Godzilla Raids Again (1955)

 

When a fellow pilot faces engine troubles and makes an emergency landing on Iwato Island, Shoichi Tsukioka is sent to rescue him.  The mission seems routine enough, until the pair encounter two giant creatures locked in a titanic battle.  One is an hereto unknown quadruped monster, but the other is none other than the mighty - and supposedly destroyed - Godzilla! 

Fortunately, the monsters are fully occupied by their battle, allowing the two men to escape unscathed.  On their return to the mainland, they are sent to Osaka to help the authorities investigate the encounter.  The new monster is identified as a (massively enlarged) ankylosaurus and named Anguirus.  This Godzilla, meanwhile, is a new monster identical to the one that previously rampaged through Tokyo.  This is an alarming development, as the weapon used against that creature is no longer available, and humanity has no proven countermeasures to such a fearsome foe.  Is there any hope of survival when Godzilla Raids Again?

Well, nearly seventy years and close to forty movies later, the answer to that question is "Obviously, duh." but I'll give credit to this film: it genuinely sells that the question is real for the characters.  They scramble desperately for options to contain the destruction wreaked by Godzilla, but for much of the movie the idea that they can stop him appears completely implausible.  It grants weight to the film's narrative, something that would soon wither away in later releases in the franchise.

This is, after all, only the second Godzilla film, and Big G is still a huge and terrifying event to its characters.  Godzilla Raids Again has long been a gap in my own viewing of the franchise, as the film was absent from the DVD boxed sets I own.  I'm pleased to say that more recent collections do include the film, as it's definitely one of the better offerings.  Not only does it give the title star the gravity he deserves, and introduce likeable but perennial whipping boy Angirus, but it succeeds in something that few Godzilla movies achieve: an engaging and enjoyable human-level narrative, with characters whose individual fate actually mattered to me!

Now this is not to say the film is flawless, of course.  Some of the subsidiary human-level narratives definitely smack of "here's a clumsy device to push the narrative where we want it to go", for instance, such as the group of convicts who inadvertently trigger Godzilla's biggest "rampage scene" in the movie.

The film-makers also appear to have used camera trickery to speed up the footage of Big G's fights with Anguirus.  This might have worked back in the 1950s, but by modern lights it looks very fake and lacking in the 'weight' that the first movie captured so well.

Overall, Godzilla Raids Again is not as good as the smash hit original film, but it is definitely one of the stronger offerings of the franchise, and well worth your time if you're a kaiju movie fan.