Godzilla 1985 (1985)

Godzilla 1985: Directed by Koji Hashimoto, R.J. Kizer, Ishirô Honda, Toshio Masuda, Shûe Matsubayashi, Shirô Moritani. With Raymond Burr, Ken Tanaka, Yasuko Sawaguchi, Yôsuke Natsuki. Thirty years after the original monster’s rampage, a new Godzilla emerges and attacks Japan.

“Picking up 30 odd years later and ignoring all the films that were made in between, Godzilla returns to trample Tokyo. The Tokyo natives think up all sorts of goofy plans to get rid of Godzilla, one which involves a highly advanced flying tank called Super-X, the other involving the use of birds to activate an often unused portion of Godzillau0026#39;s brain that resembles a birdu0026#39;s to lead him out of Tokyo and into a volcano, where he remains until the sequel, u0026quot;Godzilla VS Biollanteu0026quot;.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe u0026quot;1985u0026quot; American version includes scenes of us damned Americans trying to figure out what do and features Raymond Burr reprising his Steve Martin character from the American version of the first film. However, his first name is never used on account of comedian Steve Martinu0026#39;s then hot popularity. This version also gives Russians a bad name because they made the Russian commander launch the missile before he died when in the original version he died heroically trying to stop the missileu0026#39;s launching but failed. The death of the tramp is also shown in the original version.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003enMaybe itu0026#39;s the lighting or lack there of, the smoke, or just the dated quality of my VHS tape, but this is a very dark and atmospheric monster on the rampage epic and one that I hold very close to my heart for reasons I canu0026#39;t quite explain. Special effects run the usual gamut from good to ridiculous, and the music is pretty good. Whether or not the original version will ever be released in America remains to be seen. Iu0026#39;d settle for just being able to see this one on DVD somewhere.”