GIGANTIS, THE FIRE MONSTER (1955)
(a.k.a. GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN)
Article #193 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 9-25-2001
Posting date: 2-8-2002

Two giant prehistoric monsters are discovered, which then set out to attack the city of Osaka.

Once again, I wish to point out that all comments are based on the American version of the movie, having not seen the original Japanese version, whose title roughly translates as GODZILLA’S COUNTERATTACK. I’m not sure why Godzilla’s name was changed in the U.S. version; perhaps they couldn’t get the rights to use the Godzilla name. The movie itself is pretty disappointing; it lacks both the full-blown horror of the original movie and the goofy charm of later entries in the series. There is entirely too much narration throughout, the vast amount of which is totally unnecessary. I also feel that there was some confusion during the dubbing; if I didn’t know Gigantis was Godzilla and Angilus was the big hedgehog, I might have had a lot of trouble figuring out which name went with which monster, as it seems to switch around at certain points in the movie. In fact, the trademark cries of the monsters also seem to switch around on occasion, unless my imagination is playing dirty tricks on me. The structure is also pretty strange; the destruction of Osaka should occur much later in the movie; as it is, this sequence occurs about halfway through, and the rest of the movie suffers from a number of unexpected dead spots where the monsters appear to vanish from the picture. I don’t consider it the worst Godzilla movie, but it may well be the least interesting of them.