Bizarre Hollywood Facts About Godzilla

Video Transcript

"Now for Godzilla, the King of the monsters. The original "Godzilla" movie was made in Japan in nineteen fifty-four with the title "Gojira" which is a combining form meaning gorilla and whale. In nineteen fifty-six, the American producer Richard Kay bought the rights to the movie, and spent three months adding scenes, which included Japanese-American speaking actors. And he matched that movie scene for scene. For example, his leading lady wore the same blouse that the lady did in the film. You can hardly distinguish between his scenes and the original Japanese which are a bit lighter. That movie re-digitized, we would see virtually no difference. He did a sensational job. He added Raymond Burr as the American actor playing a reporter named Steve Martin. Up until that time, Burr usually had villainous secondary roles. So this is probably his best role up until he later got Perry Mason. Now I should point out that at the end of the movie Godzilla was utterly destroyed by the oxygen destroyer, down to his very atoms. Yet, the next year, nineteen fifty-five they made a new movie in Japan called "Gigantus the Fire Monster", which was really the Godzilla creature, but also called "Godzilla Raids Again". But no explanation as to how Godzilla could've been resurrected. They did not handle that well. They just did psst, didn't even wave their arms. They simply had him emerge. He could've been a cousin of the original Godzilla. I think they should've tired to integrate some idea of how he was resurrected. I should point out that in the Christopher Lee movie "The Horror of Dracula", he was utterly destroyed also. Turned into dust in that first film. Then Hammer, eight years later when he came back in the second film, they showed those original scenes. They really embraced them, then showed how a servant actually gathered together the dust, then found a victim whose blood was drained on top of those dust particles to resurrect Christopher Lee. That's what they should've done with Godzilla. By the way, in the nineteen seventy-two movie "Godzilla versus Gigon" we have the unusual aspect of Godzilla actually talking as he and another dinosaur, Angilus were swimming towards shore. And that was the first time that Godzilla was shown actually bleeding in battles with Gidra and Gigon. Yes, Godzilla the King of the monsters."