Time has not diminished this movie’s tabloid docu-horror allure. H - bomb tests awaken a four - hundred - foot sea dragon and send him wobbling into Tokyo, crushing trains and swatting down fighter planes like a fire - breathing King Kong. The monster is obviously an actor in a rubber suit, but the destruction is smashing in every sense of the word, and the director, Ishiro Honda, ladles out dollops of crude pop poetry, whether in his medieval mode (smoky tableaux of a remote Japanese island) or his futuristic one (an oxygen - depleting chemical sending fish skeletons plummeting to the bottom of a tank). In the underwater climax, the slow - moving Godzilla is as glacially creepy as the dragon in Fritz Lang’s “Die Nibelungen.” The new print restores forty minutes never before seen in the U.S. and excises Raymond Burr’s tackedon role as an American reporter. The immortal Takashi Shimura (“The Seven Samurai”) emerges as the indisputable star. Originally released in 1954. In Japanese.—Michael Sragow (Film Forum; May 7 - 11.)
 
FILM FORUM
W. Houston St. west of Sixth Ave. (212 - 727 - 8110)— May 5 - 6 at 1:20, 3:10, 5:30, 7:20, and 9:10: “High Noon” (1952, Fred Zinnemann). May 7 - 11 at 1:10, 3:15, 5:30, 7:30, and 9:40: “Godzilla” (+).