New Godzilla DVD and Blu-ray Reissues Rising from Tokyo Bay

With that unstoppable Hypeosaurus poised to go on a rampage any minute now in preparation for the May 16th release of Gareth Edwards reboot of Godzilla, a couple of small video distribution companies are trying to get in on the action by reissuing a handful of, well, if not exactly “classic” titles from Godzilla’s 60 year run, at least some interesting ones. For the obsessives out there, the exciting news is a couple have never come out on DVD or Blu-ray before (not legally anyway).

First up, on April 1st Universal will be releasing both 1962’s King Kong vs. Godzilla and 1967’s King Kong Escapes on Blu-ray for the first time, as well as reissues of both DVDs. Okay, so Universal isn’t exactly a “small distribution company,” King Kong vs. Godzilla is indeed a series classic, and Godzilla isn’t even in King Kong Escapes, but we’ll just shut the hell up about all that, won’t we? Only the US versions of both films will be included on the discs, which are okay here, as both were rare instances in which the differences between the US version and Toho originals were negligible.

In Godzilla terms, King Kong vs. Godzilla was groundbreaking in many ways. It was considered the first real sequel to 1954’s Gojira (what was known here as Godzilla Raids Again had been originally released as Gigantis the Fire Monster), it was the first Godzilla film in color, and it represented the last screen credit for poor, sad Willis O’Brien, who’d animated Kong in the ‘33 original and spent the last half of his career pitching Kong scripts around Hollywood in vain. Somehow his script for King Kong vs. Frankenstein ended up on Toho producer Tomoyuki Tanaka’s desk, and he decided to make it his next Godzilla picture. Not surprisingly the story bears an uncanny resemblance to the original Kong, but with Godzilla, and in Japan, and with a happier ending.

King Kong Escapes, a favorite of mine when I was a kid, is a weirdie. A weirdie aimed squarely at a much younger audience. Toho made the picture with Rankin/Bass in a rare Japanese-American co-production to tie into a then-popular Saturday morning Kong cartoon. Watching it as an adult this is pretty obvious. There’s an evil queen, a mad scientist, a giant Kong robot, an abrasive submarine nurse, and more Americans than you’d expect in a Toho picture. Kong here might resemble Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’s Bumble, but I still think Mechakong is pretty fucking cool.

 Much more exciting, on May 6, a week and a half before Edwards’ film premieres, a new little video distributor called Kraken Releasing (a division of Section 23 Films) will release 1972’s Godzilla vs. Gigan (aka Godzilla on Monster Island), 1966’s Ebirah, Horror of the Deep (aka Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster), and 1971’s Godzilla vs. Hedorah (aka Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster) on DVD and Blu-Ray. All three titles will include both the US and Japanese versions, and even though they aren’t what you’d exactly call great films (though I have a soft spot for Hedorah), if you’re a compulsive like me, getting both versions on disc makes this a big deal.

All right, so maybe Gigan’s not a big deal (though the Japanese version is surprisingly bloody for a Godzilla film). It’s very comic book centric, and in one head scratcher of a scene Godzilla and Anguirus speak in word balloons. Overall though at this point the series was fast plunging toward its nadir, which it would hit with the following year’s Godzilla vs. Megalon.

What makes the release of Ebirahinteresting, apart from the scene in which Godzilla plays volleyball with the titular giant fiddler crab and a boulder, and another scene in which Godzilla meditates (yes, meditates) is that the film, though released in a cheap VHS version a long time back, has never come out on disc before.

The same is true for Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster, which makes this the most intriguing of the lot. Although the Japanese version has been available for years, it’s well known that for some reason (likely the theme song, “Save the Earth”) Toho has been trying to bury the American version since it was first released. Why they hate the US version so much I can’t say, but they won’t even acknowledge it ever existed. It briefly came out on VHS in the late ‘80s, then quickly vanished. Fifteen years ago I paid a damn arm and a leg for a used copy, and prices have been jacked way up to Jesus ever since. If Kraken really does have the US theatrical version of Smog Monster on the disc (and I don’t know how they’d get that one past Toho) then they have a goldmine on their hands, even though Hedorah is a much better film, there are just too many Godzilla fans who were imprinted by the Smog Monster at a very early age and who still find themselves humming “Save the Earth” in the grocery store.

I think what has me most giddy about the new releases is knowing that come early May I’ll finally be able to trade out those old tapes and free up a little space on my Godzilla shelves. Now if someone would only release Godzilla 1985 and Son of Godzilla on disc, I’d be all set and could finally relax.

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