Gojira

Released: 1954
Director: Ishiro Honda
Preceded by: None, this is the first ever Godzilla Movie
Followed by: Godzilla Raids Again
Reviewer: Dan

So begins my weekly effort to review all 28 Godzilla movies in order. If I decide to go at my current pace I've set for myself of one of these a week, I should finish by mid-March of 2008. A daunting task, but maybe by then someone will decide to release on DVD the remaining three Godzilla movies that never made it to my flat, round, plastic friend.

You may be asking why the title of this review isn't "Godzilla." I need to point out that this review is referring to the original Japanese version of the film, which is titled Gojira. The American version, Godzilla: King of the Monsters is a fair attempt at adapting the movie to an american audience, but it cuts out about 20 minutes of the movie and is somewhat akward in the way they do it. To really enjoy the earliest Godzilla movies, you should probably just learn to tolerate subtitles.

The plot of this movie is fairly good, considering it doesn't stretch the bounds of possibility to the limit like other sci-fi movies of the era. Here is the short version: Ships are vanishing under some rather mysterious circumstances. After three survivors report that their ship had sank when the "Ocean Exploded," research vessels were sent to find the cause, only to be sank under the same mysterious circumstances. Another research party sent to an island near to the sinkings find out what had been sinking all of the ships when Godzilla comes rumbling out of the sea after them. After a report to the Diet, Japan prepares for the worst and tries to muster their military strength against the giant reptillian threat. I'm not going to reveal the ending for those of that haven't seen it, but if you've seen any of the newer Godzilla movies released in the past decade, you probably know exactly how it ends.

The majority of the plot is done well, but some of it is a little too easily missed. There is apparently a love triangle somewhere in the movie that is almost impossible to detect. The only way I realzed it is in the American version, they just come right out and say that there is one. I thought that the love triangle was just made up for the American version, until I watched Gojira a few more times.

The one thing I'll say that is outstanding about this movie was the minature sets the man in the Godzilla suit got to step on. This is probably where the vast majority of the time, yen, and effort went in this movie. In the pre-cgi days of 1954, the buildings they topple in the movie really do look real, unlike obvious fakes of other movies of the era. The two best examples of this is when Godzilla uses his radioactive breath to melt a steel tower and destroys another steel tower by pushing it over onto other buildings. With that said, any minature part of the set that had to move, was really, well, just plain bad and showing its age. The two examples of when the minatures look really bad, is when the jet fighters are shooting missiles at Godzilla. You can clearly see the strings that were meant to guide the bottle rocket towards the guy in the suit (which looks lame compared to later versions). The other major failing is a scene on a ship, where at minature scale, the sea is violently rocking the ship in one angle, but when it cuts to the people on board, it looks like they're floating on pleasantly calm waters.

Final Verdict

If you are a fan of any classic sci-fi movies, then this is a must own on DVD, especially the version from Classic Media, which as both the original Japanese Gojira and the American Godzilla: King of the Monsters on two discs. The movie is showing its age, but it doesn't make it unwatchable. The fact that it is a sci-fi movie set in the time period in which it was made has allowed it to age gracefully. Even though I've said a lot of good things about this movie, I'm only going to give it 5 out of 10 simply because I'm going to be using Gojira as a benchmark to test the other Godzilla movies against. Trust me, some are much better and some are much, much worse than this 1954 Toho classic.