Godzilla/Mothra highlights

Most of the YouTube clips of the Godzilla/Mothra fights are spoiled by homespun pop and heavy metal soundtracks idiotically added to the footage. But here’s a raw Japanese preview of the film at a length of about 2 minutes and 15 seconds.

On one level the Japanese monster films are kiddie entertainment, but I’ve always found Godzilla and his fights to be rather potent on a mythical level, perhaps in part due to the atomic bomb connection that so many have discussed. And that strange sound that Godzilla makes is so ambivalent– on one level it gives you the chills, but on another it makes some part of your brain feel that the human race is protected (perhaps illusorily so; I’m just talking about the psychological effect of the sound).

Another factor is that many of us (at least Americans of my generation) watched Godzilla films most heavily very late at night in early childhood, which is perhaps the most impressionable circumstance in our lifetimes. To be a child at 1 AM is to be in a pretty strange place that is never really replicated again at a later age, when the entire clock is sometimes required as a normal work zone. For adults the middle of the night loses that quasi-forbidden status in which myth works most readily on the mind.

In the 1970’s there was obviously no YouTube, nor were there even video rental places for anything but porn (and hardly anyone owned a VCR anyway). Also no cable TV then, at least not in Iowa. So you had to watch specific Godzilla films whenever it pleased the fancy of the local CBS or NBC or ABC affiliate to broadcast them. They were like gifts from the gods, tied down to a certain night and time, and this only added to their mythical power. “Monster Island is being shown on Saturday at midnight!” “Really? Can I spend the night at your place and we’ll watch it?” I recall conversations like this with my cousins.

One of these days I need to watch Godzilla films throughout the night again. It’s been well over 30 years since I did that.