REVIEWED - GODZILLA/GOJIRA: ISHIRÔ Honda's fabulous Gojira, a serious film in a frivolous genre, was, before the welcome release of this newly restored print, best known in the West in its clumsily dubbed, ruthlessly edited American version.

Comparing Godzilla: King of the Monsters, which featured more Raymond Burr than was strictly necessary, with the moody, pessimistic 1954 original, it becomes clear that we may as well have attempted to assess the merits of Double Indemnity by studying those bits of it that appear in Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid.

The plot, which sees a giant lizard-thing descending on Tokyo after being disturbed by H-bomb tests, recalls many American monster movies of the era. Indeed, Ray Harryhausen, the great creature animator, took considerable offence at the way the film borrowed from his work on The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.

But Gojira, made less than a decade after the end of the war, carries about it allusions to Nagasaki and Hiroshima that lend a surprising solemnity to the proceedings. As the monster (Haruo Kakajima in a rubber suit) strolls around the capital vaporising everything he hasn't stomped upon, a widow comforts her doomed daughter. "We'll be joining your daddy soon. Just a little longer," she says. Japanese viewers observing such grim fatalism from the inhabitants of a burning city must have been considerably more deeply affected than those punters watching the film in, say, Cleveland. Not that the scene made it into the American version.

There is fun to be had too - giant lizards are, notwithstanding Roland Emmerich's moronic remake, rarely dull. But Gojira, boosted by a terrific score and quaintly ingenious effects, comes across as an unexpectedly thought-provoking piece of work.