"Someday, perhaps, we'll see Godzilla films released domestically with commentaries, essays, and all kinds of extra goodies. But I'm not gonna be holding my atomic fire-breath."
    That was the rather cynical statement with which I finished my review of Godzilla, Mothra & King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, written for this website two years ago. I'm quite happy now to say that, thanks to Classic Media's respectful, pristine, (and yes, loaded) line of Godzilla DVDs, I can finally let that atomic fire-breath out... which is good because it was playing hell with my acid reflux. But I digress: If any Godzilla film was likely to get the star treatment, it would have to be the one that started it all, made in Japan in 1954 and titled Gojira. Two years later, a radically different version of the film was released in the U.S. as Godzilla, King Of The Monsters. The Japanese original is a nightmarish metaphor for the horrors suffered from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and is the one film in the Godzilla series that a mainstream film critic can admit to liking without fear of having his credibility revoked; as for the American version, well it's still a damn fine monster movie. Now, for the first time, both versions are available in one monumental two-disc set.
    The story of Gojira begins as a Japanese fishing boat is attacked by some unseen force and disappears. The same mysterious fate befalls other ships that have been sent to search for the missing fishermen. Eventually a couple of survivors are found, suffering from horrible burns and claiming that they saw a great flash of light before their boat was destroyed. One survivor of the attacks washes up on his home island of Odo, and he tells his people that a monster was responsible for the attacks. The village elder is convinced that the monster is none other than Gojira, a legendary creature that the islanders had long ago feared so much that they offered human sacrifices to it. The younger inhabitants of Odo Island scoff at the elder's belief in Gojira, until the island is attacked on a stormy night by something that crushes several huts and leaves behind enormous footprints. The villagers' ordeal is enough to convince noted paleontologist Dr. Yamane (played by Takashi Shimura, ven erable vet of many Akira Kurosawa films) that a prehistoric beast may indeed be alive and causing all this death and destruction. Dr. Yamane leads a team of researchers, which includes his own daughter Emiko (Momoko Kochi), to investigate the wreckage on Odo Island. Accompanying the expedition is a young sailor, Ogata (Akira Takarada). Ogata and Emiko are carrying on a secret love affair, even though she is promised to marry her childhood friend, Dr. Serizawa (Akihiko Hirata), a brilliant scientist who is troubled by a darker secret of his own.
    The Odo island research team discovers that the giant footprints are highly radioactive, and within the footprints are found prehistoric parasites. Suddenly, any further speculation is dispelled when the village alarm is sounded and Gojira himself pops his monstrous head over the mountain, glares down at the puny humans, and emits the most famous bellow of all giant movie monsters before disappearing back into the ocean.
    Gojira soon expands his base of demolition to include the Japanese mainland, attacking ships, trains, and finally Tokyo itself. The military, finding its normal weapons to be ineffective, erects a barrier of towers around Tokyo, designed to electrocute the huge beast. Gojira has a weapon of his own held in reserve, however, and spews forth a devastating ray of atomic fire from his throat, easily melting the protective wall of power stations. After that, Tokyo can only fall before his rage, as it seems mankind's last hope has failed.
    As thousands flee before the terror of Gojira's attack and just as many are killed, the lives of our four protagonists are affected in other ways by the monster's existence. Dr. Yamane is convinced that Gojira is a dinosaur that has been mutated by the testing of hydrogen bombs. Yamane insists that Gojira not be destroyed, but rather used as a means to understand the power of the atom and how to heal its damage. Ogata has planned to ask Yamane for Emiko's hand in marriage, but instead he enrages Yamane with his insistence that Gojira needs to be destroyed. Emiko also resolves to tell Dr. Serizawa the truth about her love for Ogata. Serizawa seems to already suspect where Emiko's true affections lie, but because she is also his only friend, he is compelled to show her a horrific scientific discovery that is weighing heavily upon him. Serizawa has been studying the oxygen molecule, and inadvertently created a means of using oxygen as a terrible weapon.
    Obsessed with his invention, he asks Emiko to watch a demonstration of its power. Serizawa drops a pellet into an aquarium, the water begins to boil, and within seconds all the fish in the aquarium have had the flesh flensed from their bones. Soon even the bones themselves are dissolved. Emiko is repulsed by the display, but Serizawa wanted her to see why the invention can never become public knowledge. He then swears her to secrecy. Emiko leaves, too despondent to even tell Serizawa about her plans with Ogata. While working as a nurse at a makeshift hospital ward that has been set up in the wake of Gojira's latest devastating attack, the suffering she witnesses causes Emiko to break down and tell Ogata about Serizawa's invention and its potential to destroy Godzilla. Together, she and Ogata try to convince Serizawa to use the Oxygen Destroyer. He thinks they have come to announce their marriage intentions, but he is more devastated to know that they want him to make the world aware of his secret weapon. He refuses, saying that the weapon would be used ultimately for evil. When a television broadcasts a childrens' choir singing a prayer for deliverance from Gojira, Serizawa finally relents and agrees to use his device. Along with Ogata, he will descend to the ocean depths and confront Gojira with the Oxygen Destroyer. But Serizawa also knows that the secret of his invention must die along with the monster.
    Gojira stands alongside 1933's King Kong as one of the two greatest giant monster films ever made. It also is the equal of the best of America's golden era of '50s sci-fi output. Gojira has the technical audacity of Forbidden Planet, the eerie tone of Them!, and the social relevance of The Day The Earth Stood Still. The four men who collectively put their imprint on the iconic figure Godzilla was to become — producer Tomoyuki Tanaka, director Ishirô Honda, special effects supervisor Eiji Tsuburaya, and composer Akira Ifukube — are all here at the beginning, as well as the long-suffering man who would wear the Godzilla suit for many years, Haruo Nakajima. Made just 10 years after the atomic bombs were dropped on their country, the seriousness of the film's message obviously inspired these men to create a creature that would be more than just a rampaging prehistoric beast. Gojira was here to do more than create brief havoc and cause a little property damage. Gojira's presence affects the principal characters on levels personal to them all, as though their various guilt/sufferings have come to haunt them and force them into confronting the truths they are trying to hide. Director Honda, who had served in WWII, not only evidently felt he was making, first and foremost, a tragedy, but also seemed to feel that the monster is part of the tragedy and not just its cause. The final confrontation is most telling. As Ogata and Serizawa dive into Gojira's lair with the Oxygen Destroyer, the monster is seen to be resting — looking almost vulnerable — and slowly raises his head, obviously aware of the impending threat. Yet Gojira is too huge a beast to be disturbed by the quiet descent of the two tiny humans. So, does he wake because he senses the approach of his own doom, or does he sense a kindred spirit in Dr. Serizawa, a being who cannot exist in the world because he is potentially as destructive as the monster? Whatever Honda is trying to convey, it is one of the oddest moments in a giant monster film, and the entire finale has none of the action and pyrotechnics common with the conclusion of most monster romps. Instead, it plays out with no sense of triumph or relief, merely a feeling that the survivors, like the real-life nation of Japan, will have to get on with the business of healing.
    If Gojira has any noticeable flaws, it is the occasional awkward special effect, but those are minimal when compared with the overall technical achievement by Eiji Tsuburaya and his crew in what was essentially the first film of its type for the Japanese film industry. Tsuburaya had been greatly inspired by the stop-motion magic of Willis O'Brien on display in King Kong, but the time constraints he was under to complete Gojira made it impossible to use stop-motion animation, where a single sequence might take several weeks to film. Instead, Tsuburaya opted to build a suit that would be operated by a combination of wires and a man within the suit. Anyone who believes, however, that choosing a suit over stop-motion models was somehow taking the 'easy' way out isn't paying attention.
    Besides creating a more realistic dinosaur costume than had ever been attempted in Hollywood to that point, the monster's actions would also have to be co-ordinated with multiple pyrotechnics and minia tures, all having to operate on cue under sweltering studio conditions and tight budget restrictions. The results are nearly all astonishing, especially the ultra-realistic crumbling of the buildings that Gojira destroys. Gojira himself is a wonderfully imagined monster, being neither a dinosaur nor a dragon, but seemingly motivated by some unfathomable purpose. And is it just me, or does Gojira and The Sex Pistols' John "Rotten" Lydon share the same eyes? Anyway, when combined with Akira Ifukube's dark, dramatic score and Honda's use of slow-motion and night filming to add to the nightmarish mystery of the creature, Gojira is unforgettable. So, too, would the film Gojira be unforgettable to Japanese audiences, who were more than receptive to the film's reflection of the country's national nightmares about mankind's newfound destructive potential.
    But, how would Gojira play in Peoria?
    Godzilla, King Of The Monsters, the zippy new title for Gojira when it finally opened in American theaters in 1956, is often maligned as a watered-down version of the original film that omits any reference to the atomic bomb in fears of angering or alienating U.S. audiences. While there is some truth there, the film is more than that and deserves to be recognized for being a fairly impressive technical accomplishment on its own. The film distributors who saw Gojira overseas understood the entertainment potential, but they were shrewd businessmen who worried about an American audiences' willingness to attend a film with an all-Japanese cast (let's face it, with the rare exception like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, today's mass moviegoers still don't turn out in droves for films with no Anglo faces on display). To that end, they hired American actor Raymond Burr, and gave director Terry Morse the task of creating a role for Burr and inserting him into the already existing film. Nope, I wouldn't have wanted that job, either, but Morse proved more than up to the challenge.
    GKOTM opens with reporter Steve Martin (no jokes, please — it's really his name) recovering from wounds suffered when he was covering the news story of a lifetime: a giant monster rampaging through Tokyo. The events that led to this moment are then revealed to us in flashbacks and Martin's narration. Martin has stopped over in Japan a few days earlier to see his friend Dr. Serizawa, but Serizawa is too wrapped up in his mysterious experiments to be able to get away. Plus, Martin senses a big news story in the disappearances of several Japanese ships. He is further intrigued to find that two more acquaintances, paleontologist Dr. Yamane and his daughter Emiko, are investigating the disappearances because there are rumors that the ships met their destruction at the hands of a giant creature. From here, the story of GKOTM unfolds pretty much as in Gojira, with reporter Martin (Burr) present for Godzilla's first appearance on Odo Island, and also at the monster's subsequent rampages. During Godzilla's final attack, Martin is among the reporters that stay in the city to cover the events at all cost. The building that Martin is in gets crushed by Godzilla, and Martin survives but with numerous injuries. He is cared for by Emiko, who is helping look after the thousands of wounded survivors from the attack. Emiko tells Martin about Serizawa's Oxygen Destroyer, and it is Martin who tells her that she must convince Serizawa to use the invention to save mankind. Martin recovers to also be present on the ship that takes Ogata and Serizawa to the place where they will use the device on Godzilla, and where Serizawa will make the ultimate sacrifice.
    Considering that Raymond Burr's scenes were all filmed in one studio room, (and all in 1-3 days, depending on which account you believe), the illusion that he is a part of the original film is quite cleverly achieved. Morse's footage matches quite well with Honda's in terms of lighting, and Burr does an adequate job considering he has to interact and react with people and monsters that he couldn't actually see. Since Burr's narration is used to fill in the gaps from cutting nearly 18 minutes out of the Japanese version, it is also fortuitous that the American script manages to be fairly eloquent and Burr delivers his narration with conviction. In terms of story, GKOTM even manages a couple of slight improvements to the original. The opening scene of a devastated Tokyo makes the viewer immediately aware of the force that is coming, and helps build the anticipation even more as the film gets closer to Godzilla's first 'reveal'. Also, placing Martin directly in Godzilla's path during the final attack makes up for one arguable shortcoming of the original, which is that none of the main characters are placed in much direct physical danger from the monster, despite all the horrific death and destruction he is otherwise causing. There is a reporter in Gojira that heroically reports the monster's attack until his own demise, but he was not a character we had a chance to know or get close to. When Martin displays the same heroics in GKOTM, it provides a genuine excitement and a needed one-on-one confrontation with Godzilla, more thrilling than Serizawa's underplayed, poignant final encounter with the monster at the film's conclusion.
    Hey, if you need any more proof of Terry Morse's accomplishment, just watch Godzilla 1985, which is a similarly-bastardized version of 1984's remake of Gojira, wherein Raymond Burr was brought back in to play Steve Martin in new scenes which, once again, were used in place of large chunks of original footage. The results were embarrassingly terrible, because this time, the American distributors barely gave a shit.
    There are problems with Godzilla, King Of The Monsters, of course, most notably in the dubbing. The actors doing the voices just sat at a table and recorded their lines without seeing the footage, which means many lines are delivered without emotion and sound flat and displaced from the actors in the film. Also, in some scenes where actors are dressed up to resemble the original Japanese cast, and filmed over-the-shoulder to appear as though they are conversing with the Steve Martin character, the sight lines don't always convincingly match up with the original footage. Ultimately, no matter how game the efforts of Raymond Burr, his narration can't make up for losing so much of the emotion of the relationships between Yamane, Emiko, Ogata, and Serizawa, any more than the film can completely make up for ignoring the importance of Godzilla's atomic origins to what the makers of Gojira intended. Still, my own personal reaction to the film on first viewing is telling in regards to the respect Terry Morse had for the mood of the original film. As a child, I always identified with the movie monsters — what 'Monster Kid' didn't? — and after the monsters inevitably died at the end of the film, I'd usually spend hours afterwards pretending to be the monster, or drawing countless pictures of it, no doubt as a way to extend its "life". However, only once did I cry over a monster's demise, and that was at the end of GKOTM. As young as I was, I was obviously responding to some understanding of the tragedy Godzilla represented, and that's a testament to how much of the serious tone of Gojira was preserved by the American distributors, even as they had to make it "drive-in friendly". Let's say this, too: Godzilla is just a much more catchier name than Gojira!