Godzilla! (found high-quality release of kaiju film edit; 1977)

Title card from the high-quality version.

Status: Found

Date found: 2017

Found by: Marco Tealdi, Ed Glaser and RedMenace

Godzilla!, Often called Cozzilla, for its director Luigi Cozzi, is a 1977 colourized version of the 1954 film Gojira, only available for homeownership through TV recordings and bootleg DVDs. No known versions include the ending, although it has surfaced on YouTube, and the "full" version that surfaced online in 2014 was a very low-quality recording that had the text from the end of the reel included in the movie, as it hadn't been run properly.

There are rumours that a high-quality 8mm print surfaced in recent years, but it was never released, and the movie has never had a proper home media release. An old introduction used on TV shows some very high-quality footage, where the colours are actually quite distinct, while most versions of the movie available are quite faded and poorly aged.

The movie spliced in footage from other sources, which is fairly effective at some points but makes it look messy at others. Most of the footage is from The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and Godzilla, King of the Monsters. There is also at least one scene from 1955's Godzilla Raids Again, as well as footage from the wars (which does result in actual human death on screen). The base movie does seem to be from King of the Monsters, although there is added footage from Gojira.^[1]

Availability

It is unlikely the movie will ever receive a restored release since Toho Studios has never mentioned it at any point, and it's unknown if the current owners will release it. It is also notable that side B of the original soundtrack to the movie hasn't been released on CD, although it does appear on a rare EP.

Sometime in 2017, Italian collector Marco Tealdi acquired a 35mm print of Godzilla! He passed the print along to Cozzi himself, who proceeded to have it scanned. The lab created PAL DVD and Blu-ray discs of the scan, and Cozzi apparently passed copies along to Tealdi, who only had a DVD drive at the time, so he could only circulate the PAL DVD online. This was the source that was upscaled for an attempted restoration by user Geno Cuddy.

Tealdi later got in touch with American film collector Ed Glaser, who sent Tealdi a Blu-ray burner in exchange for a copy of the Blu-ray disc, which Tealdi gave his blessing for Glaser to distribute further.

In July 2019, Glaser contacted MySpleen user RedMenace, offering to pass the Blu-ray along to him to upload online. RedMenace later uploaded the Blu-ray to MySpleen on March 23rd, 2020.^[2]