Savant's new reviews today are
GODZILLA is back in town, and this time he's wisely been dubbed not the King of the Monsters but a Weapon of Mass Destruction. I saw an okay VHS of this restored Japanese cut of GOJIRA, the original version without Raymond Burr, and it's like another film altogether, a totally straight protest against nuclear bombs that makes it abundantly clear that the giant WMD (who, like all real WMDs, is very easy to find) represents nuclear aggression and probably the U.S. too. And I don't know any other country than Japan with the right to make such a film. I should be seeing the theatrical reissue soon and I'll give a little report here; from what I could tell from the old VHS, the original movie wasn't as contrasty as our 1956 domestic version, and although its action scenes were almost identical to ours, they had an entirely grim feeling about them.
Something I've never heard answered, even in the media storm that accompanied the 1998 American Godzilla movie: Who exactly figured out the name Godzilla, anyway? Thanks, Glenn Erickson
Posted by DVD Savant at May 16, 2004 08:39 AM