Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Year Movie Released in Japan 1966 Year Movie Released in U.S. 1968 The two Masaru Sato Godzilla scores for the 1960s are in my opinion two very underrated and under-appreciated scores as are the movies they accompany. Here with the Godzilla Soundtrack Perfect Collection, we can hear these two wonderful scores as well as every other classic Godzilla score re-mastered and sounding better than they ever have before. The first of these two amazing scores is Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster. Sato has a great way of setting the "island" feel with his choice of instruments (namely strings and percussion). He frequently uses electric guitar for a "surfer" like feel to the music. This is particularly evident in his Ebirah theme. Tracks that really stick out to me in particular are track #1, the Main Titles, track #5, where the characters are sailing the south seas, and track #24 in which Godzilla Awakens. As for the bonus material, people will be pleased (or maybe not) to learn that the wacky music used in the Japanese version for the jet plane attack on Godzilla is included here as it was excluded from the earlier Toshiba EMI release. I am told it is lifted from a Kurosawa film, but I can抰 recall off hand. The other bonus tracks are alternate cues of various parts of the score as well as about five versions of his Mothra music. I thought the Mothra stuff at the end was very repetitive. Not too much in the way of good bonuses, but a great CD nonetheless. The music sounds crisp and the re-mastering was very effective. Thankfully, Sony will be releasing this movie on DVD on February 8th, so we can all enjoy both the movie and score in a beautiful new transfer.