Another entry in the long running Fantastic Collection
book series, which started way back in 1977 and ran until 2008. Volume 28 focuses exclusively on the 15
Godzilla films which had been made up to this point.
The publication is a mix, covering a wide range of angles on the movies, but not in any strong level of depth and sadly the book is quite old, losing out to better publications that came after it.
In terms of the contents, volume 28 starts
out with an opening by Toho producer Tomoyuki
Tanaka, before diving into eight pages of
color shots from the Godzilla films. What follows next
is nine pages of background information on the films
accompanied by almost unrecognizable, as the brightness
for these shots is unbearably low, black and white photos.
Next is a section devoted to director Ishrio
Honda and the kaiju of the Godzilla films, each
are accompanied by numerous black and white photos,
some of which are rarely seen in publication even to this day like the Gigan shot on page 39.
Like other entries in the Fantastic Collection series,
this title is very picture heavy, which makes it more
import friendly. In fact, the book has 399 photos inside, 120 of which are in color, making this a very graphical publication. However, the pictures themselves, and
the more cheaply made paper which the book was printed
on, aren't up to par with modern standards. The book does feature a nice section dedicated to
the posters of the 15 Godzilla films, though, and has color
shots of 87 different posters in all. Unfortunately, most
of these photos are very small, measuring around three centimeters
tall and two centimeters wide, with some exceptions, like
the full size photos for the Godzilla (1954) and Godzilla King of the Monsters posters.
As a closing
point, this book hasn't aged well. From a historical perspective, this publication is slightly interesting as it pre-dates the Godzilla revival that would take place for The Return of Godzilla (1984) by one year. As a result, while relaunching the franchise was no doubt on author Tanaka's mind, who does the forward and is credited as "supervising" the book with Toho (although his role in this was probably minor), it's still focused squarely on the Showa series entries, the last of which came out eight years before this was published. However, this minor point of interest aside, there are just too many better books that have come out for this one to be worth searching out, sadly. |
