OooooAaaaaOwwwwEeeeekOuchhhhhhh...some of the sounds I was uttering while I watched Godzilla 1956: King of The Monsters. It inspired me to write a review, so sit back and enjoy the ride.

I was a fortunate soul to be able to see Godzilla 1954, unedited and subtitled, just the pure raw object stomping and crashing Tokyo into the ground before my unbelieving eyes, the city aflame with the looming black figure of Godzilla overlooking it all, smirking grimly.

I was a not so fortunate soul to be able to see Godzilla 1956: King of The Monsters, ultramega-edited and poorly dubbed, this fetid and hollywood object stomping and crashing the original film into the ground before my unbelieving eyes, the plot aflame with the looming white figure of Perry Mason overlooking it all, smirking stupidly.

What can I say, they completely re-arrange the sequence of some parts of the movie, they leave the parts on Japanese that they don't think are "important enough" for the viewer to understand, and make Steve Martin out to be a good friend of every single character in the movie. And over the course of the entire film, the annoying voice of the reporter narrates the events so the particularly dull viewers can follow along. I can't think of anything else they could have possibly done to destroy this film, short of completely removing the scenes of Tokyo burning as Godzilla rampages the city.

How do they get Steve Martin to interact with the characters in the film? Why, they just make some actor walk up to him, facing away from the camera so that you never get to see his face, occasionally inserting some random footage from thruought the movie so that you aren't just sitting there for five minutes looking at the back of the stunt double's head. How does he talk to Shersizawa on the phone? Why, throw a patch on some random actor, face that side towards the camera, and put some random scientific utensils in the way to obstruct the view.

Amazing how they make wonderful Perry Mason just an absolute hero. Wonderful how they don't even bother to make him work around the plot, instead choosing to make the plot revolve and work around him. Everyone just miraculously knows who he is, has oogles of respect for him, and can speak English whenever they want to. Not that the overdubbing voices sound anything like the original actors, making it even more fun when they are speaking Japanese one moment and English the next.

Hey, maybe if I had never seen the orignal, the American version might have been tolerable (but I doubt it), but there is no way I could ever have taken it as seriously as Godzilla 1954. The original film is such a complete mindfuck, pulling you in and surrounding you so that you actually feel something. King of The Monsters takes the orignal film and makes it as narrow and one-dimensional as most other American monster films, and what's worse, it's not even funny! Jeers to you, you American sonovabitches!!

Thanks Kris! If you would like to submit a review as well, just drop me a line at gleep9@hotmail.com. Now lumber on back to either the Godzilla Review page or the Godzilla page.

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