Gigantis the Fire Monster (1959)

Watching this is way more patriotic than shooting off illegal fireworks.

Welcome to Kaijuly 2018, bleeders! And I have been sitting on something special just to kick this year's festivities off with, because this movie right here is one of the most forgotten and overlooked giant monster flicks out there. Remember back in the day when Godzilla got brought to America dubbed with a slightly re-written plot and an American star injected into it? Well, its direct sequel got brought stateside too but it endured much heavier edits. We're talking new scenes being shot with the original suits, Godzilla's roar being replaced completely with Anguirus' own, and even the near complete loss of Masaru Sato's original soundtrack in favour of public domain tracks. But the most confusing change was that of the name, because it was believed that the idea of bringing Godzilla back made no sense after he was killed off in the original film.

Yeah, can you imagine what it'd be like if a vanquished monster kept getting brought back for new movies? That'd be silly.

If you can't tell, this whole thing was a bit of a clusterfuck and they most assuredly weren't going to backpedal, so it did indeed get released to audiences who I fairly certain kept wondering why Godzilla was being called Gigantis and sounded like...well, we'll get to that later. My own parents have no recollection of this film and my uncle only knows about it due to Svengoolie, so going into it I am filled with more than a little trepidation. Here's hoping it won't put me to sleep like the American version of Varan did. No, I wasn't kidding, that movie literally put me to sleep. I still have yet to see the entire movie because it was just so boring. Sad but true. Anyway, let's dive into the dumpster fire and see if we can get some joy from it.

Oops, too late. All joy just got destroyed by a hydrogen bomb in the first minute of the movie.

As you can probably gather, the movie opens on a hydrogen bomb exploding, which totally doesn't make anyone think of Godzilla or anything...*coughcoughPaulShreibmanwasanidiotcough*...sorry, allergies. The narrator exposits about how scary technology is, because this is the 1950s and this story will ultimately be about how bad progress is. Clearly, we should all just wander back into caves and just forage for survival. You wanna go fuck that bear? Feel free to, because knowing not to fuck large predators would be progressive and we all know how bad that is.

"YEAH! PROGRESS IS FOR FILTHY COMMIE LIBERALS!!"

After the long-winded exposition is done, we're introduced to Shoichi Tsukioka and Koji Kobayashi. They're just two simple dudes looking for tuna and babes, as any young 1950s Japanese red-blooded man would. Also, there's a weird bit of exposition from Tsukioka about how important catching all this tuna is and how the tuna industry is going to save everyone. Capitalism: it's not just for Americans anymore! but what this is really all about is him being able to talk to his main squeeze when he radios into headquarters, the lovely Hidemi. After all, every giant monster film needs a pretty face and it can't always be Godzilla.

"THE HELL IT CAN'T!"

After some flirting and a plan for a date, Tsukioka decides to remember he's got a buddy who should probably get some story time, so we see Kobayashi in peril as he has to make an impromptu emergency crash landing on Iwato Island. Most of this is...explained via exposition...like Varan was...oh lord, please no. Don't do this to me again. No, we can do this, there's gotta be a point where the exposition leaves and we just get a narrative with dialogue. So, where were we? Right, Kobayashi is on the rocks at a beach, Tsukioka sees him, and he looks for a good spot to land. Again, while all this is happening, his narration exposits all of this to us as if we cannot bloody see it in front of our eyes.

"But if I don't explain every single thing happening, how will I know what I already did?"

He lands, they build a fire, he notices his BFF has a hurt wrist, and then he tells him to go buy the ladies a present in town when they get back as they laugh at their own sexism. Hahahaha, when do the monsters arrive, because I kind of want these guys to get eaten? Like, I know it's the 1950s but I don't remember the male heroes from the first movie being so...douchey. They also didn't spend a ton of time expositing shit to the audience as if we were all blind. So, again, where are those monsters?

"BEEP BEEP, MOTHERFUCKERS!"

The two morons we're saddled with collectively shit themselves as Godz...Gigantis...shows up, scrambling to cover. one says "what are those things" which makes me respond with "I only saw one thing" before the movie then shows Gigantis is fighting Anguirus. Why are they fighting? Probably over who gets to use the Anguirus roar. I'm voting for Anguirus because hearing that roar when this weird neutered Godzilla clone in on screen is so bloody weird. The idiot patrol here decides that they should keep hiding underneath where the monsters are fighting, because they're pretty dumb and then escape to Tsukioka's plane where they fly to Osaka. Again, this happens via exposition. We're less than ten minutes into this movie and I already hate our human characters.

Meanwhile, the two characters we actually give a shit about go for a little swim.

We're going to try and sum this up a bit more and ignore most of the narration, because otherwise I'm just going to write several paragraphs about my genuine annoyance at having the main human dude narrate everything to us. They go to the authorities and are then brought to scientists who give them "pictures of every prehistoric monster", which is something I guess they just had laying around, and they identify the monster battling Gigantis was an Anguillasaurus. I really hate these names, so we're going to just go back to calling them who they actually are: Godzilla and Anguirus. According to them, the two monsters coexisted and pretty much hate one another, so this whole thing is very bad.

"It says here that we're well and pretty fucked."

From here, they really do basically say they're fucked and then they watch a film of...the first dinosaur? It's just a derpy looking thing rising from a boiling puddle and I find myself asking how they got this footage. Like, is this just a recreation with puppets? Because it looks about as real as the real monsters do, so I'm confused. And wouldn't you know it, I just realized we're sitting through more exposition. Oh joy. Also, footage from Godzilla, because Paul Shreibman is a huge jackass. Summing it up: monsters are real because radiation and these two want to beat each other up, H-bombs woke up Anguirus thus making it man's fault yet again, and Serizawa is dead so no more Oxygen Destroyer to bail them out this time. Got it? Groovy.

"Yes, but how did Godzilla come back to life and why are we calling it Gigantis now? Because I am really confused."

Nevermind all of that, the plan is to black out the city lights and use flares to lure the monsters out to sea before this movie becomes too derivative. It seems to be a good idea, because apparently lights infuriate them, at least in this movie, and Godzilla begins waddling away from all the easily destroyed buildings full of scared Japanese people. Meanwhile, a bus of prisoners decides now's the perfect time to escape and jump into a fuel truck to get away from the cops. Because fate must really hate Osaka, this results in them crashing it into a flammable building and creates a massive fire that draws Godzilla's attention back to shore.

"GET FUCKED, OSAKA!"

Sensing it's time to actually have some monster action, Anguirus arrives and the main event can finally begin. They battle across the land, destroyed everything unlucky enough to be caught in their wake. This includes the tuna cannery that our incredibly annoying "hero" works for, which means I am now very happy because I am full of hatred for him and his tuna industry propaganda. I'm also pretty sure that some of those prisoners from earlier get drowned here too, but I thought they all either died or got re-arrested. Oh well, this shit was kind of their fault, so screw 'em. Godzilla also sounds less like Anguirus now and more like a loud fart ran through a tuba. Lovely.

Observe as Godzilla forces his enemy to sniff his farts, showing his complete and total dishonour to the spiked menace.

Godzilla then finally ends the fight, killing Anguirus at Osaka Castle with a heavy dose of atomic fire breath. Not gonna lie, I feel bad for Anguirus. His cries are kind of like a hurt animal more than a terrifying giant monster. Thankfully for him, no monster ever stays dead in the Godzilla universe. And because I am really tired of the humans and their needless exposition, let's just get to the conclusion. If you ignore most of the useless bits, the movie only really has like 15 minutes left, tops. Our heroes end up encountering Godzilla after some time passes. Kobayashi tries to play chicken and loses badly, Tsukioka has jets fire missiles at the icy mountain nearby, and Godzilla gets buried. They get medals, he gets to go home to his girlfriend, and I get to be done.

Let's all have a moment of silence for my ass, which has died now because I cannot afford a comfortable chair.

That was a chore to get through, let me tell you. I really wanted to talk about it though because most people give me weird looks when I bring the film up. While it does largely follow the same plot of the original Japanese version, Godzilla Raids Again, it has a lot of extra EXPOSITION that really makes the movie feel overlong and boring. I've heard people complain about too much focus on human characters in regards to new American film, but clearly they've never sat through this nonsense. In the aftermath, I don't care about anything really beyond being done. I do not recommend Gigantis the Fire Monster but Godzilla Raids Again isn't bad. It's definitely better than what I just sat through. Don't worry though, next time we're going to talk about something much more entertaining: a Roger Corman movie. Later days, bleeders!

"THAT'S ALL, FUCKS!"