Why Godzilla?

I have written about Godzilla a lot.  Not just in this blog or for my own fanzine, but for many other magazines and even other websites.  This has been pretty much a lifelong occupation for me, especially once I learned how to draw Godzilla.  I drew my own film books and comics about him as well.

I suppose my love of Godzilla stems from my love of dinosaurs.  I did discover them first.  I saw my first Godzilla movie around Christmas of 1971 (I think) and that was KING KONG VS GODZILLA.  I've written about it elsewhere, but it obviously had a huge  impact on me at the time.  The movie was pretty much everything I could have wanted. 

It's funny, but I don't remember anyone telling me anything about it.  I was dropped off at the theater, and after a cartoon or two (and some toy giveaways) the movie started.  When you are six years old it's a pretty scary movie at times.  It didn't matter, the bug had bit me and I wanted to see more giant monsters of all kinds, but especially reptilian ones.

Then I discovered TV stations showed OTHER Godzilla movies.  Sometimes they were on during the daytime, and sometimes they were aired at ungodly hours of the weekends, though a lot were shown at 10:30 on Friday nights.  In looking for Godzilla movies I discovered his various kith and kin, plus a plethora of science fiction and fantasy movies from all over the world.

There was precious little information about these movies back then, and lot of it was derogatory, especially to my beloved Japanese movies.  Most of the commentary was aimed at the effects and dubbing.  You watch, this will be brought up with the new US version comes out next month.

It was a fun thing to see a monster movie in the TV Guide, whether you had seen it previously or not.  Sometimes there would be slumber parties and that was an added bonus.  Sometimes when the movie aired at 3 AM you would miss part of it because the alarm didn't go off.  Which was a complete tragedy.  I woke up to the end of GODZILLA VS THE SMOG MONSTER once, which was not pleasant.  There was never a guarantee that any movie would air again, ever.

Of course now, anyone can watch almost any version of movie they want to.  The thrill of the hunt is gone, sort of replaced with a DVD release, I guess.  Anyway, I meant to talk a little  more about what Godzilla means to me, but that will wait until the next post.