Destroy All Monsters

Rating:
Summary: MONSTER MANIA!
Review: The biggest Godzilla monster Bash ever filmed! A Must HAve for Godzilla FANS!

Rating:
Summary: An exact duplicate of the original DVD Release
Review: I already own this movie but I bought this DVD hoping that it would have added a little something nice to the original A.D. Vision release of this DVD -- specifically CHAPTERS! That's right, other than the soundtrack disk this is the exact same one released by A.D. Vision already and they STILL did not add the chapter selection to this supposed "special edition". Why is this important to the disk? Well for starters if you choose to skip to the next chapter the movie starts from the beginning again. If you want to see a scene 40 minutes into the movie you have to actually frame advance the whole way or else -- you guessed it -- the movie starts over! The movie is excellent but the disk is awful.

Rating:
Summary: Great movie...but not with the original AIP voice-tracks.
Review: This is one of the greatest Godzilla movies ever produced, but this DVD version is far from perfect. Unfortunately, this is just a re-issue of the same DVD released a few years ago. The film transfer is exactly the same as the one previously released by ADV films, which has a recently re-dubbed mono soundtrack. The ADV soundtrack is much inferior to the one originally produced for American International Pictures in 1968, which featured an excellent voice-cast and a different script. Apparently the AIP version can't be published because the ownership rights are in limbo. The only reason I bought this DVD issue was in the hope that it might contain the original voice-tracks. No such luck. The folks at ADV would like you to believe it's something new, and they deliberately stretch the truth. The cover art claims it's the "50th Anniversary Special Edition", but Destroy All Monsters was made in 1968, which makes this DVD issue the 36th anniversary for the film (in 2004). The 50th year, is a reference to the first Godzilla movie "Gojira" made in 1954, but the text makes no mention of Gojira or Godzilla. It also claims to contain "The original motion picture and soundtrack", which is a bit of misrepresentation. The original film was Japanese language, and this DVD isn't even the original English version. I would've been a lot less disappointed if they had at least given this version some chapter stops and stereo audio (which there isn't). There's not even a menu for this low budget version. If you try to hit the chapter advance button, the movie starts over from the beginning. There's no menus, no extras, no subtitles, no secondary audio tracks, no trailer, no nothing. The only thing that's different from ADV's first issue of this movie, is the cover art and the addition of a music CD. The CD contains 30 mono-audio music tracks from the movie soundtrack. The music score is wonderful, but the audio is not stereo and the fidelity is only fair. My point of contention is that ADV is trying to fool us into believing this movie has the original audio soundtrack, but instead gives you fine-print on the back mentioning an extra music CD. Buyer beware, if you already own the first version issued by ADV, don't be fooled into thinking this a different version.