Posted:
Thu Dec 18, 2003 11:40 pmby Legion
"Cosmic Monster" was basically missing the Toho logo, the main titles, the epilouge and some scenes of violence and over-color dialouge. No monster scenes were cut however.
The American version gretzky was referring to had to be the Cinema Shares version, since he mentions watching it in the EARLY 1980s, and the New World Inernational print didnt officially hit our shores until 1987. Even then, the Cinema Shares version still popped up occasionally on TV.
Posted:
Wed Dec 31, 2003 3:38 pmby August
For posters, try eBay. As for your station cutting the film, that would be what the station did, not Cinema Shares -- this was very common in the 1960s and 1970s (even into the early 1980s), when films were shown in 90-minute timeslots.
As for the release of the film in the States, Cinema Shares released MEGALON in the Summer of 1976 and followed up with BIONIC in early 1977 (GIGAN, as GODZILLA ON MONSTER ISLAND was released in late 1977, through 1978 -- I didn't come to the SF Bay Area until 1979). Universal forced Cinema Shares to change the title, and by the time it played in California -- the Summer of 1977, then STAR WARS was already the biggest film in history (releaed in May of '77). In San Francisco, MEGALON actually played at one theater (The Coliseum) and one drive-in (The Spruce), and then went onto another theater The Warfield sometime later that summer. I also saw it at a theater in San Jose with YOG, GHIDRAH and DESTROY ALL MONSTERS, put together as a Kiddie Matinee. The print of MEGALON shown was the uncut version (I was excited, but nobody else noticed or cared).
In those days, many smaller films were not released Nationwide at the same time, but were rather on Roadshows -- the films played in different cities at different dates, over a series of months. COSMIC MONSTER played in July of 1977 in Sacramento, California (where I first saw it), and then it finally came to San Francisco in late August/early September to San Francisco. This was far enough after STAR WARS for a "space"-theme to be exploited in the ad campaign, which is exactly what happened (no need for speculation). BTW, the HK film INFRA-MAN was also re-released to cash-in on the STAR WARS craze, with a "star wars" tag line.
TERROR OF [MECHA]GODZILLA also did the same thing after being released in late 1978 -- it bounced between theaters and drive-ins in the SF Bay Area for more than six months, and we could just bop between these venues to see it again and again. The first time I saw the film, it was on the bottom of a double-bill with the brand-new film HALOWEEN. When Toei's MESSAGE FROM SPACE was released nationwide by United Artists Thanksgiving Week, TERROR was the co-feature in local drive-ins. TERROR then made the rounds throughout the Bay Area, and it was fun following it around.
Back in those days, VCRs were out of the reach of kids (far too expensive, $1000 or more) and it was uncertain if certain films would make it to television, so you had to catch the film in the theater as many times as you could... I kind of miss those days, in a way -- because film distributors would take chances on Godzilla films, even the "bad" ones. Nowadays, we can have DVDs, but seeing them in theaters in the States is much harder, if not seemingly impossible.
Peace!