by O.Supreme » Thu Aug 02, 2018 12:27 pm
Awesome! A Welcome anniversary for my favorite G-Film (and favorite Kaiju Film) of all time. Definitely going to try to watch this again as soon as I have some free time. DAM & Smog Monster were the Holy grails for me growing up in the 80's as they were (seemingly) never on TV in the SF Bay Area, even with such prominent individuals as Bob Wilkins and Creature Features. (I do here in retrospect they played quite a bit in the 70's but that was before my ability to recollect time, and before most people had VCR's)
I did see parts of Smog Monster once, but it was probably sometime between 80-82, and never did see it again until I rented the Orion VHS from BBV in 1990. DAM however, I never saw. It was literally the stuff of legends. My dad told me of seeing it at the drive in while dating my mom (probably in late 1969), I had many sci-fi books and magazine pics. I even tried to save up money to get one of those Super 8 film reels that Famous Monsters used to advertise. But despite scouring TV guide for nearly a decade, I never found it. Then finally through dubious means (early mail order bootleg VHS), I was able to get a copy in raw Japanese in 1991, and I didn't care, it was still amazing. A year later I found a copy of the AIP dub at a convention, and it was like finding that familiar friend, because it looked and sounded like many of my other favorite Godzilla films that also had AIP dubs.
Seeing it on Sci-Fi in the mid-90's was a bit bittersweet. the Video Print was nice and pristine, but the voices were odd and unfamiliar (obviously the Toho International dub, the same with Hedorah). When ADV finally released their VHS in 1999, I was disappointed that it again was the Toho dub, so I wisely held on to my AIP VHS. I still have it to this day, and have it as a video file on my hard drive. I mean I love what MB attempted to do, but the way that audio cuts, like from a bad splice in a projector on the Blu-ray is so annoying, they could have got a much better audio source. Sadly this audio version will probably never be made available again, so I'm definitely glad I have it preserved to the best of my ability.
Also Gwangi- as someone slightly older than myself (with all due respect), I very much enjoy reading your comments, and your experiences in theaters, and what you saw on TV during I time I either cannot recollect because I was too young, or simply because I was not born yet. (I was born in Feb 1976, and am 42).
There are no more good TV Shows, only ones that haven't disappointed me yet.