Godzilla Raids Again (

1955

)

I fear that a direct sequel to Godzilla (1954) was doomed before it even entered into production to undermine the weight and poignancy of the original's tragic ending. If Godzilla survived the attack from the Oxygen Destroyer then it would make Serizawa's sacrifice a vain gesture that accomplished nothing. If the sequel opted to create another Godzilla or a completely new giant monster (and it certainly couldn't do without a giant monster, at least if it wanted to have a fraction of the original's success and impact), then it makes Serizawa into a kind of villain. After all, if he hadn't kept the means of creating the Oxygen Destroyer secret, humanity would have the means to quickly and painlessly resolve this new threat. There is no easy way for a sequel to preserve both the menace posed by Godzilla and the tragically heroic actions of Serizawa in the original film's climax.

Still, I can hardly blame the big shots at Toho for wanting to make a sequel to their hit as fast as possible. Godzilla had netted the studio a fantastic sum of money (and would go on to earn them even larger sums with the release of the international re-edit Godzilla King of Monsters (1956)). In such cases, the rushed sequel cranked out within a year or less, is practically a film-making tradition that goes back to Son of Kong (1933) which launched in the same calendar year as its progenitor King Kong (1933). That said, these sorts of quickie cash-grab sequels are almost always a disappointment in terms of technical sophistication and artistic quality. From Revenge of the Creature (1955) to Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000) to the aforementioned Son of Kong (1933), they all pale in comparison to the original. Godzilla Raids Again is no exception, to the general trend.

The story kicks off with another Godzilla being spotted on a deserted island, battling a new Kaiju menace: A dinosaur named Anguirus. For a series that would come to be known for its creative and bizarre monster designs, Anguirus is a disappointment, being little more than a scaled-up Ankylosaurus. Indeed, the first eyewitnesses identify the creature by searching through paleontology textbooks (a move that I assume is a deliberate reference to The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), though at least here the authorities don't spend the majority of the movie refusing to believe the monster is real). The dinosaur also fails to move in a very convincing manner, as unlike the bipedal Godzilla it is painfully obvious that the four-legged Anguirus is just a man moving around awkwardly in a rubber suit.

It doesn't help that all of the battles between Godzilla and Anguirus are sped up like the action sequence from old silent movies. This always looks slightly phony, even when the film in question is depicting a scene where all the characters should be moving fast (like say a criminal fleeing the police). However, it looks completely ridiculous when applied to massive, 50-meter-tall colossi. It robs the kaiju of any sense of weight or scale, as your brain instinctively knows that anything that is supposed to be that large should not be able to dart around that quickly. Moreover, it compounds the already awkward movements of the poor actor in the Anguirus suit, making him look utterly absurd. Fortunately, this is something that later Godzilla movies would correct, and before long we would see the atomic dinosaur slowly grappling with other monsters, and gradually slamming them into buildings. If anything the natural speed and agility of the actors in rubber suits would be slowed down to emphasize the massive scale of the combat.

The named human characters are insignificant, and not just in terms of size. The most important figures are Shoichi Tsukioka, a pilot with the job of surveying schools of fish from the air and directing fishing boats to them (which may well be the winner for most Japanese-sounding profession I've ever heard of), and his girlfriend Hidemi Yamaji who happened to be the daughter of his boss. Additionally, there is a less handsome pilot Koji Kobayashi, who is given the ironic nickname of the groom because of his lack of luck with the ladies. They exist largely to take up screen time in between the expensive and impressive special effect sequences.

Interestingly, these characters while they always seem to be in the middle of Godzilla's warpath (indeed, even relocating from Osaka in the south of Japan to Hokkaido in the far north still can't stop the massive kaiju from following them), will have very little impact on the film's plot until the very end. They are just regular individuals caught up in the monster's rampage. More significant than any of these characters in terms of the film's plot are the various councils of bureaucrats and military commanders who meet to discuss how to deal with the imminent Kaiju threat, how to steer the monsters away from civilization, and how to go about killing or containing these monsters before they can do too much damage. Sure, these figures tend to turn up in most Godzilla movies but I don't think they will be more at the center of the action until Shin Godzilla (2016)).

The main characters finally get a chance to impact the film's plot at the end when Shoichi Tsukioka and Koji Kobayashi team up with the JSDAF to bury Godzilla in an avalanche. This sequence is way too fucking long. First, the planes harassing The King of Monsters drop bombs on a nearby mountain to trigger an avalanche, a sequence that seems to take about fifteen minutes by itself. Eventually, they realize that the bombs are inefficient (they sure convinced me) and what they really need are missiles. Since the JASDF is apparently critically underfunded, this squadron of fighters is the entire available air force, so a few have to split off and go back to base to rearm and refuel. We then get to watch the whole avalanche sequence again, only this time with missiles hitting the snowy mountains instead of bombs. I can't have been the only one staring at the clock waiting for the movie to finally bury the monster in ice and hit the end credits.

That said, it would be unfair to simply dismiss Godzilla Raids Again as just a half-baked cash-grab followup to a cultural sensation, as despite the rough execution, forgettable characters, and interminable climax there are a few moments of genuine poignancy scattered throughout the film's run time. Most interesting is the way in which the film approaches the scenes of carnage and destruction. Godzilla (1954), treated these sequences as a tragedy, a grim reminder of the horrors suffered by the Japanese civilian population during the war, and a warning of the human misery that would surely accompany any future war. Yet perhaps the film mistook who would be its core audience, as Kaiju movies, like most sci-fi at the time, would not be the domain of veterans, salary-men, and housewives but instead it would appeal overwhelmingly to schoolboys. Even in 1954, most of Godzilla's most ardent fans would have hazy memories of WWII, if they had any memories of it at all, a condition that would only grow more acute as time marched on.

Godzilla Raids Again holds the scenes of destruction and carnage at a slight remove from the audience. In the first instance, it plays a scene of destruction from Godzilla (1954) as a silent movie for a council of bureaucrats debating how to address Godzilla's rampage. Here the film is entirely diegetic, we watch both the movie and the bureaucrats watching the movie. We even see a couple of people at the table get up to close the window blind. On its own, this sequence could be disregarded as a cynical ploy, just a chance to pad the run-time of the shoddy sequel while borrowing some of the most expensive and impressive shots of the original film. However, if this were the case why not simply take a clip from the original, sound and all, and splice it into the movie? Plenty of cheapo sequels throughout the year have done just that (some have done much worse, like Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987) which showed a highlight reel of the entire first movie). Later in the movie, the filmmakers repeat the trick, transitioning from a scene of wanton destruction to footage of that destruction being broadcast on a television screen.

On the one hand, this may feel slightly alienating, particularly for the older members of the audience who lived through the American bombing campaigns at the end of WWII, but on the other hand for the bulk of the movie-going population (all those schoolboys who had made Godzilla (1954) a massive hit), this would be reminiscent of their only experience with the war. For them, WWII was either just a story their parents told them or images they saw projected on a television or movie screen. They were no doubt aware that something grave had happened in the not-too-distant past, but for them, there is a certain unreality to these second-hand stories of destruction and terror. They were real no doubt but they must have felt impossibly distant from their lives in the increasingly prosperous and safe landscape of postwar Japan.