They say "third time's the charm." Well, if we count the 1998 film as the first attempt, then America has finally made the nearly perfect Godzilla film! This was a true unrepentant "love letter" to the life long fans of the genre and contained so many "nods" and "winks" to the Toho films.
I've recounted this anecdote elsewhere, so for those who have already read it, please forgive me.
While a child during the 1970s I had a friend who went to considerably more movies than I did. He would return and regale me with tales of what he saw. Now, he had this knack for making the narrative sound far more intense that what may have been actually presented. His accounts were further embellished by my own overactive imagination. For instance, after he saw "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory", he told me how each "naughty" child was weeded from the running and the way he described the events, well, in my mind, they took on the grimness and horror we might witness today in, say, the "Saw" films. Some nostalgic YouTubers has taken this approach, but for humorous effect, playing upon the mental hyperbole. But for me at that time, the unease I experienced upon hearing his descriptions was genuine.
Well, Kyle went to see "Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster" (nowadays packaged using the kaiju's original name, Hedorah) and told me a few "highlights". The one incident that stuck with me involved Hedorah taking flight and spraying an acidic vapor upon hapless victims below. the scene cut to a closeup of one particular fatality. the way Kyle described it, it seemed as though it depicted this horrific melting of flesh, tissue falling from the bones to leave nothing behind both a bare skeleton! Because i did not see the movie myself, I took him at his word and imagined something like what we saw in the 1988 remake of "The Blob". In reality, it was just a series of cinematic dissolves (no pun intended), fading from the fallen actress to a skeleton prop covered in "crud" and then fading to the obviously fake skeleton. But I didn't know that.
Flash forward to the impending release of the next Godzilla film. My father had finally given me permission to see the "towering terror of Tokyo". (Hmm, that would make a great title for a parody project.) The movie posters (taking a cue from the 76 remake of "King Kong") depicted Godzilla facing off his rival, both standing atop the World Trade Center towers. Yes, the film was "Godzilla vs. Megalon". Based upon Kyle's "lavish" descriptions of the prior movie and the bald faced deceptive movie poster, I expected, uh, well, I expected "spectacle" almost beyond my imagination.
What I got was a movie with production values so severely trimmed as to be comparable to those of a Saturday morning series. And it really was frugally budgeted. Years later I learned that many of the effects sequences were lifted from older Toho productions, notably "Rodan" and "Ghidrah, the Three Headed Monsters", even clips from "War of the Gargantuas" and "Destroy All Monsters". Making matters worse, Godzilla does not significantly appear until the last quarter hour of the movie. Again, years later I learned this was originally intended to be a movie showcasing a new Tokusatsu hero, Jet Jaguar, but that Godzilla was kinda' "shoehorned" into the story to assure greater box office revenue. Further disappointment was the comedic air of the confrontation accentuated by very odd choices in music, mouth harps and bongos? the final straw was the purely cartoon slapstick bit with Godzilla performing a wire assisted "drop kick sliding upon his tail, not once, but twice!
This was Godzilla? This was the movie monster my father forbid me to see? I now wonder if he wouldn't let me see them because he thought them embarrassingly silly instead of frightening.
Well, what had I imagined? What had I expected to see?
Heh, heh, pretty much what I saw last night watching "King of the Monsters". I know that's absurd given it was 1976, but I was just a kid of 13 years with an overactive imagination (but apparently not active enough to fool my eyes and ear when I actually watched "...Megalon"). Maybe if I had been younger, say 8, maybe even 9, it would have seemed "intense", but by that point, when I reached the stage when girls actually seemed, ahem, "intriguing", I just couldn't generate that level of disbelief suspension. But this is the kind of spectacle I somehow convinced myself I would see when I bought a ticket for "Godzilla vs. Megalon" in 1976. It just took 43 years to finally experience it. ;-)
