Dan Curtis' FRANKENSTEIN airs Sat. 7/27 on AMC.

[Darren Gross]

True, the Japanese editions of the Godzilla films are heads (and tails?) above their dubbed, cut American versions.

The original Gojira is terrific, but the original version runs 97mins not three hours. Even so, it's 20-30 mins longer than the US release, if you subtract the newly shot Raymond Burr footage.

Ever seen the Japanese cut of GODZILLA 98 (Gojira, 1984)? That one is much, much better as well with all of the stupid comic relief and Raymond Burr stuff gone. Though Burr does a sincere job, the intent of the rest of the scenes is idiotic.

[RingoCollins]

but the original version runs 97mins not three hours.

I'm starting to see a pattern here!

[victoriawinters]

Curiously, Leonard Whiting stopped acting almost immediately after completing this picture.  I wonder why?  His gorgeous nude scene in Romeo and Juliet remains a benchmark for luscious male pulchritude in the cinema (plus, I thought he was a wonderfully expressive actor, both as Romeo and as Victor Frankenstein).

i was curious about why he left acting too.  was it something we said?  i hope not because it isn't frequent enough that we get such marvelous examples of not only a marvelous actor but one so gorgeous as well.

i also vaguely remember the nbc frankenstein and recall it to be really good.

[Mark Rainey]

The original Gojira is terrific, but the original version runs 97mins not three hours. Even so, it's 20-30 mins longer than the US release, if you subtract the newly shot Raymond Burr footage.

Ever seen the Japanese cut of GODZILLA 98 (Gojira, 1984)? That one is much, much better as well with all of the stupid comic relief and Raymond Burr stuff gone. Though Burr does a sincere job, the intent of the rest of the scenes is idiotic.

Yah, I have copies of the original Japanese versions of all the Toho films. The original GOJIRA is an incredibly powerful film. Last year at the Godzilla fest in Chicago, the con rented out the nearby cinema, and showed it, as well as a couple of other G films, on the big screen, which was a major treat.

The one film that Americanization killed more than any other was KING KONG VS GODZILLA. The original is absolutely hysterical, with lots of tongue-in-cheek humor and obviously superb acting. All of this is lost in the dubbing and needless editing of scenes. Plus, the original score by Akira Ifukube, which was mostly deleted for U.S. release, is one of his best.

[shadow=red,left,300]--Mark[/shadow]

[Philippe Cordier]

I wasn't planning to tune in to AMC Saturday night since I already own the Dan Curtis "Frankenstein" on video. And, sorry to say, I thought it was so awful I couldn't make it all the way through ...  (Not as bad as the Branagh version, but that's not saying much.  Not to mention that it bore little resemblance to the novel by the same name by a writer known as Mary Shelley!)

Nevertheless, since I happened to be home late Saturday night, I turned on the TV just as the movie was coming on and I immediately saw that it wasn't the Dan Curtis version but rather "Frankenstein: The True Story." I remember being horribly disappointed when this version was produced on TV when I was a boy, since I had already read the novel (precocious reader that I was) and this TV movie with Leonard Whiting and Michael Sarrazin bore no resemblance to Mary Shelley's novel.

But I remember having read some rave comments about this version on the Internet Movie Database and at amazon.com and elsewhere, so I decided to shove a blank tape into the VCR ... very annoyed that I didn't know it was this version in advance, since the resulting tape is missing the first couple of minutes.    Nothing irritates me more than having the beginning (or ending) cut off on my taping of a movie.

I was able to watch most of "Frankenstein: The True Story" (and managed to find a second blank tape to put in during the commercial break), and although it had little to do with Mary Shelley's novel, I did find this an intriguing and extremely well-produced version.  It was such a hoot to see such a fantastic cast -- John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson? -- Those names meant nothing to me when I was 11 years old.  (Though of course I knew Agnes Moorhead from "Bewitched.")

I truly appreciated this version in a way that I did not when I was 11 (or whatever).  As one of the reviewers on one of the boards I mentioned wrote, this version does capture Mary Shelley's theme about responsibility (which some have interpreted as a subtle critique of her husband's and Byron's free-wheeling philosophy of life).

I especially loved Jane Seymour as the wicked Prima! It will be interesting to compare this interpretation of "Eve" with Marie Wallace's upcoming role on DS, which I haven't seen before.  (Of course, in MS's novel, "Eve" is never brought to life.)

The only faithful movie version of the book is the Swedish-Irish co-production "Victor Frankenstein", a.k.a. "Terror of Frankenstein" made by Calvin Floyd, which I have written about previously.

[Philippe Cordier]

I checked AMC's website to see if they plan to re-air "Frankenstein: The True Story" (would like to re-tape and capture the first couple of minutes that I missed -- see above).

"Frankenstein: The True Story" isn't even in their database!

They do list "Frankenstein" with the year "1973" and when you click on "synopsis," the information provided is for the Dan Curtis version with Robert Foxworth, Susan Strasberg, and John Karlen.