One of the longest-running series in film history began with Ishiro
Honda's grim, black-and-white allegory for the devastation wrought on
Japan by the atomic bomb. As his visual metaphor, Honda uses a
400-foot-tall mutant dinosaur called Gojira, awakened from the depths of
the sea as a rampaging nuclear nightmare, complete with glowing dorsal
fins and fiery, radioactive breath.
Crushing ships, villages, and
buildings in his wake, Gojira marches toward Tokyo, bringing all of the
country's worst
nightmares back until an
evil more terrible bomb -- capable of sucking all the oxygen from the
sea -- returns the monster to its watery grave. The original film is
chilling, despite some rather unconvincing man-in-a-suit special
effects, and brimming with explicitly stated anti-American sentiment.
All of that was removed for the U.S. release directed by Terry Morse. It
was replaced with bad dubbing and tedious added footage starring
Raymond Burr. The resulting edit was just another monster movie, but was
still popular enough to assure future Toho Studios monster films a wide
American release. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi (http://www.rottentomatoes.com)
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