Gojira is attacking the city!

I just picked up the Gojira/Godzilla box DVD at Costco, $12.99.

It's a very nice little number, one disk with "The Original Japanese Masterpiece" and another disk with the edited, Americanized, Raymond Burr-ized version which is the only version most people have seen. There is also a booklet giving an overview of the history of the project.

It is nice to see that the whole package has a rather dignified appeal, with none of the gaudiness which later affected the character/series. Don't get me wrong - I am very fond of the Big G in just about every one of his manifestations. (We'll ignore the "Baby Godzilla" period where they were marketing toward kids, and then there was that rumor of a Godzilla in America...) But the original movie deserves respect. I had seen "the Japanese cut" of the film before, on video, but it wasn't until I saw it in a theater that its full impact hit me. (The print was first shown at G-Con, then brought to Santa Fe for a special showing.)

Broken up by shots of Raymond Burr gazing out a window, the American release comes off in many ways as just a Japanese take-off on an American giant-monster movie. (Which in some ways it was - the production was heavily influenced by The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, which was a hit in Japan.) The U.S. cut also changed some of the scenes, especially those involving metaphorical references to the atomic bomb and scenes which might stir guilt feelings in American viewers.

The original vision of the film goes far beyond the giant bug/monster/man movies which were the stuff of 60's sci-fi. Gojira (pronounced with the emphasis on the "go") is a dark, brooding and somber cautionary tale. And this was no accident, as it was exactly the effect intended by the production staff - they had seen, firsthand, the effects of both firebombing and a-bombing on their homeland, and they injected those memories and images into the project.

David J. Skal, in his book "The Monster Show", presents the idea that popular filmic images of horror are versions of the recent history which the viewers have lived through - wars, famines, catastrophes. Gojira could not be a clearer support for his premise. The relentless mega-beast lumbering across Japan, leaving a wake of destruction and flames, is the very embodiment of the atomic genie which WWII let out of the bottle. The opening scene, a Japanese vessel sunk after a mid-sea encounter with something which produced a terrible heat, was a topical reference to a real event where a fishing vessel strayed too close to atomic testing in the Pacific, resulting in injuries to the crew (who, ironically, were Japanese).

Some of the effects are near-laughable - the obvious hand-puppet shots will make you smile - but the whole production was done very quickly considering the scope. The now-familiar "guyinasuitasaurus", a necessary compromise as stop-motion animation would be too expensive in both money and time, was actually to set a style. But if the buildings are sometimes obviously models it still has the effect of pointing up how small and helpless humans and their creations are in the relation to the destructive beast.

The music score is splendid - ominous, building, and powerful. It was to be reprised many times in the later Godzilla films, but in the dark and brooding setting of the first film it has its greatest punch.

The Gojira disk looks pretty good - some blips and pops, but overall clean. Surprisingly, considering the quality of the rest of the release, the subtitles for the disk have not been updated, and have noticeable grammatical and proofreading errors - a visual analog to the stilted dubbing which was to be a trademark element of later Godzilla films.

But the dialog is almost unnecessary for much of the film - the power, menace, and pathos of the great beast come through in any language. Anyone expecting a primitive version of the flashy entertainment of the later movies is in for a surprise.