Godzilla runs amok Aug. 20-27 at Starz

For those of you who haven’t seen Godzilla, or have only seen the American edited pipe-smoking Raymond Burr version, here’s the original Godzilla in a nutshell: Just after the start of the credits, with their accompanying reverb roaring, a boat full of happy-ukulele-playing-Japanese-sailors are burned to death by a mysterious underwater explosion.

Confused, frightened, the government sends about a dozen more ships out to the same spot, which are blown up in just the same way. The next thing we know we’re on an island, with an old man who’s pretty sure the explosions are caused by an ancient creature known as…Godzilla!

The man says warily, Godzilla only comes out of the ocean when it has run out of food.

What the hell could a 400-foot fire-breathing dinosaur eat? That evening Godzilla stomps on the villagers in their huts, causing general havoc and running amok, during a tropical storm. An investigative panel decides that the creature must be from the Jurassic period and that the radiation from the hydrogen bomb experiments have awakened him and made him a nearly invincible man-in-a-giant-rubber-lizard-suit.

A team comes out to the island to investigate the ravaged village and finds a host of broken models of ships and helicopters. The team also finds radiation traces in giant footsteps that seem to be tap dancing across the village. As they march up a hill for more investigations, a giant lumpy Godzilla head comes up over the horizon. They all flee in terror.

Panels of government officials and experts argue about what to do when (not if) Godzilla plays twister in Tokyo. A chilling scene has a girl on a city train saying the she was lucky to survive Nagasaki but does not want to face yet another tragedy. A man asks, “We have to evacuate again?” A clear reference to the fire-bombing of Tokyo during the war. By this time, 17 ships have blown up in the exact same spot in the ocean. Japanese scientists decide they must kill Godzilla!

We’re then introduced to a scientist with a pirate patch, who in his spare time, listens to classical music and shows women his secret Oxygen Killer invention, which turns underwater creatures into nothing more than bones. Meanwhile in Tokyo Bay…Godzilla comes up and starts smashing the city.

Some parts of the attack are genuinely creepy, but all modern day creditability is lost when we see a streetcar in its rubber mouth being shaken as angry dog would to a toy. Attempts to shoot, electrocute, or bomb Godzilla with model planes has no affect!

Godzilla smashes, stomps and topples buildings in his rage. Just when things could get no worse, Godzilla starts shooting compressed air from his mouth, engulfing everything in sight with fire. Rescue efforts immediately start up trying to save the city from burning to the ground.

The scientist with one eye is persuaded into using his invention, not after some of the main characters plead with him, or even get into a losing fist fight with him, but only after they take a break and watch some TV does he change his mind.

Rows and rows of schoolgirls in sailor costumes sing for the plight of Tokyo. This sight ultimately does it, and he decides to destroy Godzilla with Oxygen Killer, but refuses to let it get into the wrong hands because while Oxygen Killer is meant to do good, he knows it will be turned to bad by the evil greedy ways of man, creating another arms race. He gets into a deep sea diving suit, unleashes the weapon in a noble sacrifice and Godzilla is suddenly engulfed in a cloud of bubbles falling to his death. The one eyed scientist, in order to keep the secret of oxygen killer with him, cuts off his air tube and dies a hero. The End.

Godzilla, though mighty tacky, and often very funny when it’s not meant to be, is still a great movie, hitting home its anti-nuke theme without really pointing fingers.

- Ian Neligh

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In his acceptance speech for the 1950 Nobel Prize in Literature, William Faulkner made a grim and forthright assessment of life in the nuclear era. “Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear,” he said. “There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: when will I be blown up?”

It is this preoccupation, this essentially modern anxiety and tension that drives the newly restored and reissued version of the 1954 Japanese classic, Godzilla. Far from the campy and kitschy outings of later years, the original tale of the giant Paleolithic reptile that runs amok in downtown Tokyo is a much eerier outing, a much more somber and starkly stirring commentary on a nation haunted by ghosts of disaster and death, specters of holocaust and horror.

In this rare release of the original Japanese version, which contains over 30 minutes of footage previously unreleased in the US, the anti-nuclear theme is unmistakable. Godzilla is much more than a towering reptile with a taste for destruction; he is a giant green metaphor for the bomb.

Nuclear weapons, nuclear testing and the destructive consequences of the atomic age characterize every facet of the story, and it’s almost as if the filmmakers are exorcising the fears and demons of a nation in this epic sci-fi classic.

Those of you who have seen the altered American version may recall a much different film, a more straightforward, run-of-the-mill 1950s horror movie starring a young Raymond Burr and featuring the badly dubbed dialogue and melodrama that have become staples of the giant monster genre. Indeed, there seems to have been a cold war agenda at work behind this western edit, as the American version did away with virtually every nuclear reference and neatly sanitized the social message behind Godzilla’s rampage.

After seeing Godzilla through this lens for so long, as a corny and badly colorized rubber suit stomping miniature cities, the heavy social import of this film can impart a sobering effect for a modern US audience.

From 1945-1952, during the American occupation, the Japanese media was closely regulated by the Allied Powers, and any reference to the Bomb and America’s role in the tragic attacks was severely restricted. Godzilla seems to be a remnant from that age of restriction and censorship, a veiled protest not only towards the US its nuclear policies, but towards modern society and its determination to unlock nature’s worst and deadliest secrets.

Director Ishiro Honda’s relies on miniatures and the notorious method of “suitmation” (i.e. two really uncomfortable Japanese guys in a big rubber monster suit) to illustrate the scope of Godzilla and his destruction of Tokyo. Yes, there are the plastic trains and rubber scales that characterize the later films, and yes, there are moments during Godzilla’s rampage that are just plain funny in their sheer transparency. But, considering the historical context and the low budget of the film by today’s standards, the effects hold up surprisingly well. Eiji Tsuburaya’s effects and Akira Ifukube’s stirring musical score do much to maintain an eerie mood, and director Honda’s supplementary scenes of the human victims add a level of uncomfortable immediacy to the devastation.

50 years after its initial release, Godzilla will greet a public still in peril, still in fear, still at the mercy of the nuclear age and its consequences. Although the film seems to tap into an experience and suffering that is unique to a historical context and setting, Honda’s vision of a boogeyman borne of human arrogance and carelessness is more pertinent today than ever.

- Adam Goldstein