by canofhumdingers » Fri Nov 17, 2017 5:16 pm
So I watched one more last night: All Monsters Attack, better known as Godzilla’s Revenge. It wasn’t my first choice, but it turns out MOST of the films on Amazon’s Starz channel subscription are just SD. I didn’t check Godzilla ‘54, Godzilla:KotM, or Destroy All Monsters. But I did check all the others and the only ones in HD were Rodan, War of the Gargantuas, Godzilla’s Revenge, and Mothra vs Godzilla.
Godzilla’s Revenge was fun to see in HD. It was the first Godzilla film I owned and I watched the heck out of that vhs. Most of the stock footage was new to me and I was the right age to really identify with Ichiro. It’s not my favorite by a long shot, but I still enjoy it (and all the nostalgia it brings) and I’ve always loved the jazzy score.
All of the HD streams appear to use Toho’s old HD masters corrected in color and contrast for US calibration standards. It’s funny, but the lower bitrate on the streaming (compared to disc-based media) actually appeared to hide some of the flaws (like the ugly video noise) notoriously inherent in Toho’s transfers.
I doubt I’ll get to the final HD film, Mothra vs Godzilla, before my free trial runs out. It would be cool to watch it in HD with subs, but I’ve owned the Toho Blu ray for a few years so it’s not like the others, where I was really excited to finally see them in something better than standard def.