Summer of Kaiju: Godzilla (Criterion Collection release)

As a kid, I spent summers watching old Godzilla VHS tapes from the local Blockbuster. Since then, I've associated the sweltering season with giant monsters flattening cities into rubble. In that spirit, I'm doing a series of kaiju-themed posts for the dog days of June and July...

Back when I was young, the original "Godzilla" was the movie rental of last resort. The 1954 black-and-white film just couldn't compete with the action-packed Fujicolor wrestling matches of the Shōwa era, which featured multiple-monster-beatdowns, space aliens, and giant robots.

Now, older and wiser, I can appreciate the original film for its groundbreaking (literally) model work and somber tone. That's why I recently picked up the excellent Criterion version in honor of the Big G's 65th anniversary:




In "Godzilla," the eponymous King of the Monsters is unearthed by hydrogen bomb testing and wreaks havoc on central Tokyo. The movie's screaming civilians and crowded hospitals must have been eerie in postwar Japan, and the nighttime shots of Godzilla surrounded by a Tokyo in flames are still haunting.

Unlike modern day riffs on the "nation under siege" theme ("Attack on Titan," "Knights of Sidonia"), the movie is deeply pacifist. Godzilla is portrayed almost as divine punishment for the misdeeds of WWII, and the film ends with the suicide of the scientist who wants to take the secrets of an anti-Godzilla superweapon to his grave, lest people force him to build more of them. It's a mournful, melancholy take on the monster movie, and well worth watching for a generation that may have forgotten the horrors of the atomic era.