Gojira (1954)
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One of the longest-running series in film history began with Ishiro Honda's grim, black-and-white allegory for the devastation wrought on Japan by the atomic bomb. As his visual metaphor, Honda uses a 400-foot-tall mutant dinosaur called Gojira, awakened from the depths of the sea as a rampaging nuclear nightmare, complete with glowing dorsal fins and fiery, radioactive breath. Crushing ships, villages, and buildings in his wake, Gojira marches toward Tokyo, bringing all of the country's worst nightmares back until an evil more terrible bomb -- capable of sucking all the oxygen from the sea -- returns the monster to its watery grave. The original film is chilling, despite some rather unconvincing man-in-a-suit special effects, and brimming with explicitly stated anti-American sentiment. All of that was removed for the U.S. release directed by Terry Morse. It was replaced with bad dubbing and tedious added footage starring Raymond Burr. The resulting edit was just another monster movie, but was still popular enough to assure future Toho Studios monster films a wide American release. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
Complete Cast:
- Akihiko Hirata - Daisuke Serizawa
- Kokuten Kodo - Gisaku, Oto Island Patriarch
- Kenji Sahara - Man aboard Ship
- Takashi Shimura - Dr. Kyohei Yamane
- Akira Takarada - Hideto Ogata
- Toranosuke Ogawa - President of Shipping Company
- Ren Yamamoto - Sieji
- Momoko Kochi - Emiko Yamane
- Haruo Nakajima - Newspaper Employee (Japanese version only)/Power Subs
- Sachio Sakai - Hagiwara
- Kin Sugai - Miss Ozawa, member of Parliament
- Fuyuki Murakami - Dr. Tabata
- Katsumi Tezuka - Hagiwara's Editor (Japanese version only)/Gojira
- Director(s):
- Ishiro Honda
- Writer(s):
- Takeo Murata, Ishiro Honda
- Producer(s):
- Tomoyuki Tanaka
- Categories:
- Sci-Fi & Fantasy
- Closed Captioning:
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- Subtitles:
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