To the average audience in America, the original Godzilla is a cheesy man-in-a-suit monster smashing cardboard buildings and stomping matchbox-size cars?something so bad that America's atrocious 1998 CGI version is actually perceived as an improvement. Science fiction fans may be a bit kinder in their assessment, acknowledging that the first Godzilla film is much better than the sequels that followed, but even they tend to rank the Japanese giant well below his American counterparts. In Japan, however, Godzilla's 1954 debut is considered to be a classic on par with KING KONG (1933). Now, thanks to Rialto Pictures, which released GODZILLA in selected theatres across the U.S. 2004 (the film's 50th anniversary), American audiences can finally take a look at the uncut and undubbed Japanese original. Those expecting a campy kiddy film will be surprised to see a slow and somber mini-masterpiece, a black-and-white nightmare about the threat of nuclear annihilation -- in short, a classic example of popular entertainment working as a serious metaphor.

GODZILLA (which was released stateside in a heavily Americanized version as GODZILLA, KING OF THE MONSTERS in 1956) dramatizes nuclear horror unlike any other film of its period, because the fantasy element is clearly standing in for a reality too horrible to contemplate directly. In a cinematic world filled with denial regarding the lethal use of nuclear weapons, Godzilla stands as reminder not only of Hiroshima and Nagasaki but also of the unfortunate fishing boat, The Lucky Dragon, which was irradiated by nuclear fallout from the U.S. test of an H-Bomb in 1954. This incident, which resulted in the subsequent death of a crew member from Leukemia, was as much an inspiration for the making of GODZILLA as were the obvious American antecedents, KING KONG and THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS (1953).

Like many classic monster movies, GODZILLA gradually builds to the revelation of its title character, then keeps it mostly off-screen. Instead, the focus is on the human characters, who wrestle with the impact that Godzilla?s destruction has on their lives (something to which the film's post-war Japanese audience could easily relate). The story even presents a genuine moral dilemma: should Dr. Serizawa (Akihiko Harrata) use his Oxygen Destroyer to defeat Godzilla and, in the process, possibly reveal to the world a weapon even more devastating than the thing it's meant to defeat? Or should he keep his weapon a secret? The question (at least in the original Japanese version) isn't really whether the device will fall into the wrong hands; Serizawa has learned the painful lesson of Robert Oppenheimer: once the device is in any hands, its creator can no longer control it, and its use is almost inevitable.

The subtitled prints distributed by Rialto Pictures present the 1954 GODZILLA as it was released in Japan (where it was known as GOJIRA, a combination of the English word "gorilla" and the Japanese word for whale, "kurji"). There are substantial differences between this and the dubbed American version, GODZILLA, KING OF THE MONSTERS. The subtitle "KING OF THE MONSTERS" was not the only addition; there were also new scenes with Raymond Burr playing American reporter Steve Martin (yes, his use of the name predates the famous comedian by decades). This footage provided an audience identification figure who could narrate events, bridge continuity gaps caused by the re-editing, and explain what was going on (despite the dubbing of the lead characters, much of the supporting cast's Japanese dialogue remained intact, while Burr's footage was filmed and intercut to look as if his character were standing on the sidelines, having the conversations translated to him). To be fair, the American version was not a complete bastardization but a reasonable attempt to present a new and unfamiliar piece of filmmaking to an audience that needed some kind of bridge to cross the cultural gap. In at least one small way, the U.S. version improves on the multi-character scenario of the original: by using Burr's reporter as a central viewpoint, the plot threads are tied up and presented much more clearly to the audience.

In every other way, however, the Japanese version is superior. With an opening scene that consciously recalls the fate of the unfortunate Lucky Dragon (a fishing boat is incinerated by a blinding nuclear flash from beneath the sea), the film intends to convey a shocking sense of the consequences of atomic weapons. Unlike the reassuring tone of American films of the period, which suggested that any nuclear aberrations could be dispatched by the same science that created them, GOJIRA offers no such consolation. Director and co-writer Ishiro Honda (himself a war veteran) tried to capture a realistic sense of war-like devastation, a warning of what was bound to happen since the nuclear genie had been unleashed from the bottle. Aided by Eija Tsuburayas special effects and Akira Ifukube?s dramatic music, Honda went a long way toward achieving his goal, but much of the impact was mitigated in the American release, which not only added Burr?s scenes but also deleted several sequences (U.S. prints ran less than 80 minutes, approximately twenty minutes short of the original).

The restored footage helps fill out the characterization and ground the story in a convincing sense of reality. Several previously unseen moments stand out: the clarification that the film?s morally conflicted Dr. Serizawa lost his eye in WWII, meaning he's a war hero; Serizawa's overheated insistence that he "has no German friends" (he doth protest too much, making one wonder whether in fact he is not in touch with ex-Nazi scientists he might have met during the war); the insistence by paleontologist Dr. Yamane's (SEVEN SAMURAI's Takashi Shimura) that Godzilla is worth studying because he is capable of surviving an H-bomb (something that should be of interest to the only country ever to suffer a nuclear attack). Most memorable is a brief dialogue aboard a train: when a male passenger jokes that his girlfriend will be the first victim should Godzilla appear in Tokyo, she responds, "Not me. Not after I survived the bomb at Nagasaki." One shouldn't overemphasize the impact of this scene (as filmed, it's almost a throwaway) but the fact that it was deleted from American prints for decades lends its reappearance here the uncomfortable cutting edge, reminding viewers that Godzilla exists because of America's nuclear attacks on civilian populations.

In other cases, subtitles enhance scenes that were visible but not translated in the U.S. version. In one scene, a mother hopelessly huddles with her two children on the sidewalk; with nowhere left to run from Godzilla's rampage, the only comfort she can offer to her offspring is, "We'll be with your father soon. We'll see him in heaven." In the second, as a crowd of evacuees stands near the shore, one orphaned character repeats, "Damn it!" while helplessly watching Godzilla overturn a bridge on its way back to the ocean. Unlike later Godzilla sequels, which filmed endless monster battles as if they were a wrestling matches staged atop a toy train set, moments like these keep the camera at eye level with the human characters, so that the special effects never become mere fun-filled spectacle. This is a film that makes you want to cringe at the destruction on screen, not applaud the ingenuity of the technicians.

This approach helps overcome the flaws in the special effects. The film's "suit-mation" technology has always been derided by American purists, who preferred the stop-motion techniques used by Willis O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen (in which puppets with metal armatures are filmed one frame at a time). But the use of a man-in-a-suit, stomping around a detailed miniature cityscape, allowed for scenes of destruction that would have been impossible to achieve with the painstakingly slow stop-motion process. Filmed with low-key lighting to suggest the nighttime attacks, Gojira's raids on Tokyo achieve a wonderfully moody atmosphere that doesn't quite blind the eye to the occasionally visible wires, but does incline one to forgive the mistakes in favor of appreciating the overall tone.

That's because these sequences have a cumulative effect that is more impressive than anything scene in the 1998 American blockbuster. Edited together with shots that are always dramatic (even when not convincing), the imperfections fly by almost too fast to register. Thanks to fast-paced editing and stark photography, Godzilla's rampage conveys a sense of approaching, inevitable doom as no other special effects sequence ever has. With numerous composite shots to put Godzilla in the frame with his human victims, the sense of danger is conveyed unlike anything in any subsequent sequels. The achievement is best illustrated, perhaps, by the brief moment when television cameras atop a tower broadcast long shots of the Tokyo skyline engulfed in a sea of flames. The reporter on the scene insists to his viewers (and by extension to the film's actual audience) that this "is not a play or a motion picture!" Of course, we know it really is a movie, but we get the message: the film is telling us to take what we're seeing seriously, and for perhaps for the one and only time in a Godzilla film, we do.

Read the COMPLETE ARTICLE, including a review of the GOJIRA 2-disc DVD set, at CINEFANTASTIQUE ONLINE.