Unhelpfully renamed “Gigantis: The Fire Monster” in the U.S. – presumably because “Godzilla Raids Again” calls up unwanted images of Gojira driving into the front of an off licence in a stolen Ford Escort and making off with multiple cases of Tennents Pilsner – the Big G’s sophomore outing finds Tokyo under siege for a second bout of Toho Studio’s particular brand of “e-reptile dysfunction”.
However, while the movie starts to build on Toho’s impressive, monstrous, supporting cast with the induction of Kaiju cinema’s most notorious B-lister, punching bag, the hapless Anguirus, it’s noticably missing a vital component in the original’s success – that of director Ishiro Honda.
With Motoyoshi Oda stepping in and delivering a more straightforward monster movie than Honda’s more political take, could this second rampage of the King Of The Monsters possibly hope to match the first?
After one of their number crashes his plane while scouting for fish, a couple of pilots working for a cannery stumble across a second Godzilla while flying by a small island in the middle of the Pacific and desperately report their findings to their superiors. However, while the discovery of another, giant, radioactive lizard is enough to make the authorities go pale with worry, the fact that he’s seen brawling with another, entirely different monster, later dubbed Anguirus, is enough to ruin anyone’s day. With the Oxygen Destroyer – the invention that took down the first rampaging Godzilla – is gone with no way to replicate it and to make matters worse, the presence of Anguiris, a giant spiky Ankylosaurus with a roar like a manically depressed donkey, can only mean the devastation and loss of life will be twice as extensive. Bummer.
As the two Kaiju sort out their differences the only way Kaiju know how – beating seven shades of monster shit out of each other – authorities in Osaka can’t help but notice that their scrap is bringing them ever closer to the beleaguered city’s shores. After countless meetings, it’s agreed that this new rampage simply can’t be stopped, but maybe it could be diverted and the cities resources start going towards leading the monsters away out to sea rather than stopping them outright.
However, after their plan is accidently scuppered by a jailbreak that goes disastrously awry (crime doesn’t pay, kids), Osaka becomes host to the mother of all scraps as both Godzilla and Anguirus literally level the playing field as they throw their considerable weight around.
However, in the aftermath, Tsukioka and Kobayashi – the two pilots who spotted Godzilla in the first place, enact a plan to lure in and emprison the beast once and for all, but the plan could very well cost them their lives.
Eschewing the first film’s iconic nuclear analogy in favour of a more standard disaster plot, Godzilla Raids Again, while a slightly more epic affair (More monsters! More carnage!), definitely suffers from a less personal approach. The absence of original director Ishiro Honda is keenly felt as the model and suit work take prevalence over any truly meanful message and instead we get the typical, monster-equals-bad approach usually taken up by the Big G’s imitators.
Also, in a effort to avoid replicating the numerous political movements in the first flick, Godzilla Raids Again instead focuses on the ins and outs of the Kaiyo Fishing Inc. as the movie not only plots it’s way through the numerous love stories that occur between the pilots and the women back home who talk them through their fish scouting routes. It’s an odd choice as the movie seems to place the company’s worries of Godzilla scaring away their best fishing routes over the obliteration of the entirety of Osaka and it’s hardly gripping stuff compared to the stakes of the original.
However, Godzilla and Anguirus’ main brawl, which results in them plowing through Osaka Castle in spectacular fashion is pretty much worth the price of admission alone and a massive factory explosion which draws the monster’s attention in the first place measures up to modern motion picture levels of destruction quite well. However, while watching Godzilla square up to his first foe is legitamately cool, the Kaiju rumbles are fairly basic, the puppets used look like the Muppets reenacting a Royal Rumble and – thanks to some confusion between over and under cranking the film speed while shooting – more than a little awkward. Most old-school monster movies are filmed in slow-mo to catch the weight of the titanic beasts. Here, in some shots, the footage is actually sped up and while it initially make some of the fight look more ferral, it equally also makes you feel that the Benny Hill theme tune should be playing on the soundtrack instead of a threatening march.
Speed rates of giant lizards aside, Godzilla Raids Again has somewhat of a greater problem as the film seems to have absolutely no idea as to what it’s own plot seems to be about and is paced very strangely. The story is loaded with almost nothing but incident and the human cast, burdened with a story concerning an upcoming marriage between a pilot and his fiance, barely make an impact at all. Even Godzilla seems unsure what to do, choosing to (spoiler) kill his opponent 45 minutes into the movie and then fuck off the Arctic to just hang out aimlessly until the humans figure out how to vanquish him. Even weirder, after the puny humans figure out that burying him under a glacier will be just the ticket, they bizarrely all run off to have one more meeting about it while leaving an undignified Godzilla stuck buried up to his chest. Even a last minute sacrifice of a side character fails to add depth to a technically proficient, but ultimately pesonality-free affair.
Both the temporary departure of Honda and the iconic themes of Akira Ifukube are noticably felt and the fact that the American cut of the movie nixes large chunks of plot in favour for heavy narration and still feel like it drags isn’t a great sign.
Too straight-laced to be kickabout fun and yet too silly to be compared to it’s far superior predecessor, Godzilla Raids Again stomps in on uncertain ground. Kaiju buffs will undoubtedly find many things here of value, but few else will leaving the King Of The Monsters to wander uncertainly around instead of raiding with confidence.
🌟🌟
We Have Issues 
One comment