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So much average

best movie i've ever seen.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

American reporter Steve Martin (Raymond Burr) is a survivor in the aftermath of the devastation in Tokyo. He recounts the events of the past few days. He was flying to Japan to meet scientist Dr. Serizawa. He finds that Serizawa is engaged with some new developments and he joins to cover the situation. Ships have disappeared. Attacks continue and Godzilla lands on Japanese soil. Serizawa suspects that it has been raised by the detonation of the H-bombs.This is the version of Godzilla reworked for the American audience. Raymond Burr's scenes are fine. They are essentially him and his Japanese co-stars reacting to the Godzilla movie. It's the same as the original where the Japanese actors are standing around reacting to the destruction unleashed by Godzilla. Other than being white, Burr's scenes don't stand out much from the rest of the movie. This is Godzilla redux. I do wish for better action with Steve's injury. A building falls on him but it's not really action oriented. This is fine for what it is. It's a cheap way to appeal to the western audience without remaking the entire movie. For purists, this is sacrilegious.

American reporter Steve Martin (an earnest and engaging performance by Raymond Burr) covers the story of a lifetime after a giant prehistoric monster gets reawakened from its centuries of slumber and goes on a rampage in Japan. While this version isn't as bleak and somber as the Japanese original, it's nonetheless still pretty grim and admirably serious in tone, with the added character of Martin incorporated into the main narrative in a clever and convincing way by making him more of an active participant than a passive observer (the Big G even knocks a building on Martin at one point!). Although the love triangle amongst the three main Japanese characters is less prominently featured and the film hence nowhere near as poignant as the original, the American version still registers as a good film in its own right due to the overall respectful treatment its given by director Terry O. Morse and screenwriter Al C. Ward. Moreover, the scenes of Godzilla destroying Tokyo are truly terrifying, the dubbing is generally acceptable (in a nice touch, whole portions are still presented in Japanese), Akira Ifukube's robust score hits the rousing spot, the special effects hold up quite well, and residual traces of the pertinent central message about the dangers of atomic bombs and radioactive fallout can still be discerned throughout.

The 1954 classic was apparently not good enough for American audiences. They remade the film with Raymond Burr narrating the action and starring as a reporter covering the incident.Rather than a subtitled film, we get one dubbed. At least they left some of the Japanese dialog.Stars of the original film, Takashi Shimura, Momoko Kôchi, and Akira Takarada, took second billing to Burr, who dominated throughout. Godzilla was a grave representation of the horrors of the H bomb; horrors that Japan knew all too well. Scenes of the destruction caused by Godzilla, and of the broken, burning bodies pulled from the rubble, look authentic enough to be documentary footage of Hiroshima or Nagasaki. The film, a huge hit in the original form, must have been therapeutic for the Japanese people.

This is the American re-edit of director Ishiro Honda's groundbreaking original, that now stars Raymond Burr as American reporter Steve Martin, who is visiting Japan, and gets caught up in the biggest story of his life. Steve just so happens to know Dr. Serizawa, whose recent experiments have created the very weapon that can destroy Godzilla, if he can bring himself to do so... Reasonably good film does a fairly clever job of integrating Burr into the original, as if he had been there all along, but just off screen! Ragged around the edges to be sure, but an otherwise inspired way of making it accessible to English-speaking audiences. Raymond Burr would reprise this role thirty years later in separate sequel to a new series("Godzilla 1985", based off of "The Return Of Godzilla")