Godzilla Raids Again (1955) Review

AKA Gigantis the Fire Monster (1959)

Released a mere six months after the unexpected smash hit, Gojira, this movie is a great example of how not to do a sequel. Too much human melodrama mixed with rushed special effects work marred the project and nearly ended the series. Yet it did serve to introduce the idea there were more giant monsters out there to be found which set the stage for many Toho kaiju movies to come. Also reviewed is the much inferior American edit that bafflingly renamed the famous monster!

What do you do when you have an unexpected hit that packed theaters? Why you rush a sequel into production, of course. The golden age of film making was very much about rushing product out while a property or actor was hot. In this case, it cost them the director of Gojira, Ishiro Honda, due to scheduling so Toho assigned Motoyoshi Oda the job of cranking it out. While it tried to be serious, it failed to be anywhere near the quality of its predecessor despite having a cast filled with actors that appeared in many an Akira Kurosawa movie.

The show begins with Godzilla’s now famous roar over the title superimposed on clouds. A different roar is heard near the end of the credits in a brief moment of cheap foreshadowing. So why clouds instead of the ocean the mutant lizard is associated with? Because our main character is a pilot, that’s why!

Shoichi Tsukioka, played by Hiroshi Koizumi in the first of many appearances in the series, makes a living as a spotter pilot for a large fishing company. Tasked with finding tuna and other fish from the sky, he spends part of his radio time flirting with the operator at headquarters. Not only is Hidemi Yamiji (Setsuko Wakayama) his girlfriend, but she is also the daughter of his boss.

Yes, the romance part of the movie has been joined already in progress. Don’t expect much more progress, though. Unlike the first movie, it is incidental to the plot, not part of it. Perhaps if it had been, the characters would have been more interesting.

Enough with the humans, where are the monsters you ask? Well they show up very quickly when fellow pilot and best buddy Koji Kobayashi (Minoru Chiaki) has engine problems that force his float plane down on a rocky island. Tsukioka lands to rescue his friend which leads to banter about the women radio operators. So where are the monsters?!

Oh, there they are. Godzilla shows up out of nowhere and he brought a buddy too. Well, maybe not so much, since they fight like cats and dogs. It is a nice trick, since he was killed at the end of the first movie. The new critter stays on all fours and has a spikey turtle like back, plus horns on his head. He looks vaguely like an Ankylosaurus  the way Godzilla looks vaguely like a Tyranosaurus Rex. While the fight is inconclusive, it is historic because it is the first rumble between Godzilla and another kaiju.

Why am I going on about dinosaurs? Blame the movie. This may be the only movie that takes the identify a criminal from a mug shot concept and transfers it to identifying a monster from children’s dinosaur books. Doctor Tadokoro (Masao Shimizu) leads a group of officials from the Osaka area in investigating the monster sighting.

It is a pretty big deal, since Tokyo was destroyed a year before by Godzilla and they are not happy to find out there was more than one of the radioactive lizards out there. Tadokoro dubs the new monster Anguirus so the beasts can be kept straight. The operating theory is developed that this is a second Godzilla that somehow has been mutated the same way. Is it logical? We don’t need no stinkin’ logic, this a Godzilla movie!

Besides, it is time for some continuity fan service! Professor Yamane (Takashi Shimura) makes a cameo appearance to deliver bad news and a short highlight film of the first Godzilla trashing Tokyo. With the secret weapon lost, there is not way to fight one monster, much less two. The briefing reel goes on and on (three minutes!) as if it were trying to convince the audience this movie will be as good as the original. I can safely say those three minutes are the best part of the movie.

Preparations are made based on some very spurious logic, even for a Godzilla flick. Flares will be used to herd Godzilla around because bright lights make him angry!  The theory is that they remind him of the atomic bomb flash that awakened and mutated him. Wow, the film makers went from a parallel to the actual use of atomic weapons to end WWII in Gojira to saying this second monster has psychological trauma from A-bomb testing.

Intriguing? Nope. It appears to be a poorly written attempt to excuse using some cool effects.

Later on, we get to see a scene of the two romantic leads together at the beginning of a date in a stilted scene that foreshadows Tsukioka’s actions later in the film, but is stilted and unemotional. At least it serves as a bridge to something I enjoy about all Godzilla films, good or bad. That is glimpses into everyday culture in Japan of the time the movie was made. In this case we see the vividly lit signs that fill Osaka’s nightlife plus a recreation of a nightclub. It is there that Tsukioka and Hidemi have gone to dance to live music.

That sweet interlude ends abruptly with an announcement to evacuate. Guess who has come to join the dance? The big man on campus coming ashore to check out the lighthouse is one of the better effects scenes in the movie. Since Godzilla has arrived, it is time to roll out the toy tanks and live action soldiers.

Amazingly, the flares dropped by Japanese jets actually work in distracting the goliath. Okay, I admit it looks cool and is a pretty scene. Still, nuclear flash trauma?

We get our first clear look at Godzilla and there have been some changes to his suit. The new lizard looks skinnier with a longer neck. A major problem is that the puppet used in close ups does not look much like the suit head. While that was somewhat the case in Gojira, the puppet is used a lot more in this flick. It is also a great deal more bucktoothed, which gets to be distracting scene after scene.

Back to the human elements of the story. I assume the convicts being transferred in a police van are part of the evacuation, though it is never explained. A great deal in this movie just happens without any pretense at explanation. The criminals appear on screen with no build up, as if the truck had driven in from a yakuza movie. In fact, the whole movie feels like it was stitched together from parts of other films.

An amazing amount of contrived setups involving the escaped prisoners, the two spotter pilots, cops, a tanker truck, and a no smoking sign lead to the failure of the plan to save Osaka. No, I’m not kidding. Watch the movie and you will see for yourself. By the way, notice how buck toothed the Godzilla looks in that shot. I can’t understand why they didn’t notice how bad the teeth looked on the puppet.

So Osaka is toast, but the JSDF have to put up a futile fight anyway. They do this by hurling models into combat. Sorry, it is hard not to be snarky given the inferior work on this film. It is disappointing since Eiji Tsuburaya returned to do the special effects in the movie. One of the more glaring failures was the attempt to have human figures on the miniature rocket launchers. Instead of adding realism to the shots, it makes them look even more fake. The F-86F Sabre shot above is another problematic effect because while it looked pretty good initially, it failed to explode when it hit the water and blows up too late.

Fortunately, Anguirus shows up to save the day and the film. Well, maybe not, but we must hope – mustn't we? While there are moments that come close to capturing the spectacle of Gojira, most do not. Some of the fighting is done at breakneck speed and resembles a cat fight. The first time I watched this I wondered if they were aiming at replicating the ferocity of wild animal fights. Then I found out it was a mistake made by a cameraman.

The cameras used were set to be over cranked to film at a higher frame rate. When slowed down to the normal 24 FPS it gave the illusion of size and power. However, one of the cameramen set his camera to be under cranked, which resulted in one third of the fight footage being too fast. The director decided he was okay with it and left it in. It is said he liked the effect, but I suspect they simply couldn’t afford to waste any film and reshoots would have killed any chance of getting it out as scheduled.

When titanic monsters clash, cities get destroyed as a consequence. Osaka takes quite a beating while the helpless humans watch. An attempt to make the human loss more emotional was made with very mixed results. While it was somewhat interesting to have the owner of the fishing operation (Yukio Kasama) watch his dockside canning factories go up in flames, it is over played. His daughter Hidemi watching the city burn in the distance from their home worked a lot better thanks to some superb matte work.

 

There is quite a bit of cutting back and forth between  the battle between Godzilla and Anguirus with human characters during the battle. Some of it meshes well, while other changes of location do not. Since the fiasco involving convicts worked so well earlier, it was decided to have another trio from the escape make an appearance. Perhaps it was a desire for further karmic retribution, or the film makers just enjoyed offing criminals. It does lead to one of the better special effects when a subway is flooded. Better as in flawed, but superior to most shots in the film.

While it was novel to see the first Godzilla destroy the Tokyo Tower and the Diet, the tradition of destroying famous landmarks was cemented in Godzilla Raids Again. The world famous Osaka Castle is an even bigger and better known target for demolition, so the moment it showed up on screen I knew it was a goner.

With the backdrop of Osaka Castle, the big battle for supremacy between the monsters is set. Will the fearsome second Godzilla prevail and uphold the title of King of the Monsters gained by the first? Will the plucky and spiny challenger Anguirus pull off an upset? Will there be anything left of Japan?

And does anyone care about the human cast?

You will have to watch to find out. Or read the spoilers section.

But I am not done yet, because it is time to cover the Americanized version, Gigantis the Fire Monster!

Picture taken and scaled up from Wikipedia’s entry on the movie; all credit to the original uploader.

It was a strange and delayed road for the second Godzilla film to arrive in the United States. Along the way, it ended up with a completely different title derived from a failed film proposal by producer Paul Shreibman. He did not want the movie associated with the hugely successful Godzilla, King of the Monsters for some strange reason. Because being connected to something of a cultural phenomena would be bad.

 

Though edited to run less than 80 minutes in order to eliminate the pacing problems, Shreibman shoehorned stock footage of an hydrogen bomb test, rocket launches, and what looked like a movie serial rocket ship to start the movie – then wedged more unrelated material in later. The intro is narrated by a bombastic narrator before changing over to another narrator, Keye Luke who dubbed Tsukioka’s character. Narration is used very heavily with the assumption the audience is filled with idiots. That is even after compensating for kids being the assumed audience.

Much of the original footage is used, supplemented by public domain footage of Japanese domestic life. You would think the Osaka area was a backwards region where electricity has yet to come. Compare the above to the scenes of Osaka at night in the Japanese version. Irritating.

The music is changed around a bit with Theremin tracks added. It is not the only audio changed, for you will hear Anguirus’ roar coming out of Godzilla more than once! But that is okay, because both monsters are called Gigantis at different times. Actually, only Godzilla is supposed to be Gigantis, but the errors in the script are many. This is a quality dub, eh?

Oh the pain.

Remember the film Yamane showed? It gets extended with footage from what appears to be amateur special effects reels made by film students. It goes from the creation of the Earth through the rise of dinosaurs in a mash up from completely unrelated footage. Once again, I felt my intelligence being insulted. It won’t be the last time.

The nightclub scene gets the condescending treatment from before and manages to shove a shot of a war time performance with censored out swastikas showing! Think that is bad? What until you see the the live talent. Wait, a blond singer in front of skimpily dressed fan dancers is the act at the night club? Yeah, that was a necessary change.

I wonder whose mistress she was? I’m not joking, I seriously thought that when I saw the edit. Perhaps they knew they had a dog of a movie and hoped to get more hormonal teens to come see it.

Originally, only the monster footage was going to be used for a movie called The Volcano Monsters and Toho was okay with that. In fact, the two monster suits were shipped to Los Angeles for that production. A lack of money killed the project so a fast recut and dub of Godzilla Raids Again was done. Listen carefully and you may recognize a familiar voice. George Takei, Sulu of Star Trek, was one of the Asian actors brought in to record the English language dub during the very short recording session.

Bluntly put, the American version manages to take a bad movie and make it far, far worse. The dub script is horrible partially due to synching words to lips being more important than having the lines make sense. This was a quick and nasty edit to make a buck and it shows.

I’ll save the worst change to the movie for the spoilers section. It manages to encapsulate everything wrong with the American edit in one brief scene.

Thoughts

Gojira was a dark, serious, and scary movie which is rightfully considered a classic. Godzilla Raids Again is dark looking, contains too much comic relief, and is more boring than scary. Much of the blame falls on Toho Studios for pushing a sequel out too quickly and assembling a script that seems to have sections lifted out of other movies. All of this is a way of politely saying it is a complete mess.

It is never a good sign when a film drags and is only 81 minutes long. Pacing is a major issue with director Oda not having a clue how to build up any suspense.  I would say a good part of the problem is that the character development that should have been in the first two acts ends up being shoved almost entirely into the third act. As a result, the movie is disjointed and awkward in structure. To top it all off, compared to later films in the series, the fights between Godzilla and Anguirus are lackluster.

With all these problems, it is no surprise it was not the big hit hoped for. Neither the domestic or American versions did well at the box office and it faded into oblivion for all but the most fanatic Godzilla buffs. Growing up, I was unaware of it even existing, unlike all the other early movies in the series.

There are some good moments in the movie, here and there. I’d say the human elements don’t work well at all, but there are times imagery on screen is impressive. Osaka burning in the distance, Godzilla emerging from the ocean, and the initial F-86 strike were notable. I admit there was some emotional resonance in seeing Hidemi watch the city burn since it had to look much like wartime Japan when we firebombed the highly flammable wooden cities.

There is quite a bit of violence in this not rated movie, but I would categorize it as being PG in content. Escaping convicts are shot, drowned, and blown up, while the monsters fight very viciously like in a wild animal documentary. There is no blood, so I think most kids could handle the violent content. Where they will have trouble is sitting through the boring melodrama.

I recommend the movie for Godzilla fans and kaiju enthusiasts only. Maybe film students interested in how not to make a good sequel would find much to mine here. Gigantis the Fire Monster is even worse and is recommended only to die hard fans – or crazed film reviewers.

Technical

Classic Media did a fantastic job on this DVD issue and I will take a moment to describe the packaging. The copy I picked up used has a glossy silver and black heavy cardboard book style case with a holographic Toho Master Collection sticker on it. The inside has stills from the movie on each inside leaf and a clear plastic holder for the DVD. The DVD and back cover have little circles containing pictures and names of the monsters in the movie. For fans, this is handy when desperately trying to remember which monster appeared in which film.

Video quality is very good considering the age of the film. There are some blemishes and scratches here and there, but contrast is good which is critical for black and white movies. Gigantis is in terrible shape with a large amount of dirt, specks, and scratches visible. Please see the screen captures for an idea of just how bad.

The mono soundtracks sound nice and clean on both movies. The new English subtitles are occasionally stilted, yet get the job done. For American Godzilla fans, this issue was the first (and so far only) time the Japanese original of Godzilla Raids Again was made available with an English translation.

One great thing about Classic Media’s issues of Toho movies is that you always get some decent extras. Because of the way the DVD makes you choose the Japanese or American version, they are segregated between the two menus.

For the Japanese selection, the special features are:

The Art of Suit Acting – A 14 minute documentary written and narrated by Ed Godziszewski that gives the biographies and details of the men who performed in those heavy rubber suits in the early films. Not confining the subject to just this movie makes this DVD a must have for fans of kaiju movies, since you see behind the scenes shots from many movies.

The original Godzilla suit actor Haruo Nakajima gets the bulk of the attention and for very good reason. Not only did he pioneer the profession, he later became a fight choreographer for other suit actors. His work ethic was something to be admired and he never craved the spotlight.

You would think that wearing a 150 to 200lb latex rubber costume would be hard enough work, but what these men went through is incredible. If there was a scene involving jumping into or wading in water, they actually did that in a huge tank. For those who don’t know it, latex rubber absorbs water and gets even heavier. Then there were the accidents involving being suspended from wires or having explosives detonated on or under the actors.

 

Other suit actors including Katsumi Tezuka (Anguirus, King Kong, possibly Godzilla) and Kengo Nakayama (Hedora, Godzilla) are profiled as well. Only the original era of Godzilla films are covered, ranging from 1954 to 1975.

For me, this is fascinating and the kind of thing I would have killed to have seen as a kid. People may think men in rubber suits is a silly way to do effects, but the difficulty involved is considerable and the performers have to be very strong physically to act through the incredible bulk and weight.

Poster Slide Show – This slide show features mostly Japanese posters from the 1955 release of the movie along with trade ads. There is even an ad for the domestic laserdisc!

The American edit gets an audio commentary by Steve Ryfle and Friends. It is a mixed bag, but worth hearing more than the original track. While Ryfle ironically makes fun of the narrator talking too much, he delivers quite a bit of production trivia. The inclusion of two radio ads from 1959 for Gigantis the Fire Monster are played and offer an auditory glimpse into the past that I enjoyed.

Yes, I know I mixed the senses in that last sentence. I challenge you to make it through this film with yours intact. Then you can brag.

BEWARE! HERE BE SPOILERS!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anguirus goes down like a punk. The final battle between him and the Big ‘G’ is not even close. The spiky challenger manages to get shoved through a castle and fatally bitten on the back of the neck in classic dinosaur fashion. But that is not the end of his humiliation, for he ends up getting set on fire as soon as the last of his death spasms end.

You aren’t supposed to notice the pile of rags on fire in the foreground there. That’s really Anguirus, you see. That particular shot will never make it into the special effects hall of fame.

The aftermath of Osaka burning is not as impactful as the similar scene in Gojira. However, I did like the return to the fishing company’s headquarters depicting the clean up of the thoroughly trashed offices. It was one of the few times the film connected in a realistic way.

Now for an attempt to connect in a contrived way. Kobayashi asks Hidemi what women like in a scene that is very overplayed. His sarcastically given nickname of “the groom” comes into focus here as it turns out there really is a gal in his life. Of course he leaves his notebook behind and Hidemi can’t resist snooping. The death flag has been raised rather high for the comic relief character.

Okay, that picture needs some explaining or the cops should be called. Why does he have the picture of a schoolgirl and her diploma in there? Is he following the time honored Japanese tradition of chasing little girls or is it supposed to be from years ago? I just hope that is a high school diploma and not a middle school one.

It is never explained, by the way. Me, I suspect it came with a picture frame he purchased somewhere.

After a painful effects scene involving an immobile statue of Godzilla on an island, the big finale develops. By big, I mean that it goes on for a small eternity.  The special effects vary from very good to very bad, hitting every point in between. Buzzing Godzilla with a float plain produces one of the most flattering shots of the costume in the entire film. The T-33A jet attacks are not as successful since you can see the pyrotechnics cords used to detonate squibs under the snow to simulate the bombs going off.

Having gotten away with buzzing a giant radioactive lizard once, Kobayashi decides to try it again. I will admit, it was critical to keep the monster in place in the canyon for the jets to return on a second strike, but it isn’t like Godzilla can’t shoot a slow moving plane out of the sky. So ends the comic relief.

Yet his death was not in vain. In his own incredibly stupid way, he found a solution for the puny humans to defeat Godzilla – bury him in ice cubes! The impact of his model aircraft causes a small avalanche, which in turn inspires the jet pilots to bomb the mountainous ridge above ‘G’.

Then they fly back home and kill time by planning another attack. The whole thing drags improbably on and could have been edited down, but then I suppose we would have been subjected to more of the melodrama.

All of this is being done with a civilian assisting and then actually flying in the final attack. That’s right, Tsukioka is now at the controls of an F-86F Sabre. You see, he accidently ran into his old squadron mates who happened to be partying at the same place the company he works for decided to party and… Short story, improbable plot contrivances puts him in the cockpit. It will all make sense if you watch the movie. Then again, maybe not.

Kobayashi is joined by many more pilots in winging his way to the afterlife in an attack run that heavily reminded me of 633 Squadron. The later movie may have not been much better, but at least it had a great theme. Though they used it far, far too much in that film.

Oh wait, I am reviewing Godzilla Raids Again. Where was I… pilots auguring in, ice cubes falling, lots of models on wires with rockets on wires…

Oh yes, the final battle.

If you are a giant, radioactive, mutated lizard that can breath atomic fire, wouldn’t you try to melt the ice you are being buried in? I mean, even if your brain is the size of a walnut, that much would process, right?

Nope, not in this movie. At the last possible moment when he is buried up to his neck in snow and ice, then Godzilla lets out a blast… skyward. Folks, this is why dinosaurs went extinct in the first place.

So Godzilla is in a remote icy tomb, which means Tsukioka can pray heavenward for Kobayashi and thank him. Then in a film that had some really excellent matte work, we are presented with a terrible painting of the island in a zoom out so that “The End” in Japanese can be shown. In a way, that embodied the let down this sequel was.

Then I saw the ending of the American version.

They spliced in part of the scene with Tsukioka and Hidemi’s date so that they are back at Osaka looking out over the railing at the sea. It is accompanied by narration, of course. It talks of how they looked at the moon… and the film shows a sunset.

Absolutely brilliant.