Its New Years Day. The parade(s)
are over and I have zero interest in the bowl games.
What to do? Turner Classic Movies
has a Godzilla marathon! “Godzilla Raids
Again”, the sequel to the last years (1954) feel good for the season movie*, “Godzilla”!
Feeling over salted and over fatted from the previous days
festivities, I settled down to in front of the screen with an apple and two mandarin
oranges. Even the cat gave me the stink
eye at the lack of lickable options.
I am not sure if I ever saw this movie before. Checking IMDB reveals it was released under
different names, and was taken apart and reedited for a dinosaur flick, “The
Volcano Monsters”.
The movie starts with a pilot scouting the ocean for fish
for the Kobayashi fishing company. After
directing the Kobayashi Maru to a school of bonito, his radio team gets an
emergency call that his buddy, also scouting for fish is going down near some
island.
This island is small, you can see the whole thing in a shot,
and it has to be near by Osaka, a few hundred miles a most, because the pilot
returns there. But of course, it is on
this island we discover Godzilla, in his stop action form. What are the odds? Not only that, some other giant monster is
there and they are in a brawl.
The monsters, now in their vinyl suit form, wrassle till they fall off the island and into
the water. The pilots escape, and tell
the world that Godzilla is back, and from the description, the other monster is
a giant ankylosaurus. Mysteriously alive
after 65 million years, and not so mysteriously (cough…H-Bomb… cough) grown
from 25 feet to 150 feet long.
Japan goes on alert, the “Scientist”, played by an actor last
seen in Seven Samurai, first notes that this must be Godzilla’s identical twin
brother, since the real Godzilla was last seen stripped to the bone by a
mad-scientist’s super acid, and calmly explains that Godzilla is suffering from
PTSD from being H-Bombed, and is attracted to, indeed enraged, by lights. A plan is devised. When Godzilla shows up, the city will evacuate,
go into complete black out, and planes will lure him out to sea with dropped
flares.
And it works! A Godzilla
shaped object is first spotted by radar(!)**, the sighting then confirmed by a
frigate(!)***. Drama ensues. People less than calmly evacuate, the city
goes dark with amazing timing. Not just
the city lights, but the cars and trains all turn off their lights in the same
second! The planes fly by, flares are dropped,
Godzilla takes a tail swipe at an light house, and heads out to sea.
But that would be a 40 minute movie. We can’t have that. So we inject a scene where a dozen prisoners,
who are being evacuated, take control of their prison truck and split into 4 or
5 groups. Police efficiency is at its
best, even though there were only 4 police in the truck, every group of
convicts has 3 or 4 police chasing them.
Except one group of convicts, who hot-wired a truck. They were being chased by only 2 police in a commandeered
vehicle driven by our hero, the pilot, mentioned in paragraph 4 above, who just
happened to be driving by. I guess when
you pay top dollar for an actor, he gets as much face time as you can, no
matter how contrived the situation.
They of course, crash into the Osaka refinery, starting a
major conflagration, and catching the attention of Godzilla, along with his ankylosaurus
wrestling buddy. Mayhem ensues. The wrassling kaiju are drawn to Osaka castle
like tornadoes to a trailer park, and it is destroyed.
After that, the budget being tight, Godzilla seems to be
satisfied with the destruction in his wake, goes back out to sea. Where he is found again by our sharp eyed hero, somewhere north of the
island of Hokkaido.
What are the odds? Hokkaido itself is
about a 1,000 miles north of Osaka, and Godzilla is north of that! Running out of fuel (no kidding), his scout plane is
replaced by one flown by his buddy introduced in paragraph 4.
We next see Godzilla in his non-animatronic incarnation (the
device just didn’t work, so he just stands there motionless) as he goes to ground on a small, but mountainous
and glacier filled island.
The air force is sent to bomb Godzilla. The hero pilot asks to join them. And they accept. Now he was an Army or Navy pilot during the
war, so at least he deserved consideration.
But he has since been flying float planes, and not military jets. So that would be a hard no all round. But again, its the movies. Independence day took this to the logic absurdity putting a drunk crop duster into a F18 super hornet.
Buddy dies because, “drama”, air force arrives, but bombs are
useless. The hero sees there is a chance to bury Godzilla in an icy avalanche. Air force rearms and buries Godzilla in ice.
Where he will be forever, unless the planet warms up, or
maybe, summer.
Could this be the same island that the US Air Force buried the Blob 3
years later? There's an ugly thought.
*Godzilla came out in Nov, 1954, Godzilla Raids again, April, 1955. Tells you a lot about the expected production values.
**As a former radar operator of 50's designed equipment, I find this description
unlikely. A big signal return, yes, but
Godzilla shaped? No. Just a spike on the hash is all you will see.
***Probably a bad translation. While there is no general definition for the
term, "Frigate", but nothing in the post WWII Japanese navy would be described as
such.
