Are you partial to any DUBS? Plus, Brandon's awesome reviews

[Gojira1963]

I pretty much only watch the dubs.

[Tokage]

I prefer to watch the Showa films dubbed and the Heisei /Shinsei films subbed. It's what I'm most used to.

I pretty much agree, with the exceptions of Gojira 1954, due to so much being edited out of the 1956 US version, and Godzilla Raids Again, due to the English narration annoying me so much. I will sometimes watch the subtitled versions of Showa movies that have been slightly edited, just to see the cut scenes (eg: the bloody scenes in G vs Gigan, Katsura's fake plastic boobs in Terror of MechaGodzilla, etc), but the dubbed Showa versions are fine if they are mostly unaltered.

It really pissed me off that Tristar could only release the International dubs, especially for Son and Sea Monster.

G vs Smog Monster and Destroy All Monsters are two more that need to be re-released with the AIP dubbing instead of the International dubs.

[Goji]

GIGAN's "bloody scenes" were only omitted from the Cinema Shares cut (GODZILLA ON MONSTER ISLAND), and are present in the international version seen on the New World Video VHS/LD, Anchor Bay VHS release, and (obviously) the Sony DVD. So unless you're watching one of the rare VHS releases of GOMI, or an old SciFi airing from the early '90s, that's not even an issue.

[Tokage]

GIGAN's "bloody scenes" were only omitted from the Cinema Shares cut (GODZILLA ON MONSTER ISLAND), and are present in the international version seen on the New World Video VHS/LD, Anchor Bay VHS release, and (obviously) the Sony DVD. So unless you're watching one of the rare VHS releases of GOMI, or an old SciFi airing from the early '90s, that's not even an issue.

Yeah, that was a bad example. I should have said the monster-talk word balloons from GvGigan. My point was that there's just a few brief edited scenes here and there that cause me to occasionally watch subtitled Showa G-films from the '60s and '70s.

[Goji]

It's weird, but the speech bubbles haven't ever appeared on any of the masters used for home video in the U.S., but they were present on one that played on the SciFi channel in the mid-late 90's/early '2000's.

They do exist on at least one of Toho's 35mm prints used for screenings/festivals. The print that was screened at G-Fest 2008 featured them, much to my surprise, and that of much of the audience (though the reactions of the people I talked to were more along the lines of "I had never seen those!", while mine was "Those weren't supposed to be there!").

Outside of those two instances, they only seem to appear on the Japanese master used for Toho's R2 DVD's.

[Tokage]

Outside of those two instances, they only seem to appear on the Japanese master used for Toho's R2 DVD's.

Yep, those were the source of my subtitled VHS that I had up until the early 2000s. There were several decent mail-order places to get bootlegged VHS or S-VHS taken from the Toho laserdiscs, and later on the DVDs, with half-decent subtitles added back then.
I try to keep my sources more legit these days, but I do wish there was more HD subtitled Showa stuff out there readily available. Particularly King Kong vs Godzilla.