SEE! A monstrous sea-beast…surging up from the ocean! ….. a city of six-million wiped out by its death ray blast ! … Giant ships swamped! Jet planes swept from the skies ! Trains ripped from the rails ! MORE ! MORE ! MORE ! SEE EVERY SCREEN-SHATTERING THRILL!
Godzilla, King of the Monsters! is a 1956 kaiju film directed by Terry O. Morse and Ishirō Honda. It is a heavily re-edited American adaptation, commonly referred to as an “Americanization”, of the 1954 Japanese film Godzilla. The film was a Japanese–American co-production, with the original footage produced by Toho, and the new footage produced by Jewell Enterprises. The film stars Raymond Burr, Frank Iwanaga, along with Akira Takarada, Momoko Kōchi, Akihiko Hirata, and Takashi Shimura, with Haruo Nakajima and Katsumi Tezuka as Godzilla. In the film, an American reporter covers a giant reptilian monster’s attack on Japan.
In 1955, Edmund Goldman acquired the 1954 film from Toho and enlisted the aide of Paul Schreibman, Harold Ross, Richard Kay, and Joseph E. Levine to produce a revised version for American audiences. This version dubbed most of the Japanese dialogue into English, altered and removed key plot points and themes, and added new footage with Burr narrating most of the film and interacting with body-doubles and Japanese-American actors in an attempt to make it seem like Burr was part of the original Japanese production.
Godzilla, King of the Monsters! was theatrically released in the United States on April 27, 1956 and theatrically released in Japan on May 29, 1957, with the English dialogue subtitled in Japanese. The film was responsible for introducing international audiences to the character Godzilla, as the 1954 Japanese version remained unavailable overseas until 2004.