Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956)

While I have seen the 1990's and 2010's American remakes of the venerable monster franchise, my direct knowledge of the Japanese originals has mostly been limited to snippets I've seen on TV and a couple episodes of Mystery Science Theater. Amongst my movie goals for this year is to watch at least two of the Japanese Godzilla films, I thought I'd like to start at the beginning, and since the original 1954 Godzilla was not available on Netflix I opted for the English language release from two years later. Godzilla, King of the Monsters! takes the original movie, edits and dubs it, and chops in scenes of Raymond Burr as a reporter, and surrogate for American audiences. There was a time, concentrated around my middle school years when I was really into 50's sci-fi, that I think I probably would have rather liked this film, and I can see there's a good movie in there, but it really felt butchered to my current tastes. Burr is so staid and unnecessary, shoehorned in and the least interesting thing about the picture, I'd say he drags it down, but his presence, or some white presence, was doubtless seen as essential to American distrusters in the 1950's. I do want to see that original version some time, but I don't think I can recommend this version on it's merits, beyond simply checking "a classic" off your movie list. *1/2