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The American Version

What ink we got left, yellow? Red? Yeah, that’ll hold ‘em.

American International Pictures passed on this film, for reasons now lost to the mists of history. And so Walter Reade-Sterling and Continental released it in the U.S., in September of 1965. It was marketed on the cheap, with two-color posters and the usual newspaper spots; one memorable bit of marketing, though, was the three-faced, child-sized, paper ‘Ghidrah’ mask distributed as a promotion. Modern Godzilla-merch collectors would gladly slaughter orphans to get their hands on a surviving one of these. And rightly so. Ghidorah - or Ghidrah, as it was called at the time, in America – was frequently put on the lower part of a double bill with Elvis Presley’s Harum Scarum. Of course it was! Ads for the double bill had a line that went, “The beat and the beast make a holiday feast.” Okay, sure. But nothing about the King of Monsters and the King of Rock n’ Roll? Oh, never mind.

As we have seen from the comparative running times – the U.S. version is fully seven minutes shorter than the original – this release is another hack-job. Not only that, but a number of the scenes are rearranged. The results of all this, however, are strangely mixed. On the one hand, many ‘remixed’ scenes no longer make sense; Godzilla, as he comes to shore, teleports madly between the land and the sea, and Ghidorah appears before Salno prophesies him, which is lame-o. Salno’s origin is changed from Venus to Mars, for no perceivable reason; Ifukube’s score is, unforgivably, excised. The Shobijin, translating the monster talk, say, “Oh, Godzilla, what terrible language,” which of course makes things even sillier there. On the other hand, your reviewer is forced to admit that the recut doesn’t really alter the movie as a whole. The plot synopsis given earlier, exhaustive though it may have been, remains largely the same. Furthermore, this is perhaps one of the best dubbing jobs ever done on a Godzilla film. The performances are thoughtful, emotional, and naturalistic, delivering information about their characters rather than detracting from them. And, well, here are two lines from the dub: “An obvious case of incipient megalomania!”; “It’s no crime to practice demagoguery.” Any dubbing script of a Godzilla film that uses the words ‘incipient’ and ‘demagoguery’ is a mighty fine dubbing script.

The DVD

I’m not crying…I’m just…I’m just so happy…

This is another excellent DVD from the fine folks down at Classic Media. With both versions of the movie, a commentary, and a number of extras, this is the sort of Godzilla DVD that your reviewer would have said could never get released in America, only a year or two ago.

What you get here, after a regrettably long (90-second), inescapable introduction detailing all of Classic Media’s Godzilla releases, is as follows: There’s a biography of Godzilla effects-master Eiji Tsuburaya. As with all of the bios in this series of DVDs, it’s by Ed Godziszewski, and that means an embarrassment of riches information-wise, and a reading of that information that’s a touch on the dry side. There’s a ‘poster slide show’ and an ‘image gallery,’ which are quite similar apart from content. The image gallery quite rightly focuses on the monsters, and both are extensively captioned, which is a first for this series and a damn good idea. And there’s the original Japanese trailer, which is untranslated and over two minutes long, which doesn’t read like much in print, but which seems three times as long as the actual movie in practice.

Finally, there’s the commentary. When your reviewer saw that this commentary had nothing to do with Steve Ryfle or Ed Godziszewski, as have all previous Classic Media releases, he was saddened. But he decided to give this ‘David Kalat’ character a chance. Your reviewer was swiftly won over by the new guy; he spoke in an animated, almost goofball voice, and was quick with the jokes and the self-deprecation (Kalat’s remarks about all the previous Godzilla scholars from whom he ‘stole’ particularly hit home). And his proposal that he would defend this movie, and the American version in particular, from its detractors was intriguing.

Look, I know you’re still working on bringing me the lost Volcano Monsters suits immediately, but while you’re up, bring this to me immediately as well.

The honeymoon was over soon enough. Kalat spent very, very little time talking about the movie itself, instead keeping his remarks to the Godzilla series as a whole, and the production team in particular. It was too late for that; this was the fourth commentary in the series, and this ground had been covered. And his defense of the movie was thus never as conclusive as one might hope. Nor was his defense of the U.S. version, which seemed to distill to “It’s for kids.” Valid, in and of itself; the idea of keeping Godzilla obscured from children is, as he says, ‘asinine.’ But this does not make the dubbed version actually superior, as he claims.

Now, don’t get the wrong idea; Kalat remains an engaging speaker, and very knowledgeable on the topic. This commentary was enough to prompt your reviewer to purchase Kalat’s Godzilla book (see Acknowledgements). But it’s not the best of the commentaries.

Which is still no reason not to buy this DVD. It’s great. It’s the sort of thing that needs to be encouraged. Do it.

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This entry was posted on Friday, September 7th, 2007 at 1:30 am and is filed under Godzilla Project. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.