GOJRIA

Well I spent most of my free time watching this – so far about four times at last count. I do that with films a lot. I also re-read books – for example Fear and Loathing In Los Vegas – by the late Hunter S. Thompson (about 10 times). An ex-girlfriend once suggested I might have some high end autistic tendencies since I like to be alone, and I watch films and read books over and over again, which per her are autistic traits. I take this with a grain of salt – she had experience with autistic people and sometimes that makes you like the man whose only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail to you or in her case everything looks like Autism. I have some wiring problems in the head but I don’t think it’s linked to the condition known as autism.

She’s not my ex because of that – she’s ex because she was dealing with a lot issues from her prior relationship and that adversely affected us and she decided this wasn’t going to work. That she stored up everything I had done wrong while we were together and told me about them the day we broke up and she couldn’t understand my new found passion for the Residents (who I was in the process of discovering at that time) and that she acted batshit crazy didn’t help.

I admit I get very excited about things like that bands, a movie, an author, artic exploration, dinosaurs, whatever, and tend to as I put it – jabber intensely about them to anybody. I remember what my dad would say to me when I was like that.

He would say. “Shut up. I’m not interested”.

I never wonder why I have self esteem issues.

Back to Gojria – (the uncut Japanese edition). It’s a much darker film than the Raymond Burr version (which was no walk in the park) and there is an almost over powering sense of loss and dread here. This isn’t the fun – smash up stuff of say Godzilla vs. Monster Zero. This is about real things (as real as you can get with a 50 meter tall monster) real death and dying real loss. Here Godzilla is a personification of and not a symbol of the atomic bomb. He’s not hungry he’s not looking for something he just destroys everything that is in his path.

Really it’s quite the anti-war film.

Trivial Gojria notes: there were two monster suits and one hand puppet. One way the fire breathing effect was made was by spraying water out of a hose in the puppets mouth. The suit weighted over 200 pds and the longest anybody could say inside the thing before passing out was 20 minutes. The film cost more than the Seven Samurai which Toho also made that year.