Search - Various Artists :: Godzilla: King of Monsters

Godzilla: King of the Monsters

04/27/2002

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I got the tape version of this. It is actually two Godzilla stories that is spoken. It features two stories: Godzilla vs. Amphibion and Godzilla vs. the Alien Invasion. Godzilla vs. Amphibion is about Godzilla and a swimming reptile with sharp lobster claws and a 100 foot tall fin on his back fighting in the Bermuda Triangle and Miami. Godzilla vs. the Alien Invasion is about Godzilla coming out of Lake Michigan and fighting some aliens and these type of "slimy" monsters. I liked these stories very much. Godzilla's roar is the one he had in "Godzilla: King of the Monsters" (the movie). I just wish it came with some pics or something like that. Nuff said."

Definitely not a soundtrack album

A. C. Cronvich | Planet Zeist | 02/08/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is a great record from 1977 containing two audio adventures. The original movie series ended in 1975 and

the last film Terror of Godzilla was released to US theatres in summer 1978. This was an interesting period for godzilla fans. Henry Saperstein of United Productions of America controlled much of the US rights to the Godzilla character and liscenced him to Hanna Barbera, Marvel Comics, and also Wonderland records, who created many

audio adventure and novelty song records for children (for you youngsters out there, a rocord was a round piece of black plastic that made noise when you spun it around and stuck a needle into it. Weird huh?)

The Godzilla record has artwork from issue #1 of the Marvel Godzilla comic on the cover. A nice tie in, that is recreated on the cover of this CD. The sound effects include the original Godzilla roar from the early films.

The background music is a recognizable public domain military march (the same music can be heard during the opening credits of the original 1982 version of "I was a Zombie for the FBI", But is not in the DVD version).

The voice acting is very professional with many recognizable voice actors (there are no credits on the cover, which is a shame. One of the voices is the same actor who voiced Hayata on the ULTRAMAN series) and there is a narrator. The stories are pretty good and are more american in flavor than a Toho movie (some miami surfer types are present) and try to be topical (references to UFOs, Bermuda Triangle Mystery, JAWS and sharks) but the plots are true to Godzilla.

The first story is GODZILLA VERSUS AMPHIBION and has G battle a long necked quadruped mutant amphibius reptile with a 200 foot fin on its back and claws like a lobster, which has been causing the legendary bermuda triangle disappearances all along. Amphibion is also a radioactive mutated dinosaur.

(Shame they didnt give us any illustrations)

The second story is GODZILLA VERSUS THE ALIEN INVASION and plays on the popularity of UFOs at the time.

Bruton, an alien commander from a flying saucer, with plans of conquest, plants some "BIRTH PODS" in lake Michigan. Due to a sudden temperature change the pods hatch into giant green Mutants with laserbeam shooting red eyes. Godzilla shows up and has to battle twenty mutants. (This battle is a bit too short) while airforce jets combat more space ships. This story seemed pretty unGodzilla like to me at the time, But I had only seen Godzillas Monster Island films and some of the city smashing ones. I hadnt yet seen Monster Zero or any of the Alien Invasion ones yet. The Alien Mutants are said to resemble "string beans" and come from a

"world of constant sun"(?). Wish they told us what that planet is called, but then "third planet of the black hole

solar system" is pretty vague also.

In both stories, some scientist types refer to Godzilla as a "plaeosaur" . They obviosly just made this up for the LP, (perhaps inspired by "paleosaur" from Giant Behemoth) since Godzilla had never been classified as anything (not until 1993 when he was dubbed a "godzillasaurus")

I highly recommend this record for G fans. Particularly fans of the Showa Series. This was a sort of rudderless period for Godzilla, since the movie series had basically ended and all film projects developed during this period never came to pass. The Hanna Barbera cartoon, the Marvel comic book series and a single Viewmaster 3-D adventure continued the showa era plotline between Terror of Godzilla (Mechagodzilla 1975) and Destroy All Monsters (set in the late 1990s). It was around this time that Mattel released its giant

Shogun Warriors line of 2 foot toys, which included Godzilla and Rodan."