Yoshio Tsuchiya Dies At 90

Above, Yoshio Tsuchiya in Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (1991).

We've lost another Toho great.

One of the more interesting actors to appear in Toho's Godzilla and other science-fiction movies, Yoshio Tsuchiya, has passed away at age 90.

He was born in Kofu, Yamanashi on May 18, 1927 and played quirky characters. Tsuchiya appeared in such movies as Godzilla Raids Again, Monster Zero, The Mysterians, Destroy All Monsters, Seven Samurai, Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, Matango, The Human Vapor, Battle In Outer Space, Red Beard, Space Amoeba and many others.

He had said that he enjoyed appearing in science-fiction films, saying, "Most actors get comfortable with a certain genre, and they stick to that. But as far as I was concerned, it was equally prestigious to appear in science-fiction films or in Kurosawa movies."

UPDATE:

According to Celebrity Icons, Tsuchiya passed away several months ago, but due to other health issues, his family delayed making an announcement until now.

Icons of Sci-Fi: Toho Collection

I perused through Sony's Icons of Sci-Fi: Toho Collection which includes Mothra, The H-Man and Battle In Outer Space and came away greatly impressed with the picture quality on all three movies.

Keeping in mind that the three are in the 50-year-old range, the producers of these discs did a bang-up job in restoring/correcting/cleaning the images. The vibrant colors of Mothra was very impressive in particular. Just gorgeous!

I've a copy of Battle In Outer Space already and this edition surpasses that by a good mile. With one exception...

The only drawback to the discs is that dub-titles were used (Sony should have learned their lesson from the experience of GMK of a few years ago) on Battle In Outer Space. Battle is clearly the weakest movie of the collection with basically uninteresting characters, except for Yoshio Tsuchiya's.

The packaging of the set leaves a whole lot to be desired. Stacking all three discs on one post is asking for scratches. What was Sony thinking? Talk about going the cheap route! Also, the cover art was horrible enough and it wasn't helped any by the way it was printed. It looks like someone just printed it on a poor inkjet printer in someone's basement.

There are no "extras" to the discs except for the commentaries (we're not going to go there) and there's no insert booklet with liner notes (August Ragone would have done some excellent liner notes for free, but we won't go there either). It would have been nice if trailers or some tidbits of historical interest were included (such as posters, lobby cards, production photos, etc.).

Still, the most important thing is (or is it 'are'?) the movies, and here Sony did a great job on two of three, with the one marred by the dub-titles.

My grade A-.