Like a lot of early Japanese giant monster films, the Japanese and American versions of Godzilla Raids Again are almost completely different films (though not quite as different as, say, Varan the Unbelievable).
I just had the occasion to watch the subtitled version of this movie on DVD and found it to be a much better film than the US version. I think that as a rushed-out sequel, it is almost comparable to Son of Kong in terms of quality of effects and story. The one point that stands out is that almost all of the effects shots that use city miniatures are shot rather murkily ... there's none of the crisp, black and white documentary feel of the original Gojira. I'm not sure whether this was done intentionally to hide the face that things were rushed and not up to the previous film's par, or simply a bad processing problem, as most of those particular effects scenes were supposed to be at night.
Both versions also suffer from really bad pseudo-scientific explanations for the monsters' existence, but the original is better in that aspect as well, being considerably less childish. I'm still trying to understand how paleontologists could figure out dinosaur motivations.
Either version of Godzilla Raids Again/Gigantis the Fire Monster is worth a watch, especially for the kaiju/50's Sci-Fi completest out there.
I just had the occasion to watch the subtitled version of this movie on DVD and found it to be a much better film than the US version. I think that as a rushed-out sequel, it is almost comparable to Son of Kong in terms of quality of effects and story. The one point that stands out is that almost all of the effects shots that use city miniatures are shot rather murkily ... there's none of the crisp, black and white documentary feel of the original Gojira. I'm not sure whether this was done intentionally to hide the face that things were rushed and not up to the previous film's par, or simply a bad processing problem, as most of those particular effects scenes were supposed to be at night.
Both versions also suffer from really bad pseudo-scientific explanations for the monsters' existence, but the original is better in that aspect as well, being considerably less childish. I'm still trying to understand how paleontologists could figure out dinosaur motivations.
Either version of Godzilla Raids Again/Gigantis the Fire Monster is worth a watch, especially for the kaiju/50's Sci-Fi completest out there.