Movies - Godzilla, King of the Monsters

Home > Listing Index > Movies > Godzilla, King of the Monsters

	Movies - Godzilla, King of the Monsters

Godzilla, King of the Monsters! is a 1956 American black-and-white science fiction film adapted from the 1954 Japanese film Godzilla, which had previously been shown subtitled in the United States in Japanese community theaters only, and was not known in Europe.

It was Edmund Goldman who found the original Godzilla in a California Chinatown theater. He bought the international rights for $25,000, then sold them to Jewell Enterprises Inc., a small production company owned by Richard Kay and Harry Rybnick which, with backing from Terry Turner and Joseph E. Levine, successfully adapted it for American audiences. The adaptation process consisted of filming numerous new scenes featuring Raymond Burr and others, and inserting them into an edited version of the Japanese original to create a new film. The new scenes, written by Al C. Ward and directed by Terry Morse, were photographed by Guy Roe with careful attention to matching the visual tone of the Japanese film, while Burr's on-screen character appeared to interact with the original Japanese cast through intricate cutting and the use of doubles for the Japanese principals, in matching dress, shot from behind in direct interaction with Burr's character.

A documentary style was imposed on the original dramatic material through Burr's dialogue and stentorian narration; he plays a reporter, replacing a comical reporter character in the Japanese original. More importantly, his presence as the lead character, along with trimming (though not outright deletion) of protracted dialogue regarding the arranged marriage between the Japanese heroine and a scientist (a concept unfamiliar to Westerners), scenes evincing an active affair between her and the young naval officer–hero (a concept unlikely to be accepted by many parents of the film's youthful target audience), and a raging debate in Japan's Diet over the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and continued nuclear testing (a concept not likely to be approved of by American veterans of the recent war), served to ease American audiences into comfortable relationships with characters, whose mere nationality might otherwise have made them pariahs. The theme of devastation of Japan by nuclear holocaust became sublimated in the editing, but was definitely not eliminated, giving the film a subversiveness on the nuclear question which would later be consciously recognized by the youngsters at whom the film was aimed, as they entered adulthood.

The film was distributed in the western U.S. by Godzilla Releasing Corp. and in the eastern half by Joseph Levine's Embassy Pictures Corporation, then just a Boston-based states rights exchange. It was given "A-film" promotion, and was an immediate success. It easily exported to Europe and South America, where the original was unknown, and even made its way full circle back to Japan, where it was exhibited with Japanese subtitles for the American dialogue. The door was thus opened in the Americas and Europe for the import of unexpurgated Japanese science-fiction and horror films, and other commercial film products, and was an advertisement for Toho Studios, which had retained producer credit. After its theatrical run, Godzilla, King of the Monsters! became a television staple for decades, even into the cable years, and opened the international market for dozens of Godzilla sequels.

Synopsis

The revised story begins at a hastily-established emergency hospital in an evidently devastated Tokyo, to which is brought American reporter Steve Martin (Burr), one of the wounded. In flashback, Martin tells of his stopover in Tokyo on a routine assignment to Cairo, where he finds himself confronted by the emergence of an inexplicable menace to navigation in the Sea of Japan. Something is causing ships to catch fire without warning and sink with no time for escape. When a dying seaman finally washes up on an inhabited island, Martin flies there for the story with a representative of the Japanese security forces (Frank Iwanaga, also part of the American cast) and learns of the island inhabitants' belief in a fiery dragon which lives beneath the sea, which they believe is causing the disasters—a claim which appears to have been borne out by the crewman before he died.

Martin's involvement in the unfolding events broadens when Dr. Yamane (Takashi Shimura, of the original film), a paleontologist is consulted and, returning to the island with his daughter (Momoko Kouchi) and her young naval-officer boyfriend (Akiro Takarada) to investigate, sees the monster when it attacks the island village. Returning to Tokyo with clear evidence of the monster's existence, and power, Yamane becomes a leading consultant to Japan in mounting a defense, as it becomes apparent the monster is going to attack Tokyo.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Godzilla, King of the Monsters ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Godzilla, King of the Monsters; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Searches on eBay