Word: gojira
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...rubber suit and ran the camera at high speed, making Godzilla's movements seem appropriately ponderous when played back. The suit, however, weighed 220 lbs. (100 kg), and the actor inside it lost 20 lbs. (9 kg) in six weeks of shooting. With a budget of $1.5 million, Gojira (Godzilla) was the most expensive Japanese film yet made, and it wreaked havoc at the box office. An English-dubbed version, Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, with added footage of actor Raymond Burr playing an American reporter, was a hit overseas...
Monster-movie parables were the Pop Art of the early nuclear age. Japan got its cinematic revenge for the A-bomb with the story of a prehistoric monster (called Gojira at home, Godzilla abroad), its eon-long sleep disturbed by an A-blast, that rises from the depths to stomp on Tokyo. In dozens of sequels, the beast devolved into a toy or a clown. But here, just nine years after Hiroshima, Gojira is a political metaphor that roars majestically to life...
...rubberized-corduroy look has given way to the towering if scaly athleticism pioneered by H.R. Giger's mantid man-eaters in the Alien series. And while the snub-nosed, micro-eared Godzilla of the '60s and '70s had a vaguely mammalian mien--appropriate for a creature whose Japanese name, Gojira, is an amalgam of kujira (whale) and gorira (gorilla)--the fin-de-siecle Godzilla has a crocodilian brow, iguana affectations, a T. Rex crouch and a noble if dragonish chin instead of an avuncular Adam's apple. As for the radioactive breath, well, it was hard for Tatopoulos to justify...
...maybe not as campy as all that. After watching the original 1954 Japanese Gojira, Devlin and Emmerich came away with newfound respect for the old film. "It was not meant to be campy at all," says Devlin. "In fact, it was a mighty dramatic movie. Surprisingly, the special effects, done in the rain, in black-and-white, shot at night, were done very well, even by today's standards...
...find it, of course look for ?Gojira,? the original Japanese version that features our favorite radiation-enhanced lizard in full Gates mode, stomping on people like so many third-party software vendors. But settle for the somewhat altered but still terrifying American version, ?Godzilla, King of the Monsters,? if only for a rather fine performance by Raymond Burr. And try not to read to much into "Bambi Meets Godzilla" -- the boys at Justice surely...
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