Monday, June 2, 2014

Madcap's Reel Thoughts - "Godzilla, King of the Monsters!" (1956)

I know I’m a little late to the party on this one.  But still, I gotta say, this film isn’t half bad.  I’m surprised, honestly of the absolute sheer balls to do the film in black and white, as well as using practical effects over CGI.  Bryan Cranston seems oddly subdued in the film, however, and the entire thing is stylized so that it looks like a film made in the 1950s, not unlike the original that…

...oh...this is the original, isn’t it?

...crap.
So, Godzilla, King of the Monsters was a film produced through the American company Jewell Enterprises Inc. and, of course, Toho. Brought to American theaters in 1956, it is the first joint effort between Toho and an American company to bring the titular King of Monsters to the big screen...admittedly a great deal more on Toho's part than that of Jewell Enterprises. To explain, a great deal of the footage for the film comes from the Japanese picture Godzilla, produced two years earlier and released to Japanese audiences. So, if you're looking for where Power Rangers got the idea to re-purpose footage of men beating the crap out of one another in rubber suits, look no further.
However, much like that TV show, Godzilla, King of the Monsters! does not merely dub over the footage with English-speaking actors...actually, it does at several points, however they actually shot brand new footage to work in with actor Raymond Burr, who plays the journalist known as Steve Martin.  Interestingly, this film may be the first form of the "found footage" genre - think films like Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity - or at least closely akin to it, as Martin stops off in Tokyo on a trip to Cairo and ends up reporting on the rise of Godzilla and the destruction that follows in the creature's wake.

This is actually both a good and bad thing, as having some new footage helps to make it a little more accessible to an American audience, while still having a large amount of the focus being on the people of Japan and the actors from that side of the Pacific - this being in the time right after World War II, being one of the first films to portray the Japanese in any positive light since then - and still keeping to the basics of the original film.  The problem with this comes in with how it was done.  Now, at the very least, the locations (sets, possibly?) used to film the new footage are consistent with the original footage.  The problem comes in the dubbing of some of the Japanese actors and...well, Raymond Burr.

At the time of writing, I have never seen anything else that Raymond Burr has ever been in.  Not even once.  So, those that might know better might forgive me for this and it might just be poor direction, but...this guy cannot act.  He can't.  His performance in this is near to unbelievable.  Generally, when one is facing a kaiju, you should feel...fear? Shock? This guy stares up at Godzilla...Godzilla...with a blank expression like he's trying to remember if he unplugged the iron.  I mean, Godzilla, c'mon! It's not listening to a boring story from a distant, elderly relative and trying to resist the urge to tear your brains out with a dinner fork! It's Godzilla! Sheesh!

Apart from that, the film pretty much goes as you might think.  The only jarring gaps are when certain actors are brought in to double for actors from the original Japanese version - such as when the head of the scientific expedition speaks to Burr and has his back turned from the camera during the entire scene, or when he speaks to his "good friend" Dr. Daisuke Seriwaza (in the original footage played by Japanese actor Akihiko Hirata) on the phone and the actor standing in for him has his face obscured by scientific equipment...while still wearing the same clothing and even the eyepatch as Dr. Seriwaza does in the original.  And that's not even getting into the dubbed dialogue, some of which is just the stuff of legend.  However, unlike many dubbed projects, this film stays firmly very close to the plot of the original Godzilla film.

The plot is a simple one.  Possibly one of the simplest in movie history.  The film starts out with Burr narrating from a makeshift hospital after a great catastrophe, which he begins to recount.  A few days later, something is out in the seas around Japan that's been destroying ships and leaving no survivors.  Steve Martin, a reporter for "United World News", is on a routine trip to Cairo, stopping over to see his good friend Dr. Seriwaza (with whom he never shares a single scene with, for obvious reasons) and getting caught onto the story.  Allowed to cover it, Martin basically becomes an observer to events as the original film is played out. Godzilla makes his first appearance surprisingly in broad daylight.  The film does quite a bit to build up to the first appearance of the King of Monsters and...it's not really that impressive.

He pokes his head over a hill (Burr, again, looking completely blank faced at the sight of it) and roars a few times before he retreats to the sea...off screen.  It does quickly become apparent, though, that Godzilla is heading for Tokyo, which causes the Japanese military to get on high alert and get all the model planes and cardboard tanks they can possibly get their hands on to fight him off!  Oh, and the high-tension electrical wires surrounding the city that produce over 300,000 volts of electricity!

If you know anything about Godzilla, you know that this is exactly what it would take to moderately irritate him.

Eventually, Godzilla just gives up.  Heads back to the ocean, and seems to be done with his rampage.  And so, the Japanese - deciding to take a page out of the Doctor's book - decide to go poke it with a stick.  Or, more accurately, with a chemical compound known as the 'Oxygen Destroyer'.  Created by Seriwaza, the chemical compound removes the oxygen out of water...which somehow equates to any creature within said water reduced to a skeleton.  More accurately, at least according to Toho, the death is caused more by suffocation...though Godzilla can swim and can also breathe air, so why he doesn't exactly just stick his head up and survive, I'm not quite sure.  But hey, deus ex machima.

It's also an interesting parallel to the themes of the original Godzilla.  To give a little history lesson (hush, you have to learn something), the original film was made not long after the testing of the atomic bombs in the Bikini Atoll.  What Godzilla was, at least as originally intended, a response of nature to the horrors that man had inflicted upon himself.  A reminder to us that, no matter how far man advances, nature will always be several steps ahead and will be all too happy to make us pay for our arrogance in the spades.  It also serves, more directly, as a metaphor for the atomic bomb in general, reflecting the memories of survivors of the nuclear explosions of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and that feeling of utter helplessness against a force that cannot possibly be stopped or contained.

This is reflected, also, in Seriwaza's "Oxygen Destroyer".  Now, setting aside the cheesiness of the name and the fact that it's very likely making science cry even to this day, Seriwaza is tormented by his creation as can be seen by how he has become a reclusive and hiding himself away from his friends and family, and even his 
fiancée after contemplating the destructive power of such a weapon.  Not unlike real world equivalents of his, such as Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer, who saw their work in the fields of science militarized into the very weapons that caused the destruction that inspired this film.  Unlike those two, however, Seriwaza keeps the only samples of the chemical himself and sacrifices himself whilst using it to destroy Godzilla, so that it's power may never be used again.  It is a sad, but poignant moment as Burr narrates that the monster has died and a great man has sacrificed himself, but the world can at last wake up and live again.

...and, of course, I'm just sitting here wondering why Tokyo Bay isn't filled with hydrogen...but hey, what do I know about science?

So, final verdict on the film? Not that bad.

The effects are pretty good for the time, the newly-filmed footage fits in well with only those few jarring bits, and it's paced well enough.  And the fact is, when Godzilla starts picking up steam it is great.  The tradition of the Japanese monster movie starts here for most and does amazingly at what it's good at.  Again, the effects are good for its time and you can sometimes forget that you're watching a man running around in a rubber suit smashing model buildings and vehicles.

The few places where it falls flat are in the performance of Raymond "These pretzels are making me thirsty" Burr and the dubbing.  But the fact is that this is a Japanese product dubbed into English.  Talk to any anime fan and they'll tell you that the dubbed products are never as good as the original...and dear God, don't try to convince them otherwise (Just trust me, it's a very bad idea). The fact that Burr's acting is so subdued as to make it obvious he was only in this for the paycheck and the dubbing so bad that I've watched episodes of the DIC Entertainment dub of Sailor Moon better done that this are things I can look past. It's really not so much that I can't enjoy the film for what it is.  It's a popcorn movie, but with a message and a grim reminder when nature points out the folly of man...

Godzilla!

...sorry, the new film has gotten me on a Blue Oyster Cult kick lately...

Godzilla, King of the Monsters! is now available from Toho and Jewell Enterprises Inc. and is available wherever movies are sold...and on Netflix!

For the latest from the MadCapMunchkin, follow him on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin.

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