Amazon.com video review:
The first of the Godzilla movies, and the most somber and serious in
tone, Godzilla, King of the Monsters was originally a 98-minute
Japanese horror film, until a U.S. company bought the rights and reissued
the
film at its current 79 minutes, replacing sequences involving a Japanese
reporter with new inserts of a dour, pipe-smoking Raymond Burr. True to
the
fashion of cautionary monster movies, Godzilla has arisen due to nuclear
radiation--a 400-foot, fire-breathing dinosaur resurrected in Tokyo Bay--and
proceeds to devastate Tokyo. Hardly a bogus building is left unbusted,
nary
a toy tank unmelted, by the reptilian rogue, until scientists discover
another weapon of awesome destruction that just might stop him. The
special
effects are impressive, with the filming done so as to mask the fact that
the monster is just a guy in a rubber suit, working better here than in the
sequels, where they seem to have given up any pretense to that fact, in
favor of flamboyant effects and battle sequences that more often than not
are delightfully, unabashedly juvenile. The DVD includes a wonderful
25-minute documentary on movie monsters, pieced together from old trailers.
This DVD offers your choice of Dolby 5.1 Surround or Mono, cropped-screen or
letterboxed,
and a plethora of other features. It is also available in a boxed set with four
more
of the best Godzilla flicks by director Inoshiro Honda. --Jim Gay
