Godzilla Raids Again

Two pilots flying a routine scouting run over the sea spot something on a remote island: a second Godzilla, locked in combat with a spiny, four-legged prehistoric beast that later becomes known as Anguirus. The two creatures tumble into the water, but neither stays gone for long, and they soon come ashore near Osaka, turning the city into the ground of their fight. With the weapon that destroyed the first Godzilla unavailable, the authorities try to draw the monsters away from the mainland, while the Japanese public prepares for the worst.

Motoyoshi Oda directed this second entry in the Godzilla series, working from a screenplay by Takeo Murata and Shigeaki Hidaka, with Tomuyuki Tanaka producing. It followed Oda's It's Paradise When One Sings (1941) in his filmography, and came five years after Otora-san's Business is Booming (1958). Hiroshi Koizumi plays pilot Shoichi Tsukioka and Minoru Chiaki plays his fellow flyer Koji Kobayashi, while Setsuko Wakayama appears as Hidemi Yamaji and Takashi Shimura returns as Dr. Kyohei Yamane. Masao Shimizu and Seijiro Onda round out the credited cast of twenty-eight.

The film runs eighty-two minutes and was released in April 1955. It found a modest commercial foothold, with a worldwide box office of about two million dollars, and its reputation today is that of a mid-tier series entry: on IMDb it holds 5.7 out of ten from roughly 9,700 votes, and on TMDB it sits at 6 out of ten from around 347 votes.