How did you watch Godzilla movies growing up?

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MustafaDaisenso
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How did you watch Godzilla movies growing up?

Post by MustafaDaisenso »

I'm guessing most of you had a similar experience to myself (i.e. you were around during the VHS era and saw G98 and G2K in theaters) or you're part of the younger crowd and had greater access to DVDs and Blu Rays. I know there are a few guys who got to see the Showa movies and G85 in theaters when they were released in the US, and probably some who have spent time outside the US and have had greater exposure to Godzilla movies in languages other than Japanese or English.

I was raised on the Anchor Bay and Simitar tapes (plus the Video Treasures GRA) around the turn of the millennium. Pan-and-scan, letterboxed widescreen, tracking, and dubbing was all that I knew, and all was good. I still need to track down some of those old releases, or at the very least torrents of them for nostalgia's sake.

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Re: How did you watch Godzilla movies growing up?

Post by gvamp »

I was raised on the late 80s/early 90s VHS tapes from various companies. Usually every time we went to a store and I saw a Godzilla film I didn't have I would ask my parents if I could get it. They'd normally say yes or sometimes I'd have to wait for a special occasion like my birthday or Christmas to get the VHS.

One of my fondest memories acquiring a VHS was for the Orion VHS of Smog Monster. Our local video store had this monthly magazine and on the back of it was an ad for Smog Monster as well as the other Orion tapes (Gappa, X From Outer Space and one other I think Green Slime?) So my parents asked the video store owner to get it and it took awhile to come in I think like two or three months something like that everything is a blur.

Another fond memory I have is trying to track down Destroy all Monsters which I had read about in the Ian Thorne book at that time we called every video store in town not know that the film hadn't been released yet on home video. Finally after what seemed like years of searching my second cousin brought an ad for the film along with some other Godzilla movies which I'd later find out to be the Heisei series. It turned out it was bootleg company and not a very professional one but at least I got to see DAM as well as the Heisei films post Biollante for the first time from them.
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Re: How did you watch Godzilla movies growing up?

Post by Goji »

^ This..actually kind of sounds like my life in those days, haha.

Godzilla movies didn't come on TV often in the Boston area, so it was VHS, or nothing. By 1991, I had managed to track down (seemingly by luck; I was only 6 going on 7) all of the Godzilla movies out at the time, sans DAM, and BIOLlANTE; which I had just found existed when I saw the theatrical poster in a comic store. I didn't see DAM till '94, via a bootleg of the AIP version. From '92-'96, I was on a steady diet of Heisei bootlegs found at comic conventions. The last Godzilla bootleg I ever got on VHS was GMK, in late '02; ironically the same year I got my first Godzilla DVD.
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Re: How did you watch Godzilla movies growing up?

Post by Mac »

Interesting experiences. I'm interested to see how younger kaiju fans are brought into the genre a decade from now, considering my nostalgic TBS and VHS stores are now dead. Youtube and Netflix?

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Re: How did you watch Godzilla movies growing up?

Post by Gawdziller »

On a television set.
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Re: How did you watch Godzilla movies growing up?

Post by goji89 »

Gawdziller wrote:On a television set.
Aw man ya beat me to it :cry:

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Re: How did you watch Godzilla movies growing up?

Post by HayesAJones »

On VHS when I was reaaaally lil' and then later I'd occasionally catch a film on the Sci-Fi channel Saturday mornings.

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Re: How did you watch Godzilla movies growing up?

Post by Ultra Magnus »

On VHS, primarily rented from Blockbuster. The only two G-movies I can remember owning on tape were Godzilla vs. Megalon and Godzilla 98. I also remember being given nightmares by King of the Monsters (Godzilla's first appearance on Odo Island), and being scared shitless by Godzilla's entry in Godzilla 1985. Good times.

When I was in junior high, I started buying the DVDs with my weekly allowance.
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Re: How did you watch Godzilla movies growing up?

Post by Tyrant_Lizard_King »

TNT's MonsterVision, AMC's MonsterFest, and various late night and Saturday morning movies. I owned very few on VHS until Godzilla 98 rolled around. Godzilla movies on VHS in my neck of the woods were rather hard to come buy. Most the ones I did own were either Goodtimes or Video Treasures
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Re: How did you watch Godzilla movies growing up?

Post by Jeff-Goldblum1 »

I saw Godzilla 85 on TV somewhere in the early 90's. And a couple of others on SBS Australia, I think they were Godzilla Vs The Sea Monster and Godzilla Vs Mechagodzilla. And then Godzilla 98 in cinema.

I didn't see any other Godzilla film until 2009 and I just bought most of them on DVD to view for the first time.

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Re: How did you watch Godzilla movies growing up?

Post by GojiraDesu »

I was born in 1970, so the only time I saw them was when the local channels happened to air them. I remember one of the channels had a Sci-Fi Theater every Saturday morning, and it was always a thrill when they played a Godzilla movie during that slot.

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Re: How did you watch Godzilla movies growing up?

Post by M.o.g.u.e.r.a14 »

Buying them or cable.
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Re: How did you watch Godzilla movies growing up?

Post by Emperor5353 »

Channel 18 in Milwaukee used to show a Godzilla or Gamera movie every Sat night back in the early 70's!! Once I was hooked, I was buying the super 8 movies from K-mart

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Re: How did you watch Godzilla movies growing up?

Post by Pkmatrix »

Mostly TV and VHS.

I was first exposed to Godzilla (and Giant Monsters in general) via VHS: the Goodtimes Godzilla vs. Megalon tape, TV recordings of Mothra and King Kong Lives, and a VHS of King Kong (1976). None of them sparked my fandom, though.

I became a fan thanks to TV: Godzilla 1985 on WPIX-NY and TNT's Monstervision marathon are what did it. I also first saw GTTHM on TV too, via the Disney Channel (!).

I saw most of series on VHS, rented mostly from local Mom & Pop videostores (remember those?). In particular, there was a store in Lodi, NJ we went to that had a HUGE selection - nearly all of the Showa films available in America at the time, plus about half of the Showa Gameras, Yongarry, Gappa, The X From Outer Space, and probably a few others I'm forgetting. I stumbled across a Japanese import shop on the Seaside Heights boardwalk (of *sigh* Jersey Shore fame) in the Summer of 1995, through which I got a bootleg copy of Destroy All Monsters (sold to me as the greatest Giant Monster movie of all time, and at the time I wasn't disappointed :D ). The stand also had Video Daikaiju fansubs of the then-unreleased Heisei films - that's how I saw GvM'92 and GvMG'93 (and a non-subbed copy of GvSG too!). I started visiting a local comic shop that also carried Video Daikaiju, and that's how I rounded out the rest of Heisei (GvKG and GvD) as well as discovered Heisei Gamera (Video Daikaiju fansubs of G2 and G3 - I didn't see G:GOTU until I caught it on TV in 2001 or so).

By the time I was 11 (1997) I had seen every Godzilla movie. :D

I also first watched the Japanese cut of G'54, Japanese cut of Rodan, GxM and GMK on fansubbed VHS. Everything after that I first saw on DVD.

The only Godzilla films I've seen in theaters have been G'98, G2K, and G'14. I've also seen Mothra in theaters, when it was screened in Jersey City a couple years ago. ^_^

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Re: How did you watch Godzilla movies growing up?

Post by Rockzilla »

As a kid growing up in the 90's I was first exposed to Godzilla through the Hanna Barbera cartoon being shown on CN, and then after finding out the monster was in live action movies I begged my parents to rent tapes at a Forbes video rental store. By 1995 I had literally seen all of the Godzilla movies released on VHS, except for Ghidrah, and vs. The Smog Monster. IIRC DAM wasn't released on VHS in the states until '98, so I hadn't seen DAM until a scifi airing in 2000 or so. I didn't own many tapes. Most of the time I just rented the movies, but as I got older I recorded several scifi and TNT monstervision airings.

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Re: How did you watch Godzilla movies growing up?

Post by ILL GREEN »

I watched them on free tv in my time. Only cable company that existed was HBO and WHT. WHT would show a kaiju movie here and there. But the best channels was ABC Channel 7, WPIX Channel 11, WKOR Channel 9 and Channel 5 before FOX bought them out. ABC would show the rare kaiju flicks like Gappa, Yog and Dogora. WKOR had the Smog Monster, Megalon, and they was the first and last to broadcast Destroy All Monsters on public tv and they were the ones that put King Kong vs Godzilla every Thanksgiving, it was tradition dammit! Channel 5 had half the showa catalog and every Saturday AND Sunday mornings was Godzilla on. WPIX had Doctor Morgan's Monster Show every Saturday with Rodan, Mothra, Gargantuas etc. and that show lasted a good 3 years until it got canned.

It was a good time, only thing I hated were the commercials.

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Re: How did you watch Godzilla movies growing up?

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Rockzilla wrote:IIRC DAM wasn't released on VHS in the states until '98, so I hadn't seen DAM until a scifi airing in 2000 or so.
Funny enough, I never owned that tape and only knew about it via G-Fan.

The bootleg of DAM my parents had bought pre-dated the ADV release by about three years and was a copy of the AIP dub, so I wasn't even aware that the official VHS had the International dub (or that there even WAS a separate International dub) until I caught a few minutes of it on TV some time around 2003. I had one chance to buy ADV's DVD, but skipped it and never found it again before it went out of print. I'm doubly glad I sprung for the first DAM Blu-Ray, since that has the AIP dub on it. :)

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Re: How did you watch Godzilla movies growing up?

Post by Creature22 »

I had several of the films on VHS growing up, which mostly came from my relatives. They sent me Godzilla King of the Monsters for my birthday, which was said to be "digitally remastered" (haha!) and made copies of some of the older Godzilla films for me. I also had Godzilla vs Destroyah on VHS, which scared me as a toddler (it took "extreme" to a whole new level) as well as the 1998 film and, a while later, Godzilla 2000.

When I saw the Rialto Pictures re-release of Gojira in 2004, I lost interest in the old US edits after comparing the dubbing and quality to the uncut originals. I was happy when Classic Media released it on DVD, and even happier when the Criterion Collection added it to their list of releases, with even more footage(and this time actually being fully remastered!). I would also get to see the Criterion release on the big screen as well, to coincide with the 2014 Godzilla.

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Re: How did you watch Godzilla movies growing up?

Post by Tyrant_Lizard_King »

DAM held a near mythical status to me for a long time. Ian Thorne's Godzilla book really helped on that part. The first time I ever saw any footage was the Hollywood Dinosaurs documentary/compilation. Thankfully I knew a guy from a local CD store who happened to be a big Godzilla fan. He recorded it off SciFi Channel for me. Of course I've only ever seen the international version. He also helped introduce me to several Heisei films. I've seen pics and articles on the Heisei films in magazines like Wizard or Electronic Gaming Monthly but I first saw them thanks to him on horribly dubbed video tapes.
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Re: How did you watch Godzilla movies growing up?

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Haha! The first Heisei pictures I saw were on some online website I saw as a kid. When I was little, I didn't have a computer, and would go to the local library to use the ones they had for internet and games. Basically every monster bio featured a black and white photo of the updated "Heisei version" as well as the new monsters that I had never seen (Spacegodzilla, who I hadn't heard nor knew the name of at the time, looked mind blowing). Not knowing how to read, it never crossed my mind that a new series had been made. I figured that they were simply "realistic approaches" that weren't used in movies but more for books and museums to show what they would look like if they really existed. As wrong as I had been, it was a pretty cool thought at the time.

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