I finally have a scheduled day off from work, but I still feel horrible, so I decide it's "Sit On My Fat Ass and Do Nothing" day. This means turning on the television. Anyone with a brain knows that daytime television is made for morons and radicals because nothing is being broadcast except slanted political talk shows and weird repeats of old reality TV.
I start changing channels, wondering the whole while how the world continues to turn at this level of stupidity, until I stumble upon the COMET channel. The COMET channel is having a day-long Godzilla festival, and not the new stuff; black and white gems of the horror genre.
Oh, sure, I must have better things to do, like make soup and grade papers, maybe dust a little bit. But no, I decide it's time to watch Raymond Burr attempt to speak English to an entire cast of Japanese-speaking actors, hitting his mark every damn time. The dubbing (and over-dubbing) is side-splitting, which flies in the face of the fact that this is, with all that is true and honest, an "genuine horror classic."
It's fun to try and decipher which scenes are real footage of ships and planes and buildings, and which are done on sound stages or, worse, in bathtubs. Godzilla is, of course, a mechanical marvel and superior to the fake electricity lines. In the end, a one-eyed, semi-maniacal doctor saves the day, sacrificing himself, his speed-date fiancee's wedding-night fate, and all of the oxygen in Tokyo Bay. Sorry if I ruined it for you, but after the city is flattened, the humans do what they always do: Destroy innocent creatures from the nature they perverted in the first place.
The one thing I didn't realize though, is that Raymond Burr is not totally un-handsome. Even in black and white, it is clear that he has huge blue eyes with decent lashes, and he is a tall and not pudgy young man. However, even those revelations are not enough to hide my shock when he is lounging in a tent with a Japanese cohort. The two men are chatting away when the monster's
approach causes a sudden gust of wind, toppling their tent. Burr and sidekick run to a tree and hang on. This is when I notice Burr is clad in a partially open shirt and white skivvies. Yes, the cleanest white skivvies his mama could ever be proud of should he be in a car accident. Then, the rain starts. Raymond Burr is in the rain in sheer white skivvies and ... Geezuslouizahs, I never realized that Godzilla was borderline porn!
Well, it just goes to show that #1, things aren't always how we remember them (I never noticed the skivvies before), and #2, daytime television really is a wasteland, and, probably most important of all, #3, Godzilla maybe isn't truly dead since there is a marathon of more Godzilla movies on all day.
