Gojira Fantajî: SF Kôkyô Fantajî

As good as a movie that is about the music in Godzilla can get. Many People will enjoy the wonderful scores put together by Akira Ifukbe, and many more composers who worked on the film. Of course since all this movie is, is music I suggest it only for fans of Godzilla, or Toho in general.

This is a nicely done musical film from Toho, in which numerous sci-fi film scores by Maestro Akira Ifukube are played while scenes from Toho sci-fi movies are shown. It is like Disney's "Fantasia," where Disney scenes are shown through classical music by Bach, Tchaikovsky, Dukas, Stravinsky, Beethoven, Ponchielli, Moussorgsky, and Schubert.

The music in this feature is rich in harmony - the orchestra did a fantastic job in their performances and Ifukube did a very clever arrangement of his music. There is a nicely done rearrangement of monster scenes as well.

A video of this movie may be very difficult to find nowadays. I recommend looking in Japanese-related CD and Godzilla merchandise websites if you want to look for this feature.

Grade A

A note about the release date on this...IMDb says it was 1984 and contains no clips later than 1975.

However, I just saw this on Monsters HD, and the copyright date was 1997. Moreover, the closing credits appear to list the various movies included. It is all in Japansese, except the word "VS" in almost every title, and the copyrights- 1984 through 1995.

About halfway through the 90 minute running time, the movie appears to end, with a brief set of Japanese credits. The music then restarts, and a 3-D computer animated title appears, clearly not from 1984. There was no translation on any of the titles, aside from "Godzilla Fantasia" at the very start.

My guess is that the original film was 45 minutes, and that a sequel was done quite some time later with the same music. The video/film quality of the second half was MUCH better than the first, and only the first half had any B&W footage.

This is a really cool Godzilla release that's not an official movie, but sort of plays like a best-of compilation visually while highlighting the series' incredible music. Usually, old footage getting recycled is disappointing within the kaiju genre, but I guess only when they're trying to pass it off as something new.

Godzilla Fantasia is upfront about being a clip show, and doesn't try to tell a story, either. It's really all about the music, more than what's shown on screen. The visuals are good and they're edited together well, but Godzilla Fantasia really made me appreciate how good all the Godzilla music is more than I'd appreciated it before. It's front and center here, and it all sounds great.

Akira Ifukube wasn't entirely unsung when it came to praise, but I feel he's an underrated core individual involved with this great film series, and I like how this release allows his work to truly shine and feel like more than just background stuff.

The disc I was able to get has three selections. The first is a selection of special effects from various Toho sci-fi films previous to 1984 with new sound effects and a thin synthesizer score based on classic Ikufube compositions. The second is a fully orchestrated "fantasia" of Ikufube scores arranged into three movements by Ikufube himself. The third is a compilation of scenes from the second Godzilla series from 1985 to 1998 set to selections from various music recording from those movies.

The first edit is the weakest especially since the synthesizer sounds really pathetic compared to even the earliest Godzilla scores with their terrible recordings. The clips are decent but the sound effects are new.

The second edit is the official "fantasia" commissioned in 1984 for a full classical orchestra and conducted by Ikufube. This sounds incredible and represents some of the best recording of Ikufube's music. The visuals are selections from many films Ikufube scored including "Nippon Tanjo" a fantasy film starring Toshiro Mifune. Mostly we get to see the special effect work of Eji Tsuburaya which is just fine by me. Many clips are from the rarely seen "War in Space", a semi-sequel to the "Mysterians". Curiously there are a number of clips from the clunker "King Kong Escapes". I wonder why. The soundtrack is great and you could have a great time without watching the TV.

The third edit is comprised of selections from the various soundtracks for the second series along with clips from those films. The majority of the music is by Ikufube although a few selections from other composers are included. The clips are edited together in a hodgepodge so the music does not always sync up with the film it came from. It actually shows how effective Ikufube's scores were when a scene from the terrible "Godzilla vs Space Godzilla" gets a Ikufube selection replacing the original score by someone else. The scene immediately becomes better then it was in the actual movie.

All in all a very mixed bag for devoted Godzilla fans. The official "Godzilla Fantasia" gets a 10 in my book.