by Gwangi » Tue Dec 24, 2019 4:11 pm
Truth be told, even during the Criterion sale, it was still too expensive for me, however, positive things happened at work and I was able to purchase this set in November before the sale ended!
As for time to view everything, that is another story. What I’ve seen so far, the best parts of this set are not the movies, but rather the special features. In my half-century and almost two years of existence, I believe this was the first time ever, that I heard Ishiro Honda talk! Prior to that, I had never heard him speak or what he even sounded like! Yes, Kurosawa many times, but never Honda. Honda-san was featured prominently in the “Ran” blu-ray, in the “Making of” featurette, but I don’t recall if he ever talked.
The other feature that I loved was the “Toho Unused Special Effects Complete Collection”, which was fascinating! And yes, the rumors were indeed true, with Godzilla having a spar with Manda in “Destroy All Monsters”.
As far as the movies, I am glad to finally have the Mechagodzilla features on blu-ray (and dubbed), though I would have preferred the UPA intro for “Terror”. It is good to have a clean copy of “Godzilla vs. Megalon”. As was pointed out earlier, there is no fluttering in this disk, unlike the Media Blasters version. As for “King Kong vs. Godzilla” Japanese version, it is good that they included it, but surprised at the rather poor quality of this copy.
I am not going to mince words, as I still think this was a half-ass attempt on Toho’s part. As I stated before, they are not some Mom and Pop shop struggling to stay afloat, but rather one of the more significant companies in Japan. In my 25 years in dealing with large companies, believe me, these guys can get anything they want! The problem here is effort or lack thereof. With the way this current regime operates, I for one, do not wish to see any more releases from this group. “Rodan” and “War of the Gargantuas” are probably going to be next, but all we will see are subtitled versions and perhaps the international dub of “WotG”. I will most likely skip that and just buy another copy of the Classic Media disk, just to have a backup.
Is it good that they released this set? Bottom line, yes. However, as far as the movies themselves go, these are not the versions I grew up watching. Thankfully, there are still the fan restorations!