Messing with Nature in Kazuki Ohmori's Godzilla vs Biollante: A Blu-Ray Review

*full disclosure: a Blu-Ray copy of this film was provided by Echo Bridge Entertainment for review.

Director: Kazuki Ohmori.

Writers: Shinichirô Kobayashi (story), Kazuki Ohmori.

Cast: Kunihiko Mitamura, Yoshiko Tanaka and Masanobu Takashima.

Not many North American video releases of the Godzilla films are as thoughtful as Criterion's release of the original film, Media Blaster's Destroy All Monsters or Echo Bridge Entertainment's release Godzilla vs. Biollante. The single featurette is what sells this product. It reveals some secrets in how this film marked the Heisei period of this nuclear monster's reign and it shows that not all effects have to be CGI driven. In the late '80's, the method to create special effects involved matte paintings, models and simple tricks of the camera to create the illusion.

These heydays are long gone by today's standards. But can anyone imagine what the imagineers of "Walking with Dinosaurs," the arena spectacular could have done if contracted by Toho?

At least, in Biollante, the collaboration can potentially be amazing. Biollante itself, a beast made with the genetic imprint of a human, a flower and a beast sounds like a freakish creation from Frankenstein's lab. At least the scientists acknowledge that when man is the true beast compared to the monsters they create, this nod to Shelly's novel puts this movie on a decent footing. The message is simple: never toy with nature, because it can bite back.

The film could have done better with a different plot than one about a geneticist, Dr. Genshiro Shiragami (Kôji Takahashi) hoping to bring some spiritual essence of his daughter Erica (Yasuko Sawaguchi) back to life. She died early in the film when spies bombed a lab containing samples of Godzilla's DNA.

The spy thriller that goes on does not make too much sense unless viewers are watching the movies from The Return of Godzilla (aka Godzilla 1985) on. For Japanese monster lovers, the big fight is what most viewers are wanting to see. The battle is okay and the cry for victory sounds like a dying whale.

In the featurette, the movie makers explain that this movie marked the beginning of the Heisei era. From '84 to '95, the monsters were larger than life; they were taller and even more menacing than the beasts from the previous four decades. The effect engineers were also experimenting with new techniques to make Godzilla fiercer. Electronic animatronics were just being introduced. Sadly, the technology was in its infancy. While the comparison of this version of Godzilla to that from Final Wars is vastly different, at least the monster went out with a spectacular bang before Toho Studios retired him.

But for Godzilla fans, to see a complete Blu-ray release of all the movies complete with the original Japanese tracks and bonus material goes without saying. The DVD releases from a decade back have often included the original tracks, but very rarely have they included extra material.

Echo Bridge Entertainment earned points by including a new subtitled translation. In examining this release, they have provided a very clean, colorful and crisp transfer and included a Japanese surround track along with the old Miramax mono English dub. Kaiju fans can do more than rejoice, they can cheer for Big G coming to life in a home theatre!

Overall: 7.5 out of 10.

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