The Best Of Godzilla 1954-1975: Original Film Soundtracks

Forget that big-budget Godzilla flick-here's the REAL stuff, 42 excerpts from those fantastic scores to the even-more-fantastic Japanese Godzilla films from the '50s through the '70s. Which films, you ask? Godzilla, King of the Monsters; King Kong vs. Godzilla; Mothra; Destroy All Monsters; Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster; Godzilla vs. Megalon , and more. And on the first track are those mighty footsteps!

Despite the best--no, make that worst--efforts of a Hollywood studio to destroy his legacy in the '90s, Godzilla lives! Okay, we know, the original Gojira is still just an underpaid and overworked stuntman in a clumsy rubber suit, but that just makes the Big Guy's half-century legacy all the more remarkable. Perhaps the most underrated element of Kaiju Eiga (the Japanese term for the prolific, internationally successful monster genre spawned by the World's Biggest Radioactively Mutated Reptile with an Attitude) is its earnest, nightmarish music. The Toho Studios series' cheese-factor may have waxed and waned (mostly the former) in ensuing years, but its music maintained a remarkably even keel. The dark, often minimalist efforts of original composer Akira Ifukube set the tone, coloring much of the toy-city stomping with ominous, nerve-wracking cues. But as the genre entered the swinging '60s, a deliciously skewed pop sensibility began to take hold, as Tokyo now saw its property insurance rates skyrocket to a soundtrack increasingly informed by warbling chanteuses and twangy guitars. GNP-Crescendo offers up a generous and sampling of the first 20 years of Kaiju Eiga music here, complete with annotation and lavish color artwork that would put many major-label anthologies to shame. --Jerry McCulley