Review of Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956) by Rachel B — 23 Nov 2009

This movie was the Japanese attempt to tell the story of World War II without admitting their own guilt in starting the war or the atrocities committed by the Japanese army. They could show the suffering of the Japanese civilians by having the cities of Japan destroyed by a giant fire breathing radioactive dinosaur that rises mysteriously from the sea.

Godzilla is in fact the good old US of A. No sea going dinosaur ever burned Japanese cities and spread radioactive fallout across the landscape. It was the U.S. Army Air Force. But the Japanese didn't want to offend us since we were protecting them from communist invasion from Korea.

Therefore they had a giant lizard do it in the movie. The version released in America was dubbed into English and extra scenes with Raymond Burr added and scenes that might offend U.S. audiences deleted.

The added scenes are obviously out of place and don't fit the Japanese story. The Japanese actors seem to be acting their hearts out but the English dialog seems flat and unemotional. Godzilla is actually seen in less than 30 percent of the movie.

Sometimes all you see is his head. In the U.S. version there is actually only about 17 minutes of Godzilla smashing cardboard miniatures of a Tokyo. By using black and white film and keeping everything slightly out of focus it's not as obvious as in later Japanese monster movies made in color and filmed in sharp focus.

I guess the only reason this film was popular in America was because it was shown at drive-in movie theaters and the American people of 1954 still enjoyed the sight of Japanese getting smashed even if it was by a giant lizard.

Although Godzilla was supposed to be the bad guy, Americans probably saw him as the hero. Americans who lived through World War II know exactly what this country did to Japan and why we did it. If you were to ask someone of that generation they will tell you the Japanese deserved every bit of all the damage we did to them.

That was the generation that in the 1950's was having fun driving their new cars to the drive-in movies on Friday nights and watching a guy in a rubber lizard suit smash models of Japanese cities.