Godzilla: King of the Monsters!

The 1954 classic was apparently not good enough for American audiences. They remade the film with Raymond Burr narrating the action and starring as a reporter covering the incident.

Rather than a subtitled film, we get one dubbed. At least they left some of the Japanese dialog.

Stars of the original film, Takashi Shimura, Momoko Kôchi, and Akira Takarada, took second billing to Burr, who dominated throughout.

Godzilla was a grave representation of the horrors of the H bomb; horrors that Japan knew all too well. Scenes of the destruction caused by Godzilla, and of the broken, burning bodies pulled from the rubble, look authentic enough to be documentary footage of Hiroshima or Nagasaki. The film, a huge hit in the original form, must have been therapeutic for the Japanese people.

Well it literally is a different animal from Ishirō Honda's seminal 1954 movie about the giant atomic lizard who wakes up in a bad mood. Here the American version clips the atmosphere considerably (and the running time), craftily edits Raymond Burr into Honda's movie and of course removes the anti-American sentiment that once existed. Yet the film did prove to be very popular with English speaking film fans and further enhanced the growing appeal of all things Godzilla like.

As it is it's a decent enough film, especially if you have never seen Honda's original. For sure it's still creaky in that "man in rubber suit" way, but the iconic creature is still thrilling as it goes about its merry way destroying some carefully constructed model workings. The nuclear war heedings are still there and there's much fun to be had, intentional or otherwise. Its pale in comparison to the original, but it's not a stinker either. 6/10

Like many of the other Godzilla fans, this is the only version of the the Big-G's debut that I have seen. I have never had the pleasure of watching the original Japanese version, which is even more dark in nature than this Americanized version. I often wonder how much more of an impact the original version of this film would play and would it be treated in a more favorable light than this version. However, this is still a great film despite its flaws. Raymond Burr does a credible job as Steve Martin and he does his best to convey the horror of Godzilla's attack, even though his scenes were shot much later. However, I hope that one day someone will have the bright idea to show both the Americanized version and the original back to back to allow the audience to choose for themselves which one is better.

American studios obviously believed two things: (1) that Godzilla could be sold to American audiences, and (2) that American audiences wouldn't watch the original Japanese version, and so a familiar American actor would have to be added. The end result was the filming of many scenes incorporating Raymond Burr as American newspaper reporter Steve Martin, who just happened to be in Tokyo when Godzilla struck.

In all honesty, I haven't seen the Japanese original ("Gojira") and so I have no basis on which to compare the two versions, so "Godzilla: King Of The Monsters" has to be looked at on its own merits. Let's admit right off the top that it has a lot of weaknesses. The Burr scenes aren't edited in particularly well, there are some strange decisions about dubbing (sometimes the original scenes are left in, with Japanese language and all and a narration by Burr explaining what's happening and sometimes English is dubbed over the original Japanese, and there didn't seem to me to be any particular rhyme or reason for which decision was made to which scene), the special effects are primitive (but it was made in the 1950's), and the monster stretched credibility a bit (partly the costume, and partly that he was 400 feet tall - how would the link between Jurassic era land animals and sea animals be so big?) Having said that, unless your agenda is simply to bash Americans for Americanizing the movie, you also have to admit that it's not bad. The opening scene is marvellous, with Martin being rescued from a destroyed building and brought to a hospital on a stretcher. If you didn't know the story (and we do, so perhaps this loses its impact) you'd swear off the top that this is a movie about an atomic bomb attack. For all the above weaknesses, the movie's fun pretty much all the way through if not particularly scary, and the casting of Burr accomplished what the studios wanted - Godzilla became as much an American cult classic as a Japanese one.

The ending is a bit abrupt, and seemed pretty decisive, leaving me to puzzle where all the sequels came from, but overall, if not great this was still an enjoyable film, probably undeserving of some of the criticism it gets. 6/10

Just a few weeks ago, I watched the original Japanese version of Godzilla. So now, I just also watched the American-edited version with new scenes of Raymond Burr as American reporter Steve Martin narrating most of the movie with some of the Japanese scenes dubbed in English. Other than those new scenes, the movie has most of the same narrative with only a few scenes cut out. Burr as the reporter is quite effective when narrating or talking into a tape machine meant for his boss to receive. And it's mainly because of that narration that I'm giving this version called Godzilla: King of the Monsters! an 8 while I gave the original version a 7.