Monday, October 03, 2011

Upcoming Godzilla DVDs (and Blu-ray)

Now that October is here, the season of monsters, I thought I better post some DVD release news that I've been sitting on for weeks, before it's no longer news. I've mentioned these before, and now it's official with pre-orders and release dates.


Destroy All Monsters is getting a DVD re-release and its first Blu-ray release on October 25th from Media Blasters. This is great news, as MB has done terrific work on a host of Toho kaiju and sci-fi flicks in their Tokyo Shock line, including The Mysterians, Matango, Latitude Zero and many others. It was previously released on DVD by the now defunct anime label ADV Films. I have read elsewhere that the cover art MB chose was used on a Japanese DVD of Ghidorah The Three-Headed Monster.

A commentary track by kaiju experts Steve Ryfle and Ed Godziszewski appears to be just the starting point for the extra supplements on this disc. Some cryptic posts on Media Blaster's Facebook page has lead many to believe that one of the two English dubs on the disc will be the superior American International Pictures audio track done by Titra Studios. An official release with the AIP track has been a Holy Grail for kaiju fans.

The real surprise is the Media Blasters' release of Godzilla vs. Megalon on DVD and Blu on November 22nd. This was a staple of discount store tape bins in the VHS era, and it seemed unlikely that a company would want to license it for an official release. The terrible public domain prints released on tape damaged Megalon's reputation over the years. It's not a Destroy All Monsters; however, there are some neat things happening in this underrated movie, especially the robot Jet Jaguar. I'm excited about finally seeing the original Japanese version of this childhood classic.

2 comments:

Victor Von Dave said...

Godzilla vs. Megalon was the first Godzilla movie I ever saw (they used to have movie nights in the gym of my public school when I was a kid, so I should thank the York Region board of education) - so it's sad to see he doesn't get the respect he deserves...

Seriously, he has drills for hands and spits bombs, possibly the greatest breath weapon of all time.

Kaiju said...

Megalon is a great monster design; the suit is really well done. Very underrated.

It wasn't the first Godzilla movie I ever saw, but I remember seeing Godzilla vs. Gigan at a local library branch when I was a little kid. I remember being really excited about it because it was shown on an actual film projector. Some of the other kids fell asleep before the end.

Thanks for reading!