Over the years, the cinema has produced certain figures that have gained immortality through there work. Humphrey Bogart is one such man, as are Marilyn Monroe, Charlie Chaplin, Cary Grant, James Dean…and Godzilla, the 200-foot tall radioactive monster who has starred in twenty-eight films from Japan’s Toho studios of wildly varying quality. Fans of low-budget drive-in fodder savour the big guy’s cheesier films, full of alien attacks, senseless monster fighting, and special effects that could charitably be described as unconvincing. At their best, however, the films inspire a sense of primitive awe and even social commentary.

Classic Media has released a boxed set containing several of Godzilla’s adventures from the 1950s to the 1970s, most directed by Ishiro Honda, the Orson Welles of Japanese monster movies. If you like Godzilla (and honestly, why wouldn’t you?), it’s a treasure trove.

GOJIRA (GODZILLA)
Rating: *** ½ (out of ****)
Cast: Akira Takarada, Momoko Kochi, Akihiko Hirata, Takashi Shumura, Fuyuki Murakami, Godzilla
Director: Ishiro Honda

GODZILLA, KING OF THE MONSTERS!
Rating: ***
Cast: Raymond Burr, Godzilla
Director: Terry Morse, Ishiro Honda

The story has become cliché. H-bomb testing in the South Pacific has woken and mutated a giant, prehistoric monster from the depths of Tokyo bay. Godzilla, looking for nuclear radiation to feed off of, and, frankly, for something to do, rises up and demolishes Tokyo. Meanwhile, in the human story, Dr. Serizawa, a brilliant but troubled scientist, discovers a new weapon called the Oxygen Destroyer, which can destroy the air in water. The Oxygen Destroyer appears to be the only hope against Godzilla, but Serizawa fears that making this weapon public knowledge could lead to it falling in the wrong hands.

Those who know Godzilla only as a man in a cheesy rubber costume in numerous Z-grade movies may be surprised by the original film, which is one of the very best monster movies of all time. Get this: it’s better than the original King Kong. It’s a slow, sober affair, and was one of the first Japanese films to deal explicitly with the subject of nuclear proliferation. The city destruction scenes were meant to be reminiscent of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

Let’s talk about the city destruction scenes. The effects work by Eiji Tsuburaya is surprisingly effective, taking into consideration that even though this was the most expensive film ever made in Japan at the time it was still very low budget. The stark black and white photography helps greatly, concealing the effects’ flaws and giving the film a grainy, documentary feel.

Anyone who has seen a Godzilla sequel will be surprised by the decidedly un-cathartic city-stomping scenes. ‘Thrilling’ or ‘exciting’ or even ‘unintentionally amusing’ aren’t the words for these. They’re somber and grim, as if Honda and company were filming natural disaster footage. There’s one particularly bleak scene of a woman in a burning city block holding her baby and telling it that they’d be joining her father soon. Not the Godzilla of the 60s and 70s. This feels more like an art house drama than a creature feature.

Joseph E. Levine, an American distributor who would go on to distribute films by Fellini as well as the Steve Reeves Hercules vehicles, bought Gojira for American distribution. With journeyman director Terry Morse, he eliminated forty minutes of Ishiro Honda’s footage (including almost all references to WWII and nuclear weaponry). In its place, Morse and Levine added twenty minutes of new footage featuring a pre-Perry Mason Raymond Burr as “Steve Martin,” an American journalist visiting Japan to see his good friend Dr. Serizawa. Burr is integrated into the story fairly convincingly, although certainly not flawlessly (you don’t have to be Sergei Eisenstein to notice that Burr and Serizawa share not a single scene together). This 80-minute version of the film was released in American theatres under the title Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, and proved surprisingly successful, making $2 million in its first run and enjoying a long, long life on TV.

Godzilla, King of the Monsters! certainly isn’t as good as the original Japanese version. By removing the political subtext it loses a lot of its resonance, and as much as I enjoy the Raymond Burr scenes, they don’t add much. But the American version retains much of the tone of the Japanese version, and keeps most of the monster footage. And if you saw it when you were young enough (I was ten when I first saw it), it probably has a special, nostalgic place in your heart.

GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN
Rating: **
Cast: Hiroshi Koizumi, Setsuko Wakayama, Minoru Chiaki, Takashi Shimura, Masao Shimizu, Godzilla, Angillas
Director: Motoyoshi Oda

GIGANTIS: THE FIRE MONSTER (American version of ‘Godzilla Raids Again’)
Rating: *
Director: Motoyoshi Oda

After the first Godzilla was a success, Toho rushed Godzilla Raids Again into production and released it less than a year later. It shows: the human story is startlingly uninteresting and slow-paced, and the social commentary is not nearly as pervasive as in the first film. Only one cast member from the previous film, Akira Takarada, returned, but his role is little more than a glorified cameo. The mood is once again solemn, but without the direction of Ishiro Honda (who was quite committed to his anti-nuclear message), the film feels soulless and dull. On the plus side, Godzilla Raids Again is once again in black and white, a cinematographic style that really suits the rubber-suited antics of the Godzilla series.

Released by Warner Brothers on a double bill with Teenagers from Outer Space, Gigantis: The Fire Monster, the dubbed American version, is essentially a different film. The most obvious change is that Godzilla’s name has been inexplicably changed to ‘Gigantis’ and all references to the original film removed, but this is the least of its sins. Severely cut and with ridiculous new scenes made from cheesy stock footage that seems to derive from a combination of cheesy sci-fi and no-budget classroom films, Gigantis also features dubbing that somehow manages to be the most incompetent a Godzilla film would ever receive. Quite an achievement. At one notorious instance, a character says the dubbed line, “Ah, banana oil!” – an expression that went out of date in the 1920s. Listen carefully to those dubbed voices, however, and you might just hear Keye Luke and Geoge Takei.

MOTHRA VS. GODZILLA
Rating: ** ½
Cast: Akira Takarada, Yuriko Hoshi, Hiroshi Koizumi, Yu Fujiki, Kenji Sahara, Godzilla, Mothra
Director: Ishiro Honda

GHIDORAH, THE THREE-HEADED MONSTER
Rating: **
Cast: Yosuke Natsuki, Yuriko Hoshi, Hiroshi Koizumi, Akiko Wakabayashi, Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan, King Ghidorah
Director: Ishiro Honda

INVASION OF ASTRO-MONSTER (GODZILLA VS. MONSTER ZERO)
Rating: ** ½
Cast: Nick Adams, Akira Takarada, Jun Tazaki, Akira Kubo, Kumi Mizuno, Godzilla, Rodan, King Ghidorah
Director: Ishiro Honda

ALL MONSTERS ATTACK (GODZILLA’S REVENGE)
Rating: *
Cast: Tomonori Yazaki, Eisei Amamoto, Sachio Sakai, Kazuo Suzuki, Kenji Sahara, Godzilla, Minya, Gaborah
Director: Ishiro Honda

TERROR OF MECHAGODZILLA
Rating: * ½
Cast: Katsuhiko Sasaki, Tomoko Ai, Akihiko Hirata, Katsumasa Uchida, Goro Mutsumi, Godzilla, Mechagodzilla, Titanosaurus
Director: Ishiro Honda

Following Godzilla Raids Again, the series, like Godzilla himself, went into hibernation for seven years while other kaiju (giant monsters) made their big screen debuts – Rodan, Varan, Mothra, etc. With the 1962 release of King Kong vs. Godzilla, an enormous commercial hit all over the world, the formula for the series became clear: bright colours, lots of monster battles, and only the most superficial of social commentary.

Mothra vs. Godzilla is universally acknowledged as the best of the sequels in the original series. I have my doubts – I get more perverse enjoyment from watching the so-bad-they’re-good entries like Godzilla vs. Megalon, and Mothra is, frankly, a hugely overrated monster (it’s a friggin’ moth, for chrissakes!). Still, this goofy film is pretty enjoyable, and is the last of the original series to present Godzilla as a ‘bad guy.’

Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster just doesn’t do it for me. Too much pseudo-James Bond intrigue, too many talky human scenes, not enough monsters fighting each other. Camp value comes, however, in the scene where Mothra mediates a peace settlement between Godzilla and Rodan so that they can join forces in fighting King Ghidorah. Seriously. More fun is Invasion of Astro-Monster (Godzilla vs. Monster Zero) which reaches new heights (or depths) of silliness with its story of astronauts who travel to Planet X. The space alien residents ask for the human race’s assistance in defeating a monster who has been plaguing their planet named Monster Zero (played, interestingly enough, by King Ghidorah). The human race agrees, sending Godzilla and Rodan to space…but wouldn’t ya know it, those rat finks of Planet X turn out to be double-crossers set upon world domination. Don’t you hate when that happens? The special effects are…well, cheesy, but there’s eye candy to spare in this very juvenile entry, which stars, I kid you not, Nick Adams, shortly after his Hollywood career tanked. Watch closely for Godzilla’s victory dance!

All Monsters Attack (more commonly known as Godzilla’s Revenge) is one of the sadder entries in the Godzilla series. Blatantly pandering to the kiddie audience that was embracing the Gamera series, it’s about a troubled little boy in disturbingly small pants who, to escape his lonely existence, takes frequent naps, where he dreams about visiting Monster Island. There, he hangs out with Minya, the son of Godzilla, and watches the Big G take down a variety of evil monsters. Almost all of Godzilla’s scenes are stock footage from previous movies, mostly Son of Godzilla and Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster. Now, I have a certain amount of affection for this movie (it was another one that I watched a lot as a kid), but there’s no denying that it’s a pretty pitiful excuse for a movie.

Terror of Mechagodzilla is the second worst Godzilla film that Ishiro Honda directed, suffering from an embarrassing budget and another ridiculous space alien plot. The film is a direct sequel to the previous year’s Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, and is about an alien race that has rebuilt Mechagodzilla (Godzilla’s mechanical clone) to, of course, take over the world. Meanwhile, another monster, the forgettable Titanosaurus, makes his first and last appearance in the Godzilla series.

Terror of Mechagodzilla is a bad film, but a slight step up from the Godzilla films of the 1970s that preceded it because of a slightly more mature tone and a slightly higher budget. Some of the monster fight scenes are entertaining as well, but the pacing is uneven and the whole enterprise has a strong scent of cheese. The box office failure of Terror of Mechagodzilla meant it would be the last Zilla thrilla to be released for nine years.

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If you’re as big a fan of the ol’ rubber brute as I am, Classic Media’s DVD collection will have just about everything you could want. Most valuably, each movie contains both the original, subtitled Japanese versions and the re-cut, dubbed American versions. Each film also has a smart commentary by a Godzilla historian (yes, I actually wrote the words “Godzilla historian”), as well as poster galleries and documentaries.