Godzilla’s Rumble and Tumble Part 1- My Journey through the Showa Era

Welcome to my first post devoted to the King of the Monsters in a while. Actually, it’s been almost two years since my review of Godzilla Minus One that was published on my original blog and over six years since my Godzilla overview article. Time does fly fast, but my love for the Big G and the Tokusatsu genre as a whole hasn’t changed.

I’ve been planning to do a sort of revisitation series of the Godzilla movies. I love some of the flicks to death and rewatch them on a yearly basis, but I’ve seen many other entries in the franchise only once or twice, and they faded in my memory. That’s why I wanted to come back to the beginning and watch everything in chronological order.

So, this post, and the other five or six that will follow, is a record of my personal journey through the Godzilla films. And, to be specific, I want to focus primarily not on the original 1954 movie that started it all, but on the sequels that followed suit. As you know, everything has been said and done about Gojira (1954), and I will most likely write something about it in the future, but here I want to get into the nitty-gritty of the Showa Era, the core of which is fourteen sequels, so let me start.

My journey began with Godzilla Raids Again (1955, dir. Motoyoshi Oda). If I understand correctly, this movie was made by accident(?) There was no plan for a continuation. Nevertheless, allegedly, the producer of the original film, Tomoyuki Tanaka, was at a Toho business party, and one of the executives was like, “Hey! Gojira was a big success. Make a sequel asap or something!” And that’s what he did.

To be honest, the direct sequel to the original is a bit of a chore to get through. Yes, it’s black and white, it tries to be serious, but the execution just lacks the heart and care that made the original movie so special. The story centers around scouting pilots and their sweethearts who work at a dispatch station, and essentially, the characters observe the mayhem that unravels between Godzilla and Anguirus (love him, by the way). But, unfortunately, it’s all kind of watered down and forgettable. The finale doesn’t really involve Anguirus, but only Godzilla and the brave fliers trying to battle the King.

King Kong vs. Godzilla (1963, dir. Ishiro Honda) is also a bit of a storytelling mess, but this is the moment when the (not-yet-existing) series was discovering its successful formula. The themes of media frenzy and corporate promotion are interesting as well as the monster rumble, but the biggest disadvantage is, I guess, King Kong himself, who is presented in a rather boring fashion in this picture.

Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964, dir. Ishiro Honda) is, honestly, the first Showa Era sequel I truly enjoyed. The human characters aren’t annoying, the Cosmos twin fairies are cool, and I love the mystique of Mothra. Equal praise goes to the film's direct companion piece, Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964, dir. Ishiro Honda). It introduces Godzilla’s arch-nemesis for the first time, while also telling an interesting sci-fi human side story about a princess who jumps into a rift between dimensions and consequently attempts to warn humanity about the impending danger.

Another gem of the Showa Era is definitely Invasion of the Astro-Monster [a.k.a. Godzilla vs. Monster Zero] (1965, dir. Ishiro Honda), which pits the Big G and Rodan against King Ghidorah yet again, but this time the bad three-headed dragon is controlled by an alien species that wants to invade Earth. I absolutely love this entry in the series and often come back to it.

With the movie Ebirah, Horror of the Deep in 1966, the directional duties were handed over to Jun Fukuda, who would, in my opinion, define the tone of the Showa Era up until its end. Under his direction, the stories were more light-hearted, definitely sci-fi oriented, and lavish production design borrowed a lot of cues from the James Bond films. I had a blast watching Ebirah, though the human baddies were a bit one-dimensional. Fukuda’s Son of Godzilla (1967) was visually pleasing, but a bit of a disappointment for me, mainly because of the flawed design of Minilla, which looked more human-like rather than Godzilla-like.

Destroy All Monsters (1968) is Fukuda’s riff on Invasion of the Astro-Monster, as it reuses a lot of the plot elements from that film but cranks the action all the way to the max and sets everything within the sterile confines of Kubrick’s Space Odyssey-like sets. In 2025, I finally understand why this movie was so revered by film buffs in Godzilla articles and books.

The same, however, cannot be said about Godzilla’s Revenge (1969, dir. Ishiro Honda) [a.k.a. All Monsters Attack]. This movie is hated on the web across the board, and I vividly remember James Rofle’s YouTube review that obliterated it. The main point of dissatisfaction is that the film reuses a lot of footage from the previous entries, mainly from Son of Godzilla. We follow the daily life of a school boy who is a massive fan of Godzilla and daydreams about visiting Monster Island (from the previous film). However, he gets in trouble because in an abandoned warehouse, he snatches documents of criminals who are wanted by the police. Needless to say, the criminals want them back and kidnap the boy.

I tried to stay open-minded, so let me just say that I don’t think Godzilla’s Revenge is the worst Godzilla movie or the Showa Era entry ever. Yes, it was made on a small budget to milk the popular franchise. I think Minilla shouldn’t be talking in Japanese at all, even in the boy’s dreams. But in fact, I dare to say Ishiro Honda managed to present an insightful exploration of a working-class family in Japan of the 1960s. If you think about the social context surrounding the annoying (and definitely reckless) boy, the whole thing feels quite touching.

Let me finish the first phase of my journey here. In the next article, I will cover the remaining Showa movies together with my unintentional journey down the rabbit hole of Godzilla subtitle translations and odd movie print artifacts.

Image attribution: The feature image is a box artwork that belongs to Criterion. The remaining promo stills and posters belong to Toho.