Happy 70th Birthday, Godzilla!

by Joseph Perry and Mike Imboden

Normally in our “The Good, the Bad, and the Verdict” film reviews, Joseph and Mike give their thoughts on a slice of cinema. For this installment, it’s something a little different.  With today being the 70th anniversary of the release of Godzilla, we wanted to pay tribute to the King of the Monsters.  Here, then, is what Godzilla means to us

JOSEPH

On this 70th anniversary of Gojira, I’d like to mention a few reasons why the king of kaiju is special to me.

One of the very first monster movies I remember seeing as a preschooler parked in front of my   electronic babysitter was Godzilla vs. The Thing — I was instantly hooked. I was already a big fan of dinosaurs, and Godzilla had a different cachet than those prehistoric predecessors. I honestly remember being sad when the Mothra larvae disposed of Godzilla. I was thankful to learn that   he would live on in other movies. 

I drew pictures of Godzilla destroying skyscrapers in my school books during kindergarten and early elementary school, and later in life was happy to   learn that professional artists were tackling Godzilla. I loved Marvel’s Godzilla comic book series. For some reason I have forgotten, #2 “Seattle Under Siege” was my favorite issue.

Even though my cartoon watching days were mostly behind me by 1978 as a high schooler, I still checked in on Hanna-Barbera Productions’ Godzilla animated series. I found it a fun diversion, but oh, that Godzooky.

Godzilla 1985 marked my first big screen viewing of a Godzilla movie, but of course I had seen several of the films on TV before that. I was fortunate enough to have seen several classic Godzilla films and also Shin Godzilla at South Korea’s Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival. Alas, Godzilla is not a big deal in Korea — the high school students I teach are far more familiar with the recent Legendary films than they are with any of the Japanese ones — and although the screenings at Bucheon were often sparsely populated, it was fun to see parents bring their young children to watch movies I assume meant something to their own childhood.

Just some of Joseph's stuff

Speaking of that, the most important part of my Godzilla fandom has been sharing my love of The Big Fella with my now-adult son, from his childhood to this day. We watched many of the Godzilla movies together over the years, from the heyday of video rentals to the Shin Godzilla screening in Bucheon. He talked excitedly with me about seeing Godzilla Minus One in the States, where he lives, in its opening days there, as it hadn’t yet played here in South Korea where I’m currently located — and still hasn’t. He teaches high school English, using the original 1954 Gojira to explore various themes and sharing Godzilla with today’s teenagers.

I still collect Japanese Godzilla and Toho kaiju figures, most often when I visit Japan but also from a pair of stores in Seoul, one of which sells vintage figures and the other of which sells more recent ones. I also have some tee shirts and Japanese banner-style cloths for wall decoration. 

Godzilla has been a part of my life since I was a preschooler. I’m far from that age now, but I know the king of kaiju will be with me for the rest of my life, too.

MIKE

In 1973, when I was six, my step father let me stay up late to watch Godzilla, King of the Monsters and I was hooked.  I would dutifully scan the TV guide for ‘Monster Week’ on the local ‘4:00 Movie’. It was here I also discovered Gamera and his foes, but they easily took a backseat to Godzilla, and company.

 My love of comic books hadn’t fully bloomed yet, but when Marvel started publishing their version of the Big G, it was first step into becoming a collector as I made it my mission to ensure I got each issue as soon as they hit the spinner rack at the pharmacy not too far from where I lived.  I’d also draw my own comics on old paper my mom would bring home.  Sometimes they were my recollections of movies, other times they were original with him fighting all sorts of creatures.

I never really grew out of loving Godzilla, as I’m sure some of my peers did - if anything it grew as I became older and things began to become more accessible to me.  I had one friend who, like me, didn’t outgrow him and he luckily had a Super 8 projector so we’d save our money and buy one of the short films every few months.

I had a grandmother who used to take me to the movies and it was with her I saw Godzilla vs The Bionic Monster (vs Mechagodzilla) when I was ten as my first foray into the Godzilla on the big screen.  Since then there’s been many more, of course, and hopefully many more to follow.

The boom of home video was a godsend, allowing me to collect everything on VHS, which became DVD, which became and continues to be Blu-ray.  Disposable income allowed me to collect a fair amount of figures and related paraphernalia.

More than just Godzilla

Back to Gamera, briefly.  I’d be remiss to mention him, Ultraman, and Johnny Sokko and His Giant Robot as it was thanks to Godzilla that doors to all sorts of worlds of daikaiju were opened.

I still love to watch the old films from the 70s as much as I do the new ones, only really finding much fault in 1999’s Godzilla (in name only) film.  And All Monsters Attack.  Even as a kid I disliked that one.

I can’t say that Godzilla changed my life or anything sappy like that, but I can say that he’s brought me more joy and memories than any other pop culture icon. Here’s to seventy more, big guy!