Review: Return of Godzilla
Rebooting the franchise whilst also being a follow-up to the original “Gojira” , our title monster bursts out of an erupting volcano 30 years after the events of the first film. A group of fishermen witness this, but are quickly attacked by mutated sea lice, who kill all but one of the men. This lone survivor is rescued by a vacationing journo (Ken Tanaka) who tries to get all who will listen to take the story seriously. Familiar faces Yoshifumi Tajima and Hiroshi Koizumi (who had roles in several previous Toho films) turn up as a government minister and geologist, respectively. The 1984 Japanese version of what was eventually sliced and diced into the Americanised “Godzilla 1985” , this Koji Hashimoto (a veteran 2 nd assistant director on several Toho films including the tedious “King Kong vs. Godzilla” ) film was meant to be the vastly superior cut I was informed. I haven’t seen “Godzilla 1985” in decades, but this sloppy, unfocussed, and dull affair is bottom tier Godzil...