Known as Gojira in Japan, this original version of Godzilla includes 40 minutes of footage not seen in the U.S. cut. It has twice the resonance and none of the Raymond Burr. The monster as A-bomb metaphor is less clumsy and more mythic here, as the extended running time allows director Ishiro Honda to linger over the scenes of destruction Godzilla has wrought. This is a monster movie with equal parts mourning and mayhem. The mayhem, of course, is what attracted American distributors, especially the scenes of Godzilla stomping through a model version of Tokyo with all the care of a toddler wobbling across a playroom of block castles. The effects often are hokey – Godzilla’s roar still sounds like it is coming via tin can and string – but they also retain that undefinable sense of classic-movie magic. No amount of computer-generated imagery could match it.
