Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956)

Godzilla, King of the Monsters! is a 1956 Japanese American science fiction kaiju film co-directed by Terry O. Morse and Ishirō Honda. The film is a heavily re-edited American adaptation, commonly referred to as an "Americanization", of the Japanese film Godzilla, originally produced by Toho in 1954, which had previously been shown subtitled in the United States in Japanese community theaters only, and was not known in Europe.

For this version of Godzilla, some of the original Japanese dialogue was dubbed into English and some of the political, social, and anti-nuclear themes and overtones were removed completely, resulting in 16 minutes of footage cut from the original Japanese version and replaced with new footage shot exclusively for the film's North American release, featuring Canadian actor Raymond Burr playing the lead role of American journalist Steve Martin, from whose perspective the film is told, mainly through flashbacks and narration. The new footage featured Burr interacting with Japanese-American actors and look-alikes to make it seem like he was part of the original Japanese production.

Although a handful of independent, low-budget films had previously been filmed in Japan after World War II by American companies and featuring Japanese players in the cast, Godzilla represented the first to present Japanese in principal, heroic roles or as sympathetic victims of the destruction of Tokyo (albeit by a fictional giant monster) to the American public in a commercial release given A-picture status and bookings.

It was this version of the original Godzilla film that introduced most audiences outside of Japan to Godzilla and labeled the character as "King of the Monsters".

Synopsis

American reporter, Steve Martin (Raymond Burr), is brought to a hospital with dozens of maimed and wounded citizens. In flashback, Martin recalls stopping over in Tokyo, where a series of ship disasters catches his attention. When a survivor finally washes up on Odo Island, Martin flies there for the story with Tomo Iwanaga (Frank Iwanaga), a representative of the Japanese security forces and learns of the island inhabitants' belief in a sea monster god known to them as "Godzilla", which they believe is causing the disasters.

Actors