Godzilla / Gojira (1954), Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956) 2 x DVD9 Criterion Collection

Something is destroying fishing boats off the Japanese island of Odo, and one of the village elders suspects it's a mythical "sea god" known as "Godzilla". As the country's best scientists investigate, they discover that the old man was right after all: the country is under siege by an enormous destructive lizard monster, set free by a nuclear explosion. Can the monster be stopped before all of Japan is laid to waste?

The best bonus feature on the disc is an entire alternate cut of the movie, the U.S.-released Godzilla: King of the Monsters. The American version adds in new scenes of Raymond Burr as a reporter following the monster attacks, but cuts out a lot of material from the Japanese film; even with the new footage, King of the Monsters runs only 81 minutes. The American cut moves much more quickly and certainly has its champions, but loses so much of the Japanese identity that makes the '54 film so fascinating. If nothing else, it provides an interesting counterpoint to the Japanese movie, and demonstrates that even in the mid-1950s, American studios were less interested in substance than in entertainment value.

2 x DVD9 | NTSC 4:3 | 01:40:03 & 01:20:49
7.13 Gb + 7.46 Gb + 3% rec
Language: Japanese in 1954 and English in 1956
Subtitles: English
Genre: Action, Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Director: Ishiro Honda, Terry O. Morse
Cast: Takashi Shimura, Akihiko Hirata, Akira Takarada, Momoko Kochi, Raymond Burr, Sachio Sakai
Country: Japan, USA
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