This is the Original Japanese Version, unavailable in The States for decades. I Have been a Godilla fan since I was a lad, I remember reading about the Japanese version at the public library and wanting to see it since (I eventually bought the DVD when it came out.) I got in fistfights on the elementary school play yard over who would win, Godzilla or Kong. I always understood Godzilla movies as silly fun, as badly dubbed guys in monster suits stepping on toys. They were so fun!!
Well this original film, which directly references Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is a much, much, heavier affair. Everyone knows Godzilla is a metaphor for the big bomb in '45, but here is a company, Toho, not ten years later, making a major motion picture that comments on the atrocities of war and nuclear power. And from the country that to this day is still the only one to have experienced the bomb.
It is still a thrilling, expertly made Monster on the loose movie, it just has a heavy dose of philosophy that was surgically removed for the Americanized version.
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