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Review

My favorite building! Noooo!

Gojira - the original Godzilla – was a serious and gripping film, a grim and powerful one. Its sequel, not so much. There really isn’t much to Gojira no Gyakushu. There’s Godzilla fighting another monster – oh, man, there is that! – and that is, of course, just fine. But the things that aren’t Godzilla fighting another monster (which is to say, the human plotlines) have little or nothing to do with the monsters. Godzilla destroys Osaka, and out heroes have to relocate. Relocate! Oh, what hath the march of mankind wrought? Perhaps more importantly, the human plotlines don’t even have very much to do with themselves. Kobayashi suddenly, inexplicably has an off-screen girlfriend toward the end of the movie; much of the narrative hangs on coincidence – it just happens to be Tsukioka’s car commandeered to chase the escaped convicts who accidentally summon Godzilla back; Godzilla just happens to follow our heroes north after Osaka. Why wouldn’t he? There’s nothin’ better goin’ on. Really, there isn’t; we are hard-put to care about our heroes, because nothing’s really happening to them. And this makes for a slow movie, a movie that gets tiresome. Why are we watching convicts escape for so long? Why are the planes attacking Godzilla returning to base to talk about it? And so on.

It’s hard to say just who to pin this boredom, this disconnect, upon. The actors do their best with what they’ve got. The chaste and polite nature of Tsukioka and Hidemi’s romance is more an artifact of Japanese cinema of the time than a mistake. Hidemi actually manages to look honestly concerned about the destruction of Osaka, which is more than the others – or the narrative itself – can manage. Masaru Sato’s score is decent, but consistently upbeat, which certainly sucks away the gravitas of things. Sato has said, of his work here, that hearing it is “like listening to a kid, trying to learn.” The special effects are much as in the first film, and the collapsing buildings do look good (although at one point, a building in the background suddenly collapses as the monsters fight in the foreground, as if it were committing suicide in fear). The script is a problem, with its reliance on coincidence and its placement of the big monster-fight halfway through the film, leaving us with nothing to which to look forward. But really, most of the blame should probably be placed on Motoyoshi Oda’s direction. Oda doesn’t seem interested in the awesome destructive potential of his creatures. Or in anything else, really. Screenwriter Takeo Murata has said that he intended for the escaped-convict sequence to be about the looting and chaos in the wake of Godzilla; Oda makes it into interminable light comedy.

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Synopsis

No, none of these look like the little rapscallion who tricked us into whitewashing his fence…

Act One

After the credits, we see the handsome young Tsukioka (Hiroshi Koizumi), in his plane, looking for schools of fish for the fishing company for which he works. He talks to his girlfriend, Hidemi (Setsuko Wakayama) over the radio, as she works in the control room back in HQ; her father owns the company. Then, his less handsome best friend, Kobayashi (Minoru Chiaki) radios that he is having engine trouble, and is going down; and Tsukioka goes to look for him. Thus are Our Heroes introduced.

Tsukioka finds Kobayashi on the deserted Iwato Island. He sets down, they build a fire, and then, looking up from the crevasse they are in, they see…Godzilla. Well, a Godzilla – it is later said to be another member of the same species. Don’t say you weren’t warned! This Godzilla is battling a quadrupedal, spiky giant reptile, roughly his own size. Our Heroes express their understandable dismay about this sighting, and the monsters’ battle takes them tumbling unceremoniously into the sea.

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Statistics

Japanese Title: Gojira no Gyakushu (”Godzilla’s Counterattack,” roughly)
Toho Studios’ Official English Title: Godzilla Raids Again
Other American Titles: Gigantis the Fire Monster (original U.S. release title);
Godzilla’s Revenge
Noteworthy International Titles: Le Retour de Godzilla (French; “The Return of Godzilla”); Il Rei di Monstri (Italian; “King of the Monsters”); Godzilla Kehrt Zuruck (German; “Godzilla Returns”)
Director: Motoyoshi Oda
Producer: Tomoyuki Tanaka
Screenplay: Takeo Murata and Shigeaki Hidaka, from a story by Shigeru
Kamaya
Music: Masaru Sato
Special Effects: Eiji Tsuburaya
Japanese Release: 4/24/55
American Release: 5/21/59
U.S. Distributor: Warner Brothers
Review Copy DVD Distributor: Classic Media
Running Time: 82 min./ 78 min. (American version)
Monsters: - Godzilla (Japanese: “Gojira”) – A second oversized, imaginary
dinosaur, awakened and presumably mutated by atom-bomb tests, very similar to the first
- Anguirus (Japanese: “Angirasu”; also called “Anguiras”, “Angilas,” “Anzilla”, “Angurus”, and “Angiras”) – another oversized, fictional dinosaur, this one an ankylosauroid quadruped; also awakened and mutated by atom-bomb tests
Principal Cast: - Godzilla – Haruo Nakajima
- Anguirus – Katsumi Tezuka
- Shoichi Tsukioka – Hiroshi Koizumi
- Hidemi Yamaji – Setsuko Wakayama
- Koji Kobayashi – Minoru Chiaki
- Dr. Kyohei Yamane – Takashi Shimura

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Once upon a time, Matt Groening, the creator of a show called “The Simpsons” – perhaps you’ve heard of it? – and of another, more consistently funny show called “Futurama,” was nothing more than a lowly alternative cartoonist. His weekly cartoon, “Life in Hell,” was often brilliant, and often just weird. In 1994, he produced an episode of the cartoon entitled “Important Questions About Monsters, by Will and Abe,” Will and Abe being his very young sons. It was an aptly named cartoon. There were a lot of Life in Hells about Will and Abe’s preoccupation with monsters in those days; less so later on. Presumably, their love for monsters was beaten out of them by society, as it is for so many of our nation’s youth. Damn you, society! I could be a king, if not for you!

Anyway, for my next trick, I will now answer Will and Abe’s Important Questions, just 13 short years too late! While balancing on the high wire! You won’t be able to see that part.

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Well, that’s Godzilla Month, then.

First off, I would, of course, like to thank everyone who read and everyone who commented. Your support makes it all worthwhile; I already know all this stuff, after all. Particularly supportive were Elizabeth Conway, Michael Callies, and Craig Duncan; much of this would have been literally impossible without them. And thanks once again to Dan Swensen, for letting me clutter up his website with this nonsense.

My primary source for much of the information in these pieces was the Classic Media Gojira DVD itself, and its commentaries, featurettes, and pamphlet, which were put together by Ed Godziszewski and Steve Ryfle. I also did some readin’; here, then, is the bibliography:

Cerasini, Marc / Lees, J. D. The Official Godzilla Compendium. Random House, Inc., New York, 1998. Indispensable to a project like this one, and highly recommended.

Ryfle, Steve. Japan’s Favorite Mon-Star: The Unauthorized Biography of “The Big G.” ECW Press, 1998. Really the definitive text; the Godzilla Project itself is but a frail shadow of what Mr. Ryfle has accomplished.

Finally, G-FAN magazine, published by Daikaiju Enterprises, Ltd., has been an invaluable resource. Edited and published by J. D. Lees – one of the authors of The Official Godzilla Compendium - it comes out every few months. The following articles, in particular, were very useful for Godzilla Month:

- “Godzilla Abroad,” by multiple contributors, G-FAN #22
- “Godzilla Speaks! A Conversation with Haruo Nakajima,” by Michiko Imamura, Ed Godziszewski, and Kumi Takikawa, G-FAN #22
- ”Hidden Meanings: Did Godzilla Ever Really Symbolize America?” by Richard Pusateri, G-FAN #41
- “Without Raymond Burr: Godzilla at the Egyptian,” by Peter H. Brothers, G-FAN #50
- “Which Came First, the Monster or the Bomb?” by Rick Hansen, G-FAN #57
- “Godzilla vs. the Bomb,” by Bill Bussone, G-FAN #63
- “A Monster For All Seasons,” by David Annandale, G-FAN #69
- “’The Truth is the Truth’: a 50th Anniversary Analysis of Godzilla,” by Peter H. Brothers, G-FAN #70
- “The First American Godzilla: an Appreciation,” by Richard Pusateri, G-FAN #75

The Godzilla Project will return soon, but first, I’m going to think about some other stuff for awhile.

Thanks again!