Like its predecessor, I believe the OCN for Godzilla’s second adventure is no longer extant and as a result, all Japanese home video transfers have been consistently shaky and badly timed because Toho seems to only have a poor grade nitrate interpositive or something on hand. This is because Japanese film laboratories were still behind on the times and didn’t make the jump to higher standards until about a year later.
However, it would seem Toho sent better quality dupe negatives to foreign countries (which had higher film stock developing standards) for dubbed versions (Gigantis The Fire Monster included), so overseas film elements look much better. Recently, the German theatrical version of the film was rediscovered, and the resulting transfer by Splendid supremely out does Toho’s efforts.
Toho Video R2 transfer of the Japanese cut.
New German theatrical transfer.
The German version is still missing approximately 44 seconds of footage however, and the credits are obviously not the Japanese originals. I will utilize a contrast corrected version of the more recent 2008 HV Nihon-Eiga Channel broadcast of the Japanese version, which looks a tad better than the R2 transfer, for the credits and missing shots, thus creating the best visual presentation of the Japanese cut currently known to all mankind.
With that said, neither of the available subtitle tracks are all that good. The old VDK/Tokyo Monsters subs take many questionable liberties with the dialogue, and the subs on the U.S. Classic Media DVD are overly literal and filled with grammatical errors. Once video editing is done, I will have an acquaintance of mine go over the two and from them create a more refined script.
Final release will be a .mkv or even DVD5 torrent on MySpleen. Possible extras may include an isolated score. Credit goes to Allen Perkins or BoxMonster, as his Kong restoration was a big influence and he will of course provide the HV broadcast footage and has offered to author the DVD edition.
