October 2019 is shaping up to be a big month for kaiju fans between Mill Creek's release of Ultra Q and Ultraman on October 15 and Criterion's release of Godzilla: The Showa Era Films on October 29. Amid all the discussion of how these films and shows will be presented, talk of the confirmed special features has taken a backseat, which isn't unusual. I personally don't rewatch special features on home media nearly as often as the movies themselves. It gets to the point that I don't revisit a lot of these special features for years at a time.
I want to change that, and I want to contribute more positivity to this home media forum, so this is the first in what I want to make a series of Special Features Appreciation threads. Think of these as the special features equivalent of the movie talkback threads.
I'll try to post one of these every Monday in the run-up to October, reexamining special features from the many kaiju DVDs & BRDs that have been released in North America over the years. If you've got a collection of kaiju discs and some free time during the week, won't you join me in giving these special features another look?
What better way to kick things off than with the featurettes on Classic Media's "Toho Master Collection" DVDs? It's a safe bet that most everyone here has these discs on their shelves. Originally released from 2006 to 2008, Classic Media's seven Godzilla titles and their Rodan / War of the Gargantuas set include a total of two-and-a-half hours worth of featurettes.
The eight featurettes spread across the Godzilla discs are all narrated photo slideshows, loaded with information and a gold mine of pictures, while the feature-length documentary Bringing Godzilla Down to Size on the Rodan disc is easily the most ambitious effort that's ever been put into bonus content for a kaiju home media release in North America.
——————————————————————————————————
Godzilla (1954)
Classic Media DVD - 2006
Classic Media BRD - 2009
Classic Media DVD - 2014
Godzilla Story Development - 12:58
Written, Produced and Narrated by Ed Godziszewski, Edited by Bill’s Kitchen
The first part of this featurette examines Shigeru Kayama’s original story, which Tomoyuki Tanaka commissioned him to write as the basis for Godzilla's screenplay. Kayama established the four main characters and the basic structure of the plot but otherwise his story was significantly different from the final film. It then goes into how Takeo Murata and Ishiro Honda developed Kayama’s story into the film’s screenplay.
The rest of the featurette details a number of the film’s deleted scenes, some of which were written and storyboarded but never filmed, others which were filmed and then discarded. Because they destroyed the film negatives, the deleted scenes that were filmed are known only from photographs, many of which are on display here. It’s interesting to see that there was a filmed scene in which Dr. Yamane’s team accompanied Shinkichi to the cemetery where his mother and brother were buried after Godzilla’s nighttime appearance, with the scene supposedly hinting at a prior relationship between the Yamane family and Shinkichi. This featurette is loaded with on-set photographs and storyboard sketches depicting unused scenes like that.
——————————————————————————————————
Making of the Godzilla Suit - 13:08
Written, Produced and Narrated by Ed Godziszewski, Edited by Bill’s Kitchen
Eiji Tsuburaya accepted any challenge! A lot of the information in the first part of this featurette is common knowledge to many fans but it’s great to hear it narrated over so many classic photos of Tsuburaya and Tomoyuki Tanaka. The featurette then dives into three chapters - Design, Construction & Suit In Action - and this is where it gets into the more nitty-gritty details.
My favorite part of the Design chapter is the look at the three different maquettes that Teizo Toshimitsu sculpted to try to nail down Godzilla’s design in three dimensions. The next chapter, Construction, runs through the process of building the first, highly immobile Godzilla suit and the second suit which was barely more mobile. The Suit In Action chapter covers the shooting phase.
——————————————————————————————————
Godzilla Raids Again (1955)
Classic Media DVD - 2006
Classic Media DVD - 2012
The Art of Suit Acting - 14:20
Written, Produced and Narrated by Ed Godziszewski, Edited by Bill’s Kitchen
Picking up right where Making of the Godzilla Suit left off, this one starts off by profiling the suit actors who first brought Godzilla to life and then segues into the rest of Toho’s sci-fi output. The first six minutes are devoted to the career of Haruo Nakajima. It then examines the various roles of Katsumi Tezuka up through 1964; Shoichi Hirose, who played King Kong in ’62 and King Ghidorah in ’64 and ’65; Hiroshi Sekita, who played opposite Nakajima many times in the late '60s and who played Godzilla for the majority of Son of Godzilla; Marchan the Dwarf, who played Minilla; and Kengo Nakayama, who played Hedorah and Gigan and eventually changed his name to Kenpachiro Satsuma and went on to play Godzilla in the Heisei Series. This is a terrific featurette.
——————————————————————————————————
Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964)
Classic Media DVD - 2006
Classic Media DVD - 2012
Akira Ifukube Biography with Tribute by Shogo Tomiyama - 13:01
Written, Produced and Narrated by Ed Godziszewski, Edited by Bill’s Kitchen
From his immersion in Ainu culture at a young age to his legacy as a composer, this biography provides a nice overview of the life and career of Akira Ifukube. It offers a good bit of detail on his early years and his work during WWII before moving into his work scoring sci-fi films. It also spends a good amount of time covering Ifukube's later years and his work on the Heisei Series. The biography itself runs for eight minutes, with the last five minutes of the featurette being a series of silent text screens displaying an English translation of Shogo Tomiyama’s tribute to Ifukube penned shortly after his passing in February 2006.
——————————————————————————————————
Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster (1964)
Classic Media DVD - 2007
Classic Media DVD - 2012
The Father of Godzilla: Eiji Tsuburaya, 1901-1970 - 7:14
Written, Produced and Narrated by Ed Godziszewski, Edited by Bill’s Kitchen
This biography of special effects mastermind Eiji Tsuburaya is brief but it packs in a lot of info, and of course another boatload of historical photos. It hits on his early years from when he learned trick photography and special effects techniques to when he was inspired by King Kong and eventually helmed the special effects for Toho’s propaganda war films in the ’40s. It traces his career through the creation of Godzilla and other sci-fi films for Toho in the ‘50s to the peak of his success in the ’60s.
——————————————————————————————————
Invasion of Astro-Monster (1965)
Classic Media DVD - 2007
Classic Media DVD - 2012
The Creator of Godzilla: Tomoyuki Tanaka, 1910-1997 - 8:32
Written and Produced by Ed Godziszewski, Narrated by Steve Ryfle, Edited by Bill’s Kitchen
This featurette kicks off with a summary of how Tomoyuki Tanaka came up with the idea for Godzilla and brought together the team that made it happen. It then goes back to Tanaka’s youth, tracing his influences and significant points in his pre-Godzilla career as a successful producer. It’s interesting how the published stories that served as the basis of so many of Toho’s sci-fi movies were often commissioned by Tanaka himself. The featurette also covers Tanaka’s later career overseeing the Heisei Series. It concludes with Steve Ryfle reading a quote of praise for Tanaka from US producer Henry Saperstein. For a short biography, this is fast-paced and exhaustive.
——————————————————————————————————
All Monsters Attack (1969)
Classic Media DVD - 2007
Classic Media DVD - 2012
The Soul of Godzilla: Ishiro Honda, 1911-1993 - 6:44
Written and Produced by Ed Godziszewski, Edited by Bill's Kitchen
An abridged biography of Ishiro Honda, particularly compared to the 2017 book by Godziszewski and Ryfle, this featurette nonetheless covers a lot of info in a short amount of time with a plethora of photos to go with it. The bulk of the featurette is a straightforward summary of Honda’s life and career, with the remainder dedicated to his personal ideals and his legacy.
——————————————————————————————————
Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975)
Classic Media DVD - 2007
Classic Media DVD - 2012
The Women of Godzilla, 1954-1975 - 10:55
Produced by Steve Ryfle & Ed Godziszewski, Written & Narrated by Steve Ryfle, Edited by Bill’s Kitchen
Many of the most significant characters in Toho’s classic sci-fi movies were women. The first eight minutes of this featurette focuses on the women who acted in Ishiro Honda’s films, including Momoko Kochi, Kyoko Kagawa, Yuriko Hoshi, Emi & Yumi Ito, Akiko Wakabayashi, Kumi Mizuno, Yumi Shirakawa, Mie Hama, Yoko Fujiyama, Tetsuko Kobayashi, Kyoko Ai and Yukiko Kobayashi. Some of them get a lot of biographical info while others are just mentioned briefly.
The rest of the featurette profiles women who appeared in other Godzilla films of the Showa Series. They include Setsuko Wakayama (Godzilla Raids Again), Keiko Mari (Godzilla vs. Hedorah), Bibari Maeda (Son of Godzilla), Yuriko Hishimi (Godzilla vs. Gigan), Reiko Tajima and Barbara Lynn (Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla), and for some reason not included with the other Honda-directed movies, Tomoko Ai (Terror of Mechagodzilla).
——————————————————————————————————
Rodan -and- War of the Gargantuas
Classic Media DVD - 2008
Bringing Godzilla Down to Size - 69:01
Directed by Norman England, Written and Produced by Steve Ryfle & Ed Godziszewski, Narrated by Alex Cox, Edited by Yasu Inoue, Music by Kow Otani
Classic Media saved their most ambitious production for last! Featuring interviews with the likes of Haruo Nakajima, Akira Takarada, Yoshio Tsuchiya, Hiroshi Koizumi, Kenpachiro Satsuma, Teruyoshi Nakano, Tsutomu Kitagawa, Takeshi Yagi and Shusuke Kaneko just to name a few, it's an in-depth and heartfelt exploration of the Golden Age of Japanese sci-fi and the craftspeople that brought these fantasy worlds to life on the screen.
One of the highlights of this documentary is a roundtable interview with Yasuyuki Inoue, Akinori Takagi and Toshio Miike. They discuss at length Inoue's role as Tsuburaya's special effects art director during the Golden Age and we even get to see Inoue direct the team as they recreate the classic erupting volcano from Latitude Zero. Another major highlight is seeing three generations of Godzilla suit actors pal around together.
——————————————————————————————————
Taken as a whole, Classic Media's featurettes offer a comprehensive background of the original Godzilla, the franchise and entire genre that it spawned, and the people that made it all happen. The eight short featurettes offer a wealth of knowledge and rare photos and the documentary Bringing Godzilla Down to Size is the perfect capper. It's especially rewarding to go through all of these features in close succession.
