leeper@ahutb.UUCP (leeper) (03/18/85)
GODZILLA
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Way back in the early Fifties, Toho Pictures of Japan
made a serious monster film inspired by BEAST FROM 20,000
FATHOMS. The film was called GOJIRA (pronounced GO-jee-RA)
and was reportedly about how the Americans used a nuclear
bomb to try to kill a centuries-old dragon or dinosaur that
was worshiped by the natives of a local island. The enraged
and now radioactive monster vented his wrath on Tokyo. The
film became an allegory of the closing days of World War II.
Japan was being hit by something incomprehensively powerful
of unknown origin that just totally wiped out any place it
appeared. Finally a courageous Japanese scientist uses his
own powerful weapon against Gojira, but only after he has
taken safeguards to be sure his force is never used against
humans (are you listening, American nuclear scientists?).
The film was extensively re-edited to be much less anti-
American, scenes with American actor Raymond Burr were
added, and the film was released in the U.S. as GODZILLA,
KING OF THE MONSTERS. The film became an international
success and spawned a whole series of films with
Gojira/Godzilla and eventually created a whole subgenre, the
Japanese monster movie.
Of Toho's followups to GODZILLA none had much real
quality, but some were fun on a junior high school level of
complexity. Most notably, GODZILLA VS. THE THING had a
certain charm. At the end of the next film, GHIDRAH, THE
THREE-HEADED MONSTER Godzilla turns into a good guy and
after that the films became more and more silly and
childish. They maintained a small audience for a decade or
so, but they eventually died out. Presumably the executives
at Toho began to lament their own degradation of their
monster. They have just finished making a film tentatively
to be called either GODZILLA or RETURN OF GODZILLA. It is
another sequel to the original GODZILLA, KING OF THE
MONSTERS, but to only that film.
As the film begins there has been one and only one
appearance of Godzilla, and that was some thirty years
earlier. A second monster of the same species rises out of
a volcano to threaten Japan and to spark an international
nuclear incident.
It had been rumored that Toho Pictures had been working
on a Godzilla film that would employ stop-motion technology.
If, in fact, this is the film that resulted, it is something
of a disappointment. This Godzilla is another "man-in-
suitosaurus," to use Don Glut's term. But at least the
producers have returned to an earlier and less cute
visualization of the creature. This Godzilla looks much
like the one in the first Godzilla films with a face like a
crumpled sheet of newspaper. The camera uses low-angle
camera shots effectively to make the beast look impressively
- 3 -
large, a technique used in the first films and not again
since. The special effects of the monster walking through
Tokyo at night look much like a similar effect in the 1976
KING KONG.
The new Godzilla film (and it isn't dubbed in English
yet--I saw it in Japanese with a narrator explaining what
was going on) is not a very good film on any sort of
absolute scale; I guess I have never seen a Japanese science
fiction film that was. But for those of us who grew up with
hokey Godzilla films, it has considerable nostalgia value.
The quality is not up to that of the 1976 KING KONG, so
expect very little, but if you liked the old Toho science
fiction films in their best years, it might be worth
watching for. It was a pleasure to see, but I cannot fairly
give the 1984 version of GODZILLA anything better than a -1
on the -4 to +4 scale for fear that someone might see the
film and realize what rotten taste I really have.