31 Days of Fright, Day 20: Godzilla

Welcome to day 20 of 31 Days of Fright here at Road To The Movies! In today's episode, Gabe goes sightseeing in Tokyo and just happens to catch a glimpse of...

GODZILLA
1954
Not Rated

So far this month we've seen schizophrenics, freaks, zombies, demons, cannibals, murderous animals, fish-men, psychopaths, aliens, ghosts, werewolves, pagan gods, sharks, and fairy tale creatures, but we've yet to spot a good, old-fashioned giant monster. Well, who better to fill the slot than the King of Monsters himself, Godzilla? And I didn't say that wrong. I'm not talking about Gojira, the original Japanese movie. I'm talking about Godzilla, the Americanization of that Japanese movie, starring Raymond Burr as a relatable white man who conveniently translates the movie into language we can understand!

You know, I'm kind of glad I decided to watch this version instead of the Japanese original. I have both, and it's not because this version is better. I'm glad I watched the American version because I have this sneaking suspicion that once I've watched Gojira, I'll never even consider watching Godzilla again.

If you've been following Road To The Movies for any length of time now, you know that I despise it when people - myself included - compare a work to its source material. It is my firm conviction that a work - any work of art - should be judged based solely on its own merit, and not on how it stacks up to what went before. That is what I believe. It's not always what I practice. What can I say? I'm only human.

The choice to edit Raymond Burr into the original film in order to make it more palatable to American audiences leaves a bad taste in my mouth to begin with, but the way in which the filmmakers went about doing it is almost unforgivable. Huge swaths of story have clearly been excised in order to shoehorn in Burr's Steve Martin (no relation), and from what I can tell, the story they cut was the far more interesting one.

Burr's Martin basically follows the Godzilla story around, contributing nothing to the equation beyond an english translation. If I hadn't known his character was jammed into the story as an afterthought, I would still have thought his character should have been cut in an early draft of the script. If anything, what we have here is a movie that gains a level of forgiveness from the foreknowledge of what went on in bringing it from Japan to America. If I hadn't known anything about it, I would have walked away from it thinking, What a piece of crap. As it is, my thoughts when leaving the movie were more like, Gee, I'd really like to watch the original now. It looks waaaaay better.

The scenes with Godzilla himself are truly awesome. I can't imagine what it must have been like for some kid watching it back in the fifties. The image of a rubber-suited man stomping through a miniaturized Tokyo has been hacked to death by more than two generations worth of parody and special effects jokes, but if you - like me - can sit down and really give yourself to what the filmmakers are doing, I doubt you'll be able to walk away unaffected. The silhouette of Godzilla roaring against a burning Tokyo skyline literally gave me chills.

As I've already said, the Japanese actors here get pretty short shrift. Raymond Burr does nothing and dominates the film, meanwhile the locals are actually solving the problem and they can hardly get a word in edgewise. Trying to enjoy the story as it unfolds is an extremely frustrating experience here, and had I not known there was a Japanese-only original version of this movie, I would likely have turned it off before Godzilla even put in an appearance. That would have been sad, because whatever images may have lodged themselves in your brain during a lifetime (in most of your cases, at least) of having Godzilla as a pop-culture icon, if you haven't actually seen this movie, you don't know the first thing about Godzilla.

Should you watch Godzilla? Maybe. If you want to experience a significant piece of pop-culture the same way the rest of America first experienced it - flaws and all - then yes. It's an interesting little piece of history. But if you're looking for a great monster movie, look elsewhere. Maybe to Gojira. I haven't seen it, but all the great moments of Godzilla are there, and minus the unwelcome uselessness of American gawker Steve Martin. At the very least, it sure looks a whole lot better than this mess.

4.5/10

-GABE


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