think back to the nineties to gain perspective. Remember Monica Lewinsky, the first Gulf War, the first World Trade bombing and Rwandan genocide? All these events have current cultural resonance just as WWII had for the Japanese and Americans. Gojira plays at a superficial level as a Saturday-morning B-movie. Dig deeper and you'll see how the Japanese version contains elements of the horror that played out in real life for Japanese during the war. Gojira was almost certainly viewed on two levels by Japanese audiences at the time, but the American edit buffed off most of the subtext.
Godzilla, King of the Monsters is the second DVD in the set and contains a domestic edit of the original film. The superlative title for the monster reflects American marketing. Apparently a trend of America pumping out advertising and marketing while Japan and the rest of the world actually make things was already beginning in the fifties. Showing Gojira with subtitles might have offended an American public still angry with Japan's role in WWII. So Director Morse and Raymond Burr came through with what would best be described today as a "remix" of Gojira. Afeared or inspired, the result was coherent, and introduced domestic audiences to a great monster-movie icon. Godzilla would go on to generate a "monster" franchise in Japan and America. Burr served mostly as a narrator with the original movie spliced in strategically to keep the storyline intact. Look for Burr to find one million creative ways to ask for a translation during his scenes, so the inserted clips from Gojira can be adapted without subtitles. Hilarious!
The unspecial side of this special release is the lack of inspired options on each DVD. Just a few weak featurettes are included. The focus is on releasing the Japanese original rather than doing a retrospective of the Godzilla franchise. I imagine that if Gojira is a success on DVD, we may see other movies released in deluxe packaging sometime soon. This set loses points for not coming with more meat inside. Scripts, stills, bios, etc. Besides a couple of "made for TV" features on the Gojira suit and some trailers, there is little of what I would call Special Features. Frown on that but smile on the chance to own a real piece of film history. If you have fond memories of watching B-movie features as a kid or have a fascination with how the monster-movie genre became lodged in our cultural psyche, your library should include this collector's edition.
