Godzilla Raids Again (1955)

Welcome back to the Criterion Challenge/October Franchise Run/Godzilla Deep Dive (it's a little of all three for now.)

We're a bit late into the month, but still determined to keep moving. Over the next few days, we'll be covering the first 'arc' of Godzilla - from atomic menace to what I'd like to call 'friend to all children', but that's Gamera's beat.

Anyway, that's getting ahead of ourselves.

Flashback to 1954 - in the wake of Honda's original Godzilla becoming a success, Toho producer, Iwao Mori, already had the word 'sequel' on his lips.

An ambitious idea, to be sure. Save for the fact that the titular monster was dead.

Not that that's ever stopped a sequel before, of course.

Taking inspiration from a line from Professor Yamane (Shimura Takashi, briefly reprising his role in this) the movie found its hook - when your first radioactive dinosaur dies, get yourself another one. Or two, as the case may be here.

Going in this, and the subsequent entries, I am coming at this with a particular primary focus - tracking the franchise as a whole, and how each property evolves that from its beginnings to what is considered the 'traditional' Godzilla film.

The decision to have multiple kaiju is where Godzilla Raids Again distinguishes itself in that line. Godzilla is back, but audiences are also introduced to the second of what would become Toho's extensive bestiary - the giant ankylosaurus, Anguirus.

Okay, one new observation here - this is the first time it really hit me how at first they tried to keep to dinosaurs as far as expanding the roster went.

At first, anyway, but we'll come back to that.

Besides the another kaiju, the most marked change this movie has over its predecessor is that it is considerably less grim. This doesn't make it a light-hearted movie, of course, but it also avoids anything on the level of the destructive horror of the previous movie's Tokyo attack and its somber aftermath.

There is still a fair amount of destruction to go around (including a subplot involving one of cinema's more unlucky jail breaks) but it also spends much of its time looking at the impact of these giant monsters from a trade and supply line perspective. Which is an interesting take, don't get me wrong, but it also causes this to lose out on the horror of the previous movie.

Despite that, it does keep with its predecessor in its view of its titular monster - yes, Godzilla is fighting another kaiju in this, but that doesn't mean he's our hero. In fact, neither Godzilla nor Anguirus really pays any mind to what the humans around them are doing. They're just destroying whatever gets in their path - including each other - and the humans are left to determine how to handle the winner.

How those humans handle that marks the last major difference between this and the original - there is no oxygen destroyer and no troubled scientist to really drive the nuclear comparison this time. Which isn't a bad thing - as much as I love that aspect of the original, it's not an element you can expect to keep repeating to the same returns. In that case, I'd prefer they give it one good go rather than keep repeating it till the tank runs out of gas.

In turn, this version emphasizes the human effort in terms of trying to trap the surviving monster (including two pilots, one of whom is played by Kurosawa alum Minoru Chiaki.) There isn't a superweapon to save the day - just risky planning and a willingness to put one's life on the line to try and stop another catastrophe in the form of a radioactive dinosaur.

Godzilla Raids Again is an interesting part of the larger lore for me. On the one hand, it lacks the punch of its predecessor. On the other, it still makes a good effort to stand on its own, and marks the first expansion of the kaiju roster. It's a generally well made, eminently watchable Godzilla movie, especially if you're looking for titles from the era when the character was still seen as, literally, a walking disaster.

This also marks the last of the black and white era for Godzilla. Next time we step into the world of color, and Godzilla's first warm-blooded opponent, with the vaunted (and rumored) throwdown King Kong vs Godzilla.

Till then.