Godzilla Raids Again

(1955) director Motoyoshi Oda
viewed: 11/12/10

I’ve been watching Godzilla movies with my kids for about 3 years now.  So far, all the original Showa series.  And though it began as a bit of an experiment, with much younger kids, this latest viewing was requested by my daughter.  Not the film itself, but “a Godzilla movie”.  And we were down to three left of the original series that are available on Netflix.  Oddly, a few are missing from availability.  And I haven’t figured out what to do about that.

The funny thing about Godzilla Raids Again is that I’d never seen the darn thing.  The second of the original Godzilla films, coming hot on the heels of the original Gojira (1954).   Actually, it’s a little less odd in some ways.  For some odd reason, when it was released in the US originally, Godzilla Raids Again was re-packaged as Gigantis, the Fire Monster.  So despite being the only other black-and-white Godzilla film and being the first to feature a battle between two titanic beasts, Godzilla and Anguirus, this one somehow eluded me for many years.

As in watching these films with the kids, we watch the dubbed and re-edited American versions.   The only exception I made was in watching the original Gojira, which I did without them, and allowed myself to watch it as a foreign film with subtitles.  It certainly can and does make for a different experience.  And in the case of Godzilla Raids Again, it’s probably fairly detrimental to the film.  It’s ripe for comedy quite a bit.

In this one, hydrogen bomb testing unleashes the two dinosaurs and they find their way to Japan to wreak havoc.  Interestingly, they wreak havoc in Osaka, not Tokyo, for a change.  And initially, the monsters are only interested in battling one another.  That is, until Godzilla kills Anguirus and then just has Osaka to take his aggression out upon.  He meets a rather interesting doom, buried beneath an avalanche.

The kids really enjoyed it.  For Clara, it’s hard for her to remember back 3 years ago when she was 3 and we were first testing the waters with giant rubber-suited Japanese monster movies.  Felix was 6, so he remembers the movies a little better.  They’re actually keenly interested to re-watch a couple of favorites, but I told them that I’d like to get through the other two films left in my Netflix queue before back-tracking.

I, of course, grew up with Godzilla myself, this same series of films, some of which were still being released new at the time.  And Godzilla was my favorite monster for whatever reason.  We haven’t been watching them in any particular order over time, which served our purposes for watching whichever seemed to tickle a fancy at the time, but it might have been interesting to watch the evolution of the creature from villain to hero.  And I’m a little bummed because I really would like to watch Destroy All Monsters (1968) (a personal favorite from childhood), All Monsters Attack (1969), and Godzilla vs. Megalon (1973), but Netflix doesn’t carry those titles.

We do have a couple left to go, so, depending on the kids’ whims and fancies, you’ll see more of those Godzilla flicks here in coming weeks.

If you’re interested in seeing a list of all the Godzilla movies we’ve watched, click here for the whole bunch!