Garp
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Week 2: 'Godzilla, King of the Monsters' [1956]
Is Godzilla in it? Yes
America shoehorns its way into the Godzilla business with this clunky version of 'Gojira' from two years earlier. The story remains somewhat the same, this time being witnessed by pipe-smoking journalist Raymond Burr as Steve Martin.
The film plays fast-and-loose with the chronology and inserts new scenes of Burr, friend of every main character from the original, apparently, despite his lack of Japanese and rather patronising attitude. (He sneers that one witness to the monster probably drank too much sake.) To counter the language barrier, this film mixes Burr's narration with dubbing that rises at times to 'passable' and a helpful official that acts as Burr's interpreter. Scenes in which Burr is supposed to be interacting with the original cast are simply bad, showing just the back of their heads. The impressive creature footage is still there, but all the human drama has been truncated, sucking the soul from the original film. What remains is a big old dumb monster movie, which no doubt would have been fine if I hadn't already watched the vastly superior original.
As Godzilla does his business on Tokyo, Burr elbows his way through local Japanese witnesses to get a front row view from a window to record the devastation for America. This scene pretty much summed up the film for me.
Is Godzilla in it? Yes
America shoehorns its way into the Godzilla business with this clunky version of 'Gojira' from two years earlier. The story remains somewhat the same, this time being witnessed by pipe-smoking journalist Raymond Burr as Steve Martin.
The film plays fast-and-loose with the chronology and inserts new scenes of Burr, friend of every main character from the original, apparently, despite his lack of Japanese and rather patronising attitude. (He sneers that one witness to the monster probably drank too much sake.) To counter the language barrier, this film mixes Burr's narration with dubbing that rises at times to 'passable' and a helpful official that acts as Burr's interpreter. Scenes in which Burr is supposed to be interacting with the original cast are simply bad, showing just the back of their heads. The impressive creature footage is still there, but all the human drama has been truncated, sucking the soul from the original film. What remains is a big old dumb monster movie, which no doubt would have been fine if I hadn't already watched the vastly superior original.
As Godzilla does his business on Tokyo, Burr elbows his way through local Japanese witnesses to get a front row view from a window to record the devastation for America. This scene pretty much summed up the film for me.