“THE PRE-EMINENT MOVIE MONSTER OF THE 50’S! Its significance can be glimpsed only in the Japanese version!”
– Terrence Rafferty, The New York Times

“SMASHING IN EVERY SENSE OF THE WORD! Time has not diminished this movie’s tabloid docu-horror allure. In the underwater climax, the slow-moving Godzilla is as glacially creepy as the dragon in Fritz Lang’s Die Nibelungen….
The immortal Takashi Shimura (Seven Samurai) emerges as the indisputable star.”
– Michael Sragow, The New Yorker

“TALL, DARK AND RADIOACTIVE!
NOT JUST A LANDMARK MONSTER FLICK!
A FIRST-RATE MOVIE!
THE NEW 35mm PRINT LOOKS TERRIFIC!”
– John Anderson, Newsday

“A REVELATION! FLAT-OUT FUN!...
50 years after the Big Guy’s first appearance on Tokyo theater screens, Japan’s biggest cultural export finally gets his due in the United States with the release of the original ‘Godzilla’... with a vision as well-imagined and chilling as ‘Dr. Strangelove.’... A crisp print unspools... IT’S TIME FOR A MAJOR RE-APPRAISAL!”– San Francisco Chronicle

"STEP ASIDE, KING KONG! GODZILLA IS BACK!”
– David Sterritt, Christian Science Monitor

“MAGNIFICENT! VISONARY! THE GREAT MOVIE MONSTER OF THE POST WORLD WAR II ERA. Godzilla belongs with – and might well trump – Hiroshima Mon Amour and Dr. Strangelove as a daring attempt to fashion a terrible poetry from the mind-melting horror of atomic warfare.”
– J. Hoberman, Village Voice

“A BRILLIANT RESTORATION! This GODZILLA rips out those unnecessarily re-shot Raymond Burr scenes and the corny voice-overs once added for American audiences, stomping them all into the cutting–room floor like so many Toyotas!”
– New York Magazine

“STILL THE MOST AWESOME! Godzilla is pop culture’s grandest symbol of nuclear apocalypse!”
– Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

“IMPASSIONED AND RESONANT! GODZILLA IS THE CITIZEN KANE OF BIG LIZARD MOVIES!”
– Jay Carr, A.M. New York

“UNDUBBED, UNCUT AND UNREPENTANT! Godzilla rages on its 50th anniversary with articulated civic anger at nuclear folly, years before Dr. Strangelove. Godzilla in its original form is the atomic age’s fiercest indictment, not of prehistoric beasts loosed from underwater caves, but of all too-human button pushers. A sizzling metaphor for nuclear anxieties!”
– Joshua Rothkopt, Time Out New York