GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN: Introducing Anguirus, The Most Metal Turtle Ever

Godzilla Raids Again (1955) – The 2nd Godzilla Film – Directed by Motoyoshi Oda – Starring Hiroshi Koizumi, Setsuko Wakayama, Minoru Chiaki, Takashi Shimura, and Haruo Nakajima.

It would be hard for any movie to have to follow GOJIRA, the dark, moody masterpiece that introduced Godzilla to the world, but GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN does a solid job providing a serious backdrop while upping the Kaiju mayhem.

Tsukioka (Hiroshi Koizumi) and Kobayashi (Minoru Chiaki) are pilots. Not military pilots, but pilots working for a tuna cannery. Yup. Sexy. They’re out looking for schools of fish so the canners have something to can when Kobayashi’s plane realizes its job is to look for fish and gives up. Tsukioka is a good pal, so he lands his sea plane near the small island where Kobayashi is awaiting rescue and the two of them are happy until they look up and see the big, angry head of Godzilla. It’s not the original Godzilla, of course, because he was killed thanks to the Oxygen Destroyer, but another Godzilla.

I find that revelation to be both intriguing and disappointing. On the one hand, it’s a nice twist that “Godzilla” is an equivalent name to “Tyrannosaurus Rex” or “komodo dragon” or “cocker spaniel.” It certainly makes it easier for additional Godzillas to keep showing up and frees up writers to kill the giant, mutated, amalgamated dinosaur if they feel that makes for the best ending. On the other hand, I kinda liked my ignorant notion that “Godzilla” was the equivalent of “Thanos” and “Darkseid” and “Barney.”

Tsukioka and Kobayashi witness Godzilla fighting with another big monster, but this one doesn’t stand upright but rather walks on all fours, and has enough spikes all over his body that he looks like Rob Halford designed a the most metal turtle in history. The two Kaiju go tumbling into the ocean, never to be seen again.

Or, until later in the film.

The pilots come back to land and they have a meeting with some scientists, including Dr. Yamane (Takashi Shimura) from the first movie, and they figure out that the most metal turtle ever is likely related to an ankylosaurus. A book from a Polish scientist informs them that the “angilosaurus” wasn’t cool with dinosaur bullies like Godzilla, so of course they’re going to fight.

At the meeting, Dr. Yamane is total doom and gloom. There’s no way to defeat Godzilla because there’s no more Oxygen Destroyer. He suggests the military uses bright lights to keep Godzilla away from the city because the bright lights might remind him of the atomic explosions that brought him to life.

Godzilla does show up again (of course), but instead of terrorizing Tokyo, this one’s got the hots on for Osaka. Bright lights are shone at him as he walks in from the ocean, flares are shot, and they work, causing the monster to turn around. But then there’s an explosion thanks to some escaped convicts and Godzilla turns back towards the city. Anguirus intercepts him and they have a nice, impressive brawl. Yeah, sure, it’s two guys in a rubber suit, but they do a really good job knocking each other around around and then Godzilla goes and burns him to death.

After that, it’s Godzilla’s show until the end. Kobayashi gets in a plane and Godzilla uses his atomic ray to knock him down and he dies in a crash. The military then goes after the big guy near a mountain and they bury him in an avalanche of ice and snow and rock. It’s a pretty awesome sequence and a unique way to take him out.

The Tsukioka and Kobayashi relationship is the emotional portion of the film, and it’s a really great, engaging friendship. I love their flirting at the start of the film with the radio operator (who happens to be the daughter of the company’s owner) and I love that when Kobayashi is killed by Godzilla, it’s Tsukioka who fires the final shots that buries Godzilla for good, and he dedicates the death to Kobayashi’s memory.

What I really like about GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN is that it’s clearly its own movie; it’s not looking to simply replicate GOJIRA, but instead tells its own story. There’s a clear attempt to up the action and dampen the narrative darkness, but the film doesn’t totally sacrifice its emotional core and sell out for the monster mash. Tsukioka and Kobayashi are good characters and the action is surprisingly fast and violent. I can feel the enmity between Godzilla and Anguirus and you can tell early on that one of them is going to kill the other one. I love the idea that Anguirus is genetically predisposed to go after Godzilla, and it’s based on Godzilla being an aggressive species. It makes Anguirus a tragic hero in the story and gives his death a real impact in the film.

That underdog quality relates to the film, too. RAIDS AGAIN doesn’t have the cultural cache of the original GOJIRA, but this is a really good, really enjoyable movie.

———-

Mark Bousquet is the author of several novels and collections, including The Haunting of Kraken Moor, Gunfighter Gothic, Stuffed Animals for Hire, Dreamer’s Syndrome, Harpsichord and the Wormhole Witches, and Adventures of the Five. He has also published a review collection entitled Marvel Comics on Film, which covers every cinematic and TV movie based on a superhero from the House of Ideas. A complete listing of all his work can be found at his Amazon author page.

GOJIRA / GODZILLA: May We Live Without Destruction

Gojira / Godzilla (1954) – The 1st Godzilla Film – Directed by Ishiro Honda – Starring Akira Takarada, Momoko Kochi, Akihiko Hirata, and Takashi Shimura.

If you are of a certain age and grew up in the Boston TV market, you are well aware of WLVI-TV 56′s Creature Double Feature, a back-to-back Saturday afternoon block of monster movies. Given that they ran Saturday afternoons, I was more likely to turn the antenna to pick up the Red Sox or Bruins game down the dial on Channel 38, but I still watched it enough to know who Godzilla and Mothra and Rodan were, and I always loved catching the commercials.

There was a part of me, though, that was never able to get past the Rubber Suited Monster aspect, or the less-than-stellar effects, or even the black and white. Now that I’m older, none of those things are deal breakers, and I’ve decided it’s time to educate myself and watch a bunch of Kaiju movies until I get bored with them.

There’s only one place to start this set of reviews, of course, and that’s with the first film to feature the most famous of all Kaiju monsters: GOJIRA as it was originally called, GODZILLA as it came to be known.

GOJIRA / GODZILLA is one of those movies that if you haven’t seen it, you really have no idea how good it is. Knowing the basic story of Godzilla or being partly familiar with Kaiju movies does not prepare you for how powerful this movie is when you experience it for the first time. To start with, this isn’t not a monster movie. Oh sure, there’s a monster in it and he tramples through a city and fights the military and all that, but this isn’t just some dumb B-movie that gives you a scant plot in order to get to all the stomping and screeching. GODZILLA is a serious movie, awash in national and personal guilt and serving as a warning against the dangers of nuclear testing.

Brilliantly, the movie opens at the nexus of legend and science, expertly blending in historical fears with contemporary nightmares. A fishing boat is attacked by a flash of light, and villagers on a local island start recalling stories of the legendary “Godzilla,” a sea monster in which young girls were sacrificed to in days gone by. In short order we get our first look at the 150′ tall, reptilian biped looming over the top of a hill, and all the angry villagers who went running after him with their pitchforks before they saw him, no turn and run the other way.

One witness is Archeologist Kyohei Yamane (Takashi Shimura) and as he testifies to the government about what they’re up against, he tells them that Godzilla is only here because of nuclear testing. There is great debate in the room (which oddly falls on gendered lines) about whether the government should let this information out to the public. Eventually it’s decided to let the public in on things, as if not telling the citizens would have made it better when he showed up to destroy Tokyo. There is plenty of action sequences with Godzilla romping the city and getting shot at by a huge variety of Japanese army weaponry, but it’s all touched with a sense of sadness and futility.

Godzilla’s destruction of Tokyo is not filmed with either real menace or repelled with real fervor. There’s plenty of fire breathing and buildings getting knocked down, but the images that stand out are the victims of the violence, the people who had no say in Godzilla’s creation and no part in repelling his assault. They’re just people, living their lives … lives that get interrupted when a giant reptile and the army decide to fight each other in their city. Even when Godzilla is finally repelled (or when he decides he’s had enough knocking Tokyo around and leaves), the camera focuses on the sadness of Yamane more than the cheering corwds – we hear them but we see him as the man who argued that Godzilla should be studied instead of destroyed sees that dream fall by the wayside in the shadow of all the creature’s destruction.

It’s powerful filmaking from Ishiro Honda, amplified by a truly legendary score from Akira Ikufube.

As the army and government struggle to find a way to stop Godzilla, Yamane’s daughter Emiko (Momoko Kochi) reveals to her new flame Hideto Ogata (Akira Takarada) that her old flame, Daisuke Serizawa (Akihiko Hirata), has developed a device called the Oxygen Destroyer, which, well, destroys all oxygen underwater, forcing anything living to die of asphyxiation. Serizawa does not want to use the device because he fears it falling into the hands of people who will use it as a weapon. GOJIRA makes a powerful statement about the escalation of arms, as the only weapon that can be assured to defeat the new Greatest Weapon in the Next Greatest Weapon. The quest for power leads to bombs, which gives us Godzilla, a creature that can absorb radiation. The army’s attacks on the creature are only partially successful, so they need a new weapon, which Serizawa has, but he knows if he does use the Oxygen Destroyer, everyone will want it until the Next Greatest Weapon comes along.

It’s a crippling position for Serizawa to be in – Godzilla can only be defeated if he uses the Oxygen Destroyer, but then the Oxygen Destroyer becomes, in essence, the New Godzilla, which will cause other scientists to attempt to build something even more powerful. If Serizawa could simply trust people to not use his terrible weapon, he would use it, but he knows that the governments of the world are not going to let such a weapon be used once. Serizawa is ultimately convinced to use the Oxygen Destroyer when he hears a children’s chorus singing a lament on the radio, desiring that we live without destruction.

The final action sequence is jaw-dropping brilliant, but not because of the action. Rather, it’s emotion that carries the day. Honda films Serizawa and Ogata’s deep sea dive to release the Oxygen Destroyer near Godzilla with no joy, no speed. This is a somber attack on another living creature. Instead of coming across like Luke’s canyon run on the Death Star, Honda’s camera, Ikufube’s haunting score, and the dreamlike quality of the underwater shots make this a tragic march to a funeral. There is no joy in killing the “monster.” Even Godzilla watches them with a sense of tragic inevitability. The two men deliver the Oxygen Destroyer and Serizawa stays at the bottom of the ocean to kill himself in the process. Doing this ensures that no one will ever learn of his secrets to creating the Oxygen Destroyer.

Godzilla’s death is as somber as you will ever find for the death scene of a movie’s antagonist. There is a brief round of cheering after Godzilla dies, but all of the principals are saddened and troubled by the double death of Serizawa and Godzilla, and I’m leave feeling drained at the end of the movie instead of feeling joy or relief at the death of the monster.

GOJIRA / GODZILLA is an amazing movie.

—–

Mark Bousquet is the author of several novels and collections, including Gunfighter Gothic, Stuffed Animals for Hire, Dreamer’s Syndrome, Harpsichord and the Wormhole Witches, and Adventures of the Five. He has also published a review collection entitled Marvel Comics on Film, which covers every cinematic and TV movie based on a superhero from the House of Ideas. A complete listing of all his work can be found at his Amazon author page.