In the beginning, Godzilla got a raw deal. Originally the star of a 98-minute Japanese film named GOJIRA(his real name), he came to be known around the world in an 80-minute American re-cut called GODZILLA, KING OF THE MONSTERS. The American film used just 60 minutes of the Japanese version, and filled the rest with low-budget scenes featuring character actor Raymond Burr (later known as TV’s Perry Mason and Ironside). Although Gojira was terrifically successful in Japan, it was Godzilla that became popular around the rest of the world — so popular that few fans outside Japan even knew about the existence of the original film. That success in the United States and elsewhere was not the success of a serious film, however. It was the kitschy popularity of the drive-in movie; people went to the theater to see a guy in a lizard suit destroy downtown Tokyo. Any deeper qualities the original film might have possessed were lost in translation, to put it mildly. This Emperor had no clothes, at least as far as movie critics were concerned.

Or did he? With the broader modern international acceptance of Japanese film, Toho Co. decided in 2004 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the release of GOJIRA by showing the world what it was missing. The original film was granted a fairly wide international art-house movie release for the first time ever. That critics were surprised at what they saw was something of an understatement. GOJIRA is an unexpectedly political film, commenting on both the anxieties of the Atomic Age of the 1950s and the historical tendencies that made Japan an aggressor in World War II and a victim of the only two atomic weapons ever used in combat. Anchored by legendary character actor Takashi Shimura (internationally known for his starring role that same year in THE SEVEN SAMURAI), the third of the film not seen in Godzilla successfully presented a series of relationships centered around love, loyalty, and sacrifice. With dark and moody atmospherics and some strong special effects, GOJIRA is hardly the critical joke that Godzilla made it out to be.

To understand why GOJIRA is a much deeper film than Godzilla ever was, it is useful to consider what Terry Morse, director and editor of the American film, decided to leave out. Gone is the scene in the Japanese Diet where two legislators debate whether or not the definite link between the appearance of the monster and recent South Pacific H-bomb tests should be revealed in the press. Also gone is much of the militaristic exultation on the part of the Japanese public for the efforts of the Navy to drive Gojira out of Tokyo Bay, and the disgust on the part of Takashi Shimura’s character (playing Japan’s most eminent naturalist and paleontologist) for how little anyone wants to study the creature and understand how it can survive exposure to vast amounts of radiation. Finally, the American film mutes several key exchanges that discuss the ethical role of science and scientists in the creation of weapons of mass destruction. It is heady stuff for a “simple” monster movie.

Now the rest us can see what we missed in those theaters in the GODZILLA-GOJIRA DELUXE COLLECTOR’S EDITION, a two-DVD set from Toho Co. and Sony/BMG Home Entertainment. Each film sits on its own disc, with GOJIRA remastered in high definition with subtitles and a commentary track by ‘Zillaphiles Steve Ryfle and Ed Godziszewski. A number of short featurettes describing the genesis of the Gojira story and the creature suit round out the set.

The package is both hit and miss, with far more of the former than the latter. The real gems of the set are both of the films, showing in stark relief how a fairly serious piece of science fiction can be remade into cultural cotton candy. The short features and commentary provide rafts of useful information. For example, the commentators mention that any scratches present in the hi-def re-master of GOJIRA are there because of damage to the original negative — Toho Co. could not keep its cutting rooms clean and the negative suffered during the optical printing of the film’s effects. The commentary is something of handicap as well, though. The materials in the two-DVD set stress the seriousness of the original GOJIRA film at some length, and make some breezy comparisons to other great anti-nuclear films like Stanley Kubrick‘s DR. STRANGELOVE. Yet when all is said and done, the commentary track features two serious Godzilla fans, not two serious students of Japanese film, somewhat undermining the premise of the film’s supposed greatness. Film critic Roger Ebert also has a point when he says that the film does not contain the stop-motion artistry of Wallis O’Brien or Ray Harryhausen — it’s just a guy in a rubber suit.

Any deficiencies really don’t matter in the end, though. As the film that inspired more than two dozen sequels over the course of 50 years, GOJIRA still stands up. That it is also the darkest, most serious, and best of the films only adds to its luster. All hail Gojira, the real King of the Monsters — the Emperor who has some nice clothes after all!