Hope you guys like this version! Servanov and I have a more ambitious project involving this new material in the works; there’ll probably be a dedicated thread for that once it’s closer to completion.
I’m sure most of the people reading this post are probably Godzilla fans or at least vaguely aware of the history of this film, but for anyone who doesn’t know:
Godzilla 1985 is the edited US version of the 1984 Godzilla series reboot The Return of Godzilla. Aside from dubbing the film into English, American distributor New World Pictures shortened or cut numerous scenes, added several music cues from the Def-Con 4 score by Christopher Young, altered the film’s Cold War themes to exhibit a distinctly anti-Soviet slant, and shot new scenes featuring American actors (and numerous Dr. Pepper product placements, part of a deal that combined New World’s marketing with an existing Dr. Pepper ad campaign featuring Godzilla, which also produced a bizarre promotional music video with scenes from the movie set to Dr. Pepper’s then-current advertising jingle). This version is perhaps most notable (and fondly regarded by fans) for Raymond Burr’s reprisal of his role as American journalist Steve Martin, who was inserted into the original Godzilla in a similar fashion.
This film has long been out of print in the US, having only been issued a handful of times on VHS between its original theatrical release and the late 1990s. The Return of Godzilla, thankfully, has recently been picked up by Kraken Releasing, an imprint of Section23, for a DVD/Blu-ray release in September. However, this release will not include the US cut of the film, due to royalty issues concerning the added music cues from Def-Con 4. No doubt these issues could be sorted out, but Kraken, being a budget label aimed at casual shoppers, can’t be bothered.
The only options available to anyone wishing to see the film, therefore, are aging pan-and-scan VHS tapes, or low-quality, standard definition recordings of a 2006 Monsters HD broadcast of the film. A 1080i recording has been rumored to be out there somewhere for years, but if it exists, the person said to own it has explicitly refused to share it. The standard definition copies suffer from numerous digital artifacts, interlacing, and also lack subtitles for the Russian dialogue. Basically, there are few options, and no good ones.
I intend to change that by undertaking a project along the lines of Harmy’s Despecialized Editions, assembling the best possible copy of the film from various sources.
What this will entail is taking the best known copy of the American version of the film, the anamorphic recording of the Monsters HD broadcast from 2006, and utilizing the soundtrack and American footage from that recording while substituting video from higher-quality Japanese sources wherever possible. I’ve already obtained a doctored copy of the MHD recording from Echo3, who’s made some adjustments to the video and improved its quality to a more acceptable level, and I’ll be using this copy as the source for the US material. Kraken’s Blu-ray will be my source for the Japanese footage. The trickiest part will most likely be recreating the English subtitles for the Russian dialogue. Since these are missing in the Monsters HD version, and I know of no reference material for how they appeared in theatrical prints, I’ll be using the home video version of the film as a reference for the appearance, placement and timing of the subtitles until a better reference miraculously appears.
My plan is basically this: Once I obtain the Monsters HD source, I’ll start by conducting a sort of standard definition test run using an old bootleg sourced from Toho’s R2 as my source for the Japanese footage. This will be a rough pass to acquaint myself with the work that needs to be done, and will involve minimal, if any, color correction or other in-depth work. We’ll call that version 0.5.
Once the Kraken Blu-ray is out, I’ll begin work on version 1.0, which will likely be similar to 0.5, only in HD and with more work done on the sources, including basic color correction where applicable and possibly attempting to enhance the upscaled MHD footage to make it fit better alongside the HD Japanese footage.
After this, further revisions might be made to improve subtler aspects of the film. A few things I can think of include creating custom shapes to enhance/sharpen the edges of the areas through which flames are visible in the opening credits, recreating the text of the opening credits, adding appropriate amounts of telecine wobble to the subtitles to match the footage behind them, and recreating the end credits from scratch in HD. I’m not completely certain I’ll do all of these things, but it’s a possibility.
If anyone can lend advice or suggestions on some of the finer points of encoding, color correction, image enhancement or other related aspects of the project, I’m all ears - this is the first project of this kind I’ve attempted, so any guidance is greatly appreciated. I’ll also probably need a few test viewers to help check for problems and make sure the quality’s achieving high enough standards.
If any of you are on Toho Kingdom, you can see my original thread for this project on that board here. I’ll probably be keeping a closer eye on that thread, but I’ll be checking in here too, and any major updates will be posted in both threads.
