Jill Elliott - I Was Afraid To Love You (promotional-only 45, New World, 1985)

 NOTE: Link is fixed!

Well, here it is.  The infamous, notorious, extremely rare promotional 45 for GODZILLA 1985 that's...not even in the film.

Over recent years, it's become more widely known by fans that there was a plan to bring the 1984 GOJIRA (or THE RETURN OF GODZILLA if you like) to the U.S. as a "wacky parody" and make it "funny."  Thank goodness none of this came to fruition, and lots of people say that Raymond Burr had more than a little to do with stopping this from happening.  He was certainly someone who understood the importance of Godzilla and what the character stood for.  

Anyway, you'd be unable to convince me that the song on this record wasn't at the very least an outgrowth of that plan.  Just look at the label:  "the love theme from the motion picture GODZILLA 1985." It's also telling that it wasn't used as--at the very least--part of the end credits music, like Toho did with their Star Sisters track.

In the end, since the song existed, it was decided to use it in a music video of film clips, and distribute it as a promo 45.  Judging from myriad YouTube comments, the video played on MTV a couple of times, on an Elvira special, and on the beloved Night Flight...and then disappeared.  No word on whether any radio stations actually played the record. There is more than one upload of the video to YouTube if you are so inclined.

If you're familiar with the term "low-hanging fruit," then you understand why it's not even worth making fun of the song itself (it's so bad, it's bad).  Instead, here are some fun facts:

*7-inch, 45 rpm promotional-only single, made and distributed by New World Pictures

*Stereo; 2 minutes 35 seconds

*Same version on both sides (whereas in the old days, you'd get one mono and one stereo version)

*Starts and ends with some added cheesy, looped Godzilla roars...the ending ones are weird and slurred, and reminds me of how they changed Toho roars for early Ultraman monsters.  It's worth pointing out that there are versions of the promotional video on YouTube that have "clean" versions of the song, with no roars at all.

Finally, here is my direct rip of the song from the record itself, in both mp3 and lossless, in all its glory:

Jill Elliott - I Was Afraid To Love You

DESTROY ALL MONSTERS Giant Ad Mat (1969)

 

It's unfortunate that it's been so long between posts, but we at The Sphinx are hard at work on the next editions--and last volume--of our GODZILA GUIDES, in which we attempt to cover all vintage American Godzilla items...which may be a test of sanity.

Anyway, today we look at an unusual "ad mat" or set of ad slicks for DESTROY ALL MONSTERS. This particular one measures 23 by 35 inches! That's nearly as big as a movie poster.  It's one-sided, and as you can see in the photo above, it's really two sets, because no matter how you turn it, one is always upside down.  

At least we can look at the two halves, separately.  Here is a list of what's included (handy for setting up your newspaper page layouts):

Here are the two halves of the ads:

Hard to photograph, impossible to scan, but great stuff! Stay tuned for some big things coming up...we are of course still doing our annual Countdown to Spooky Month, which will start soon (somehow there is still more we haven't shared yet)!

"Manda mangles London"?