Both came out a year apart, dealt with dinosaurs being awoken by nuclear bomb testing, and they attack a city. Which do you prefer?
I have mad respect for both films, but I have to go with Godzilla(1954), it had a bigger impact on me both as a movie fan and as a person.
2014: The Year of Godzilla
The BEAST, no question.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy GODZILLA, both the original Japanese version and the somewhat more spritely U.S. re-edit, but to me BEAST is simply an all-around better film. The Big G's total invulnerability -- even a five hundred foot tall animal is still made of flesh and bone -- moves the "reality factor" a bit too far into pure fantasy.
GODZILLA, in all his incarnations, remains the much better known creation, of course, but in my estimation, BEAST is one of the great motion pictures of all time. Steve V.
The Big G's total invulnerability -- even a five hundred foot tall animal is still made of flesh and bone -- moves the "reality factor" a bit too far into pure fantasy.
"Also, as a matter of preference, I think Godzilla is just a better design than either the Rhedasaurus or the Paleosaurus (the former looks more like a huge iguana than a dinosaur, while the latter looks too much like a stereotypical sauropod)."
As opposed to a guy in a rubber suit, you mean? Just joking!
As I said, I won't deny the overwhelming cultural lead that Godzilla continues to possess, but fame -- even lasting fame -- isn't always a true indicator of quality. Following his initial film incarnation, Big G became more of a caricature of a monster than a true monster, much more suited to the predominantly younger audience he collected about himself. The Beast was a one-and-done badass monster and much more effective for it. Even in GOJIRA, you really have to cooperate with the intentions of the movie in order to keep from seeing some guy in a raincoat swatting at toy planes on rather visible string lines. (That said, I really do LIKE Godzilla.)
Besides, without the Beast there would never have been a Big G. Steve V.
As I said, I won't deny the overwhelming cultural lead that Godzilla continues to possess, but fame -- even lasting fame -- isn't always a true indicator of quality.
Following his initial film incarnation, Big G became more of a caricature of a monster than a true monster, much more suited to the predominantly younger audience he collected about himself.
The Beast was a one-and-done badass monster and much more effective for it.
Besides, without the Beast there would never have been a Big G.
"One and done" equals "one-dimensional"? Really? To bring in Shakespeare, as you did, does that make Romeo and Juliet or MacBeth "one-dimensional"? The title folk were all dead in the end of their "one and done" storylines. BEAST was about a badass dinosaur who woke up, killed a lot of people, and died himself at the climax. I certainly don't feel that equals "one-dimensional."
BEAST wasn't about the Bomb. That was only a -- very powerful -- plot device to get him out of the deep freeze and back into behind-kickin' action. Big G's connection with nuclear terror is much stronger and much more pervasive due to the nation in which he was created, of course. To the best of my memory, the BEAST didn't even carry about any residual radiation from his encounter with the Bomb; it was the exotic lifeforms in his blood that made him so dangerous beyond his size and ferocity. I don't see how he can be judged as being "second class" to Godzilla for something that wasn't even a part of his cinematic mythology. He was a resurrected, very hungry dino, not an atomic dino.
On the other hand, the Behemoth probably was strongly influenced by Big G's super breath in the way that he was able to "project" his own radioactivity the way electric eels "project" their charges (actually, I'm no naturalist, but I don't think this is even a real talent that eels have, just something the scripters introduced to explain their version of "atomic breath" in their Behemoth). But who's better and more fondly remembered today, more than half a century later, BEAST or Behemoth? Behemoth had some great scenes -- terrific panicking crowds, the swift but agonizing deaths of those caught in the "projected radiation," the radio reports of "dead fish washing up along the East Coast of America from Maine to Florida" at the end (which I co-opted/parodied in the closing lines of THE HYDE EFFECT) -- but, overall, even with its concentration of nuclear menace, it remains only a footnote to the classic BEAST.
And in the end, it remains a perhaps uncomfortable but undeniable fact that Big G never would have roasted his first modern city or tail-whipped another gigantic rampaging monster if there had never been an earlier and, for some of us, clearly superior antecedent known as THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS. Steve V.
C'mon now! That's like asking me which one of my children I love more!
If I agreed with you, we would both be wrong!
Hmm...that's a tough one. Godzilla did have the size, that unforgettable roar and that radioactive breath "wow" factor that no one saw coming. On the other hand, The Beast kicked butt au naturel! But if I had to choose one...it would be...no, no, can't do it! I'm hooked on them both equally, along with the Alien, King Kong and The Black Scorpion. There's something about them all, individually, that I can't explain in a way that would make sense.
On a side note, have you noticed that the "monsters" with the greatest longevity and remembrance seem to be mostly those that walk upright on two legs? Or is it just me?
A really, really hard one.
Beast is a better "monster movie", and I like the imaginative look of the Rhedosaurus better. The effects are of course more impressive. But it's a more literal, straightforward story.
Gojira -- I'm talking the original Japanese film, not the Americanized Godzilla, King of the Monsters -- is a more adult, serious film about a serious subject. It's more ambitious in scope. The effects aren't as good but not bad (ranging from obvious to quite convincing), especially considering nothing like this had ever been made in Japan at the time.
Very, very close, but by the narrowest of margins, Gojira. But I much prefer Beast over the Raymond Burr GKOTM.
I like the Rhedosaurus's vulnerability to gunfire and so on, which is unusual in such films and makes it more realistic. But of course the whole point of Godzilla's being impervious to everything but a fictional creation of science (the oxygen destroyer) goes to the monster's being an allegory for the hydrogen bomb -- an indestructible force of nature that can be stopped only by an even more terrible weapon. So the films can't really be compared on this point.
The fact that Godzilla himself became a worldwide cultural phenomenon is impressive but not relevant to a comparison of these two movies. Both are great.