An American reporter visiting Tokyo becomes a witness to the city's destruction by a dinosaur-like beast awoken from undersea hibernation by atom bomb testing.An American reporter visiting Tokyo becomes a witness to the city's destruction by a dinosaur-like beast awoken from undersea hibernation by atom bomb testing.An American reporter visiting Tokyo becomes a witness to the city's destruction by a dinosaur-like beast awoken from undersea hibernation by atom bomb testing.
- Awards
- 1 nomination
- Emiko
- (as Momoko Kochi)
- George Lawrence
- (uncredited)
- Unidentified Character
- (voice)
- (uncredited)
- Police Officer at Airport
- (uncredited)
- Ogata
- (voice)
- (uncredited)
- …
- Radio Operator
- (uncredited)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaGodzilla's roar was made by dragging a resin-coated leather glove up and down a contrabass and having the subsequent recording slowed down significantly.
- GoofsThe airplanes are seen on strings.
- Quotes
[first lines]
Steve Martin: [in voice over] This is Tokyo. Once a city of six million people. What has happened here was caused by a force which up until a few days ago was entirely beyond the scope of Man's imagination. Tokyo, a smoldering memorial to the unknown, an unknown which at this very moment still prevails and could at any time lash out with its terrible destruction anywhere else in the world. There were once many people here who could've told of what they saw... now there are only a few. My name is Steve Martin. I'm a foreign correspondent for United World News. I was headed for an assignment in Cairo, when I stopped off in Tokyo for a social call, but it turned out to be a visit to the living hell of another world.
- Crazy creditsMany prints and videos have absolutely no credits (including the so-called "uncut" version released on DVD by Simitar in 1998), beyond the title at the start (with a clearly video-generated copyright notice below it) and a "The End" graphic at the close. Classic Media's 2006 release of the film in the Gojira/Godzilla: King of the Monsters on DVD has the restored English credits. The Criterion Collection Blu-Ray release contains all original logos and credits.
- Alternate versionsIn the original American version of the film, end credits and the Transworld logo were present. The 1998 DVD release from Simitar restores the logo without the end credits, while the 2006 DVD release from Classic Media restores the credits without the logo. Both were reinstated in the 2012 DVD and Blu-ray releases from the Criterion Collection.
- ConnectionsEdited from Godzilla (1954)
- SoundtracksPrayer for Peace
(uncredited)
Performed by students of the Toho High School of Music
Lyrics by Shigeru Kayama
Composed by Akira Ifukube
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
- sddavis63
- Sep 17, 2008
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Details
Box office
- Budget
- $650,000 (estimated)
- Runtime1 hour 20 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.37 : 1
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