Original Japanese Cut Of ‘Godzilla’ Will Roar Into Theaters; Watch The Trailer
There’s anotherGodzillamovie stomping across the screen this year, and no, it isn’t an Asylum-style knockoff. If anything, it’s the opposite.
Rialto Pictures has announced that it will release a new restoration of the originalGodzillafrom 1954. By that, they mean theactualoriginal. This is the uncut version released in Japan, not the 1956 American edit that did away with much of the footage in favor of new scenes featuring Raymond Burr.
Hit the jump to watch the trailer and find out when it’s coming to a theater near you.
Rialto plans to debutGodzillaonApril 12at the TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood, followed by a limited run at New York’s Film Forum on April 18-24. It’ll roll out to other theaters across the country from there;check the distributor’s websiteto find out when it’s coming to your town.
Even if you’ve seen the American cut, the Japanese one will be worth checking out. The press release explains:
GODZILLA was originally released here in 1956 as Godzilla: King of the Monsters, an atrociously cut, dubbed and re-edited version that inserted American actor Raymond Burr into the action; only an hour was used of the original’s 98 minute running time. Burr does not appear in the original, uncut version, which has an all-Japanese cast including Kurosawa regular Takashi Shimura, who the very same year appeared as leader of the Seven Samurai.
As directed byIshirô Honda, with special effects by the legendaryEiji Tsuburaya, GODZILLA: THE JAPANESE ORIGINAL is much darker in tone than the dumbed-down U.S. release version, which entirely eliminated the original’s underlying theme: in the Japanese version, the monster is clearly a metaphor for the nuclear menace and the film itself a cry for world peace and disarmament. The American version also cut out all of the original’s astonishing Strangelove-like black humor.
Here are the trailer and poster for Rialto’s newly restoredGodzilla:
And here’s the trailer for Gareth Edwards' 2014 version, should you want to compare the two:
