My wife asked me, “Why do you love monsters so much?” Maybe because I can’t remember ever a time I didn’t know about Godzilla. The name and image - the glowing fins, the roar, the strange look that was almost a hybrid between a tyrannosaur and a stegosaur – were imprinted on me that early.
The same was true of King Kong, and maybe the Universal monsters (the Karloff Frankenstein, the Lugosi Dracula, and particularly the Creature from the Black Lagoon). You absorb a lot of pop culture that was made before you were born in your early years.
But I certainly didn’t learn about Godzilla from being exposed to the movies, because I remember the first time I actually got to see a Godzilla movie. It was in Killarney, Manitoba, when it still had a sit-down theatre. There’s no mention of that movie theatre online now; I think it was the Roxy? (There was a drive-in, too, and I think it’s still open.)
The theatre showed a lot of re-released low budget movies, ostensibly for a young audience, on weekend nights. I remember watching King Kong Escapes (long before I saw the original classic 1933 King Kong), an early anime called Magic Boy, and the oddly titled Super Stooges vs. the Wonder Women.
One week they showed Godzilla vs. The Thing. I think they had this poster to advertise it.
Needless to say, “The Thing” turned out to be rather different than the poster implied. I was not expecting... a moth.
That good initial experience probably helped cement me as a lifelong Godzilla fan. Even now, I can watch that first movie and appreciate it, albeit on a different level than I could when I was young.
I don’t know if my love for Godzilla would have survived if the first movie I had seen had been something like Godzilla vs. Megalon. Or Son of Godzilla. I think that was the last of the original series I saw, and... that suit. Ugh.
But being a Godzilla fan teaches you to value hope over experience. Because, if we’re being honest, there aren’t that many good Godzilla movies. Even for a Godzilla fan, young or old, some are just utterly tedious.
Being a Godzilla fan has also taught me to bide your time. Because so many of the Godzilla movies were bad, they always had a reputation as being “cheap Japanese monster movies” that were easily dismissed. But guess what? The stuff that was derided for years finally earned some respect.
People started to realize just how hard it was to create those special effects. I look at the final monster battle in Destroy All Monsters, knowing what I know now, and am in awe. How they got all those suit actors, and wire controlling monster parts, on film at all amazes me.
People began to write about how great the music of Akira Ifukube was. Composer Bear McReary noted that the only real competitor that Ifukube’s Godzilla theme has for longevity is the James Bond theme – and the Godzilla theme is older!
The original 1954 version of Godzilla got an art house run, with all the additional American footage with Raymond Burr removed. Key shots were returned and gone was the so-so dubbing, replaced with subtitles. It was a revelation. No longer was the original Godzilla a cheap Japanese monster movie. It was a haunting classic that evoked the horror of an atomic bomb attack.
I hope the new Godzilla movie I am going to see tonight is good. But as a fan, whether it’s good or bad as a whole is almost beside the point. There will probably be some moments, images, that linger on and impress you even if the movie as a whole doesn’t.
And maybe there will be some more kids who will grow up never remembering how or when they first learned about Godzilla.
P.S.—I bought the T-shirt pictured above last year, and I never wore it. I saved it specifically to wear to the opening night of Godzilla: King of the Monsters. That night is tonight! IMAX presentation and I’m very excited!
