Toho Kingdom

heiseigodzilla425 wrote: ↑Fri Nov 20, 2020 7:20 am

KingKaiju wrote: ↑Thu Nov 19, 2020 2:34 pm Kids nowadays will not understand the thrill of Video Update, Hollywood Video, and Blockbuster, as I'd go to multiple locations discovering different Godzilla films!!

Kids also wont know the frustration of going to different rental stores and grabbing the same movie but with different titles on the box, like Godzilla vs. The Cosmic Monster and Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla.

I rented Godzilla Raids Again like 3 times, because of he different covers. I was so annoyed every time I saw it was black and white.

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CrimsonBloodX wrote: ↑Thu Nov 19, 2020 7:51 pm

KingKaiju wrote: ↑Thu Nov 19, 2020 2:34 pm Kids nowadays will not understand the thrill of Video Update, Hollywood Video, and Blockbuster, as I'd go to multiple locations discovering different Godzilla films!!

AMEN! Walking into a video store to rent out a movie and maybe buy some candy was more fun than just streaming movies in your house.

Agreed! There was always a gamble of extreme excitement or disappointment.

Honestly it was mostly through the physical copies i owned. Mom bought a huge boatload for me, which i've kept going ever since!

Rented VHS tapes from my local Video stores. Nuff said.

Same story as many others, Showa-era films from blockbuster. Eventually ended up buying some of the VHS when the Heisei series started coming out via Suncoast. They were always pricey but pretty much the only place to get them.

When the Heisei Films started coming out on VHS,I remember getting them at Circuit City and they were surprisingly inexpensive (less than $10 IIRC)

I originally grew up watching a mix of films from the 3 main eras of Godzilla through bootleg DVDs made by my Grandfather (he used to do that with a lot of movies/series I wanted to watch). The first official release I got was the MADMAN Godzilla Millennium series boxset (which was also bought by my Grandfather). Years later I eventually collected the rest of the Madman sets and a year or two ago I finally started expanding my disc collection to Western releases (Criterion, Kraken, etc...) to get the films I'm missing.

Unfortunately, my collection of some of Toho's non-Godzilla films pretty much extends only to Mothra (in-terms of my physical collection at least). I'm hoping to soon get the Tokyo Shock releases of Dogora and Frankenstein vs. Baragon sometime soon though.

Get them! I did and they're excellent!

In fact, with Frankenstein vs. Baragon you get three versions of the film rolled into one package: the original Japanese version, the second Japanese version with the Oodako (Giant Octopus) scene at the end of the film (both of these versions have optional English subtitles) and the American version (dubbed in English).

I am one of the newer fans so I got to see most of them on DVD or Blu-ray and got to see the original tracks of most films as a result.

I can remember being very young and watching Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II on VHS at my mom's boyfriends house. The thought of how nostalgic that memory is to me has inspired me to collect every Godzilla VHS I can find and I've built up what I think is a modest collection!

With a smile on my face yo!

Seriously though, I collected VHSs and I would scour TV Guides weekly to see if any of the movies would pop the heck up.

I was super dork about this stuff man! Good times yo, good times!

When I was young like 6 or 8, I went to my Grandparents house, my aunt was still living there back then, till then she did have a DVD collection of horror and classic monster movies, some of them were Showa Godzilla film, I only saw 2 movie Terror of Mechagodzilla and Mothra vs Godzilla

KingKaiju wrote: ↑Thu Nov 19, 2020 2:34 pm Kids nowadays will not understand the thrill of Video Update, Hollywood Video, and Blockbuster, as I'd go to multiple locations discovering different Godzilla films!!

There's all this nostalgia for video rental places, and that's understandable, but realistically; I don't think any 80s or 90s rental place can hold a candle to the movie and TV selection at my public library system right now.

I suppose it varies from library to library, but I guess I've just got some cool librarians in charge!

Angilasman wrote: ↑Tue Apr 20, 2021 5:13 pm

KingKaiju wrote: ↑Thu Nov 19, 2020 2:34 pm Kids nowadays will not understand the thrill of Video Update, Hollywood Video, and Blockbuster, as I'd go to multiple locations discovering different Godzilla films!!

There's all this nostalgia for video rental places, and that's understandable, but realistically; I don't think any 80s or 90s rental place can hold a candle to the movie and TV selection at my public library system right now.

I suppose it varies from library to library, but I guess I've just got some cool librarians in charge!

Oh of course not. Now we get on demand films, with options of original Japanese cuts vs. American edits. We grew up in a time when the "Godzilla wins in the Japanese version of King Kong vs. Godzilla" was still a thing. I think the scarcity of films made it fun to discover every film. Nowadays kids can just go onto youtube and find summaries of each film. I had my 4-year-old nephew tell me about how the the Showa, Heisei, and Millenium series. Shit, I didn't even know that the Showa and Heisei series had a name till I got older and discovered Godzilla forums.

Going to different Video Stores as well as scanning TV Guide Every Week was a very significant part of my formative years. The market you lived in definitely makes a difference as well. Fortunately growing up in the San Francisco area, there was a lot of love for Godzilla Films. Though for some reason Destroy All Monsters and Atragon were two that never played beyond the early 80's, so I didn't get to see the AIP versions until i got bootlegs at conventions in the early 90's. Moving to Sacramento in 1990, I was able to get Gamera vs Monster X, Super Monster Gamera, and Dagora the Space Monster from late night UHF station airings. These were literally once-in-a-lifetime airings, so I forced myself to stay up, I couldn't leave to chance a programming error on my VCR

vhs/tv

Hi! This is actually my first post on the forum and I thought it seemed fitting. I had a copy of the Godzilla Invades America novel and the novelization of the 1998 movie. I thought they ranked up there with Mary Shelly in terms of sci-fi books (I was dumb). I became low key obsessed (my main obsession was Marvel Comics), but our video store didn’t have any of them really. But I would go to Best Buy and stare at the DVDs every weekend. Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla and Son of Godzilla played with regularity on Svengoolie. At a garage sale, we found Godzilla vs. Gigan, Megalon, MechaGodzilla II, and King Ghidorah. It was a sweet jackpot at the time, even though the tape for Megalon didn’t work. When I figured out Library holds and my parents Got the Netflix DVD subscriptions, I was able to fill in some gaps, but really it was only Raids Again and 2000. Weird combination. I saved up a bunch of money (like $15, but I had no source of income) and bought Final Wars, Which in my child brain I thought would be the best value for my dollar as it had the most monsters. Good memories.

VHS, including a recording of TNT's MonsterVision marathon on a couple of tapes. I also caught the occassional movie on TV and saw both Godzilla 98 and Godzilla 2000 in theaters.

I was introduced to Godzilla 1998 by my Aunt when I was young. I was at first too afraid to watch the film, but when I did, I loved it! After that my Father bought me Godzilla:King of the Monsters on DVD. That led me to renting Showa Godzilla movies on DVD, along with Godzilla 2000 and Godzilla Tokyo S.O.S. The Hesei series remained a mystery to me until I believe 2016, when I finally started watching those films. (I believe Godzilla Vs Mechagodzilla II first)

VHSs of Megalon, Godzilla vs Mothra [1962], Monster Zero and Godzilla's Revenge, followed by 2000 in theaters, a mixture of AMC's Monsterfest, Scifi ,YouTube, followed by Starz and other premium channels that had the Heisei and Millennium films.

I got introduced to it simply because family watched it. One of them grew up with Ultraman and watching Godzilla on TV, and watched anime, and it almost seemed natural I'd fall into it, because I remember watching Ultraseven [don't really remember it, but seeing the TNT opening and Tiga felt like deja vu] among Toonami and Fox Kids which had the bulk of anything from Japan. I knew a little about 1998, but I didn't see it until it hit cable. I even remember flipping the channel away from King of the Monsters because it looked a tad boring. So? Interestingly because of that coincidence, my first exposure to the first Godzilla film was first through Gojira on YouTube than KOTM like most people outside Japan. Then I promptly got the majority of the series on DVD.

I've seen many of them dubbed, but others subtitled if there wasn't any choice like with 1954, 1984 and Biollante. I can go either way.

This alongside seeing the 2004 Grudge remake* really made me very interested in foreign film, so it bled over into getting "The Host" by Bong Joon-Ho, and plenty others. Finding directors and movies I never would've been exposed to if I simply never was interested in Godzilla.

* Many people seem to not like it, but I tried getting into the original and it's frankly hilarious. Having the original Japanese director take those separate short stories into a single narrative with Sarah Michelle Gellar as the lead made it better, and Kayako felt terrifying. Then again, I seen the original years after I seen the remake, too. Depending on how much I liked the remake, I'd give the original a chance. However, the Japanese version of One Missed Call is much better in my opinion than the remake.

Back in the late 70s- mid 80's we got local NYC stations through cable. WPIX etc. Also WTBS and,TNT. Every afternoon or so I would look for them. Half of them I maybe saw in TV and later on VHS