Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.
As Toho's Godzilla series suffered it's greatest drop in ticket sales ever for Son of Godzilla, which was also the second movie in a row which failed to hit cinemas outside of it's homeland, series producer Tomoyuki Tanaka began to look at the prospect of ending the series as a serious consideration. Ideas were running thin, so he re-assembled the creators of Godzilla after a 2 movie absence, recieved a bigger budget to work with, and planned to send the series out with as big a bang as possible, with the movie that would become known as Destroy All Monsters.
Released in 1968, Destroy All Monsters has a lot to answer for. It was the first Godzilla movie I saw, and is pretty much responsible for my slide into Godzilla fandom. It was hard for a 5 year old kid not to love a movie where 11 giant monsters took to the screen, as well as UFOs, spaceships and laser-guns all played a part.
As I mentioned, the movie reunited the 4 'Godzillafathers', director Ishiro Honda, composer Akira Ifukube, producer Tanaka and special effects supervisor Eiji Tsuburaya for the final time, and was planned to include all of Toho's Kaiju in one big slap, bang end to the series that had struck a chord with audiences all over the world. Monsters who had only seen once screen appearance, like Anguirus from Godzilla Raids Again, Baragon from Frankenstein Conquers the World or the even more obscure Gorosaurus from King Kong Escapes would all play a part in Destroy All Monsters, this was to be the ultimate in Kaiju Eiga.
The movie is set in 1999, where the world is at peace, daily trips are made to a base on the moon and all of the Earth's monsters have been gathered and secured at one of the Ogasawara Islands, off the coast of Japan. Godzilla, Minya, Rodan, Mothra, Varan, Baragon, Manda, Gorosaurus, Anguirus and Spiega all call this island, dubbed Monsterland, home.
Underground in Monsterland is not only a spaceship launch facility, but a lab designed to study all of the monsters, so we can hopefully learn things from them.
However, one day an astronaut named Katsuo(Akira Kubo - Matango) is on the phone to his girlfriend Kyoko(Yukiko Kobayashi - Yog! Monster from Space), she is at Monsterland in the lab and he is on the moon, when she is cut off.
After all contact is lost with Monsterland, and all of the monsters disappear, Dr. Yoshido(Jun Tazaki - Ebirah: Horror of the Deep) asks the astronauts of the Moonlight SY-3, which Katsuo Captains, if they will land at Monsterland and find out what is going on.
However, before they get there, the world discovers where the monsters are, as Godzilla appears in New York, Mothra in Beijing, Rodan in Moscow and Gorosaurus in Paris, where each creature is wreaking havoc upon it's destination, Rodan destroying the Kremlin, Gorosaurus coming up from the ground beneath the Arc de Triumph and Mothra smashing into trains.
When the crew of the SY-3 do land on Monsterland, they are confronted by Kyoko, who is acting very strange. She takes the crew to meet a lady who claims to be from the Planet Kilaak(Kyoko Ai - Flying Phantom Ship), who reveals that they control the monsters actions via a console, and that unless the people of the Earth submit to their laws, all of the Earth will be destroyed by Godzilla and co.
Naturally they resist, and it isn't long before Godzilla, Manda, Rodan and Mothra all converge upon Tokyo to give it a sound thrashing. However, the human forces have discovered the secret of how the Kilaaks are controlling the monsters, when they capture an Earth Scientist who worked at Monsterland, only for him to kill himself. On his body, they find an implanted radio device, which the Kilaaks were transmitting waves to in order to control his actions. Small devices are found all over the world, and Kyoko is rescued when Katsuo rips out her earrings, which contain the devices. However, the monsters still remain under the control of the Kilaaks, but it isn't long before they discover that the waves are being transmitted from the moon, so the SY-3 sets off to the moon.
When there, they discover the base of operations, and blow up the transmitter. However, possibly the most important discovery made there is that the Kilaaks are incredibly weak when not in a heated enviroment, and will go into hibernation unless they are in a very high temperature.
The people of the Earth, after commandeering the device used to control the monsters in Monsterland, have now figured out how to control them for our benefit, and it isn't long before all 10 denizens of Monsterland are making their way to the base of Mount Fuji, where it's been established that the Kilaaks have a hidden base. However, while they have lost control of the Earth Monsters, they summon Ghidorah to help them, commencing one of the most monstrous battles cinema has ever seen.
Now, Destroy All Monsters is often regarded as one of the best Godzilla movies, which has always quite amused me. While it is easily one of the most entertaining, it has more plot-holes than Godzilla Vs. Megalon, and possibly the dumbest alien invaders ever to set foot upon Earth.
With the aid of suspension of disbelief, the movie is actually brilliant, right up until the final battle. The movie, while illogical in many cases, has been absolutely great, quirky Japanese monster fun. 10 of Toho's monsters have assembled, we all know the Kilaaks are going to pull something out to make a final battle. And all they produce is Ghidorah and a flying saucer that sets itself on fire. I mean, Ghidorah got thrashed pretty badly by Godzilla and Rodan(and Rodan didn't really do that much) in Invasion of the Astro Monster, so it's pretty hard to be impressed when they try to send him out against 10 monsters, half of whom don't even do anything.
Seriously, the film's big draw is that it features almost every monster on Toho's roster up until that point, but half of them don't do anything. While the Varan suit had decomposed so badly they could only use the puppet of him flying for one fleeting scene at the end, the complete characterless representation of Mothra, stuck in lame larval mode, coupled with the fact the Toho staff lent out the Baragon suit to Tsuburaya productions for use in a TV show, meaning his one appearance is stock footage, and the meat of his role going to Gorosaurus is all pretty shoddy in my eyes. Come to think of it, despite being set about 30 years after Son of Godzilla, Minya looks surprisingly similar.
While it's probably being pernickity, exactly how they got all the monsters to Monsterland is right up in the air. As far as we knew, Varan, Baragon, Spiega, Anguirus and Gorosaurus were dead, Manda was guardian of Mu, and I believed died with it, and I really wonder how they got Mothra, who was never really a monster like the others, to Monsterland without the objections of the people of Infant Island, who are all strangley absent from this movie.
And this makes me sad, because, as I said, it's easily one of the best series entries entertainment wise up until that point. The spaceship is cool, almost Atragon-esque, it's characters may not be brilliant originality wise, but they are likeable, and the film features some great monster action, the scene where the 4 monsters attack Tokyo is easily one of the most spectacular sequences in the original series, especially the awesome shot of Manda wrapping itself around a raised train-track to crush it, with Godzilla blowing stuff up in the background.
The movie is blindingly good fun, and always takes me back to being a kid, completely blown away by all this on-screen mayhem. I mean it doesn't come close to the original movie in terms of quality, but then it doesn't aim to be anything like Gojira, and is more like a celebration of the Kaiju Eiga genre for it's, thankfully halted, demise. Yet, this fact makes it all the sadder how some monsters are underused.
Special effects certainly weren't Toho's best, but they did at least try to make this as spectacular as possible. I'm not at all a fan of the new Godzilla suit made for the film, which went on for use until a new one was designed for Godzilla Vs. Megalon. This suit just looks too generic, with a medium sized head and quite big eyes, as well as a return of the 'Muppet Mouth'. However, when the Son of Godzilla suit gets used for his attack on New York, you appreciate just how decent this suit is.
Rodan and Ghidorah both look slightly different to their last appearances in Invasion of the Astro Monsters, Rodan now has a more bird-like face, and Ghidorah is more serpentine looking at the heads, which have also had that horrible pubic-hair trimmed down. Ghidorah's wings are also less detailed now, and look like, as I've often heard them described, Kites.
The new Anguirus suit, to celebrate his second appearance ever, is pretty nifty, making him less dinosaurian, and more...monstrous. His skin, as it turns out, is a sort of blue-brown mix, and his spikes look a lot harder and sharper than they did in Raids Again
Spiega's puppet is still hella creepy, yet the same one from the last movie, and Mothra's larva was probably one left over from her last movie, and still basically looks like a giant turd. As I said, Minya is identical to how he appeared at the end of Son of Godzilla, which wasn't exactly brilliant, the suit looking pretty shabby to begin with.
I already mentioned the shafting Varan takes, and Baragon's one appearance, but the real star here is Gorosaurus, basically just a large t-rex, but man this suit looks great. It actually has Dinosaur-like legs, and not the thunder thighs of most Japanese monsters, and while hardly up their with Jurassic Park's dinosaurs, I'll doubt you will find a better rubber-suit dinosaur anywhere.
The other triumphs include the SY-3, which looks great for a miniature, as well as the nifty Kilaak UFOs, which have an impressive take-off sequence. The miniature cities are all well created, and the scene of Tokyo in ruins is really quite excellent in terms of realism.
The most mixed effect for me, has to be Manda. Now, Manda is a long, Chinese dragon style creature, and my problem isn't with how it is realised, the puppet work is still spectacular, my problem is that for some completely unexplainable reason, they removed his horns and whiskers, making him look more like a snake with legs than a mythical creature.
I'm reviewing this on the 1998 4-Front Video PAL VHS tape, which utilises the International Dubbing job. To be honest, while the dubbing isn't the worst, it is prone to the odd ridiculous line "listen to the monsters...in their cries of horror and sudden death" being pretty laughable, but the biggest 'fault' is the line where Gorosaurus gets called Baragon. It turns out this isn't a dubbing fault, it's simply that Baragon was, as I mentioned, set to play the role Gorosaurus played. This actually highlights laziness at Toho for not changing the script more than anything.
Gauging acting through any dubbing/subtitles isn't something I'm overly keen on, but apart from the performance of Andrew Hughes, who really annoyed me(although that may have been down to his dubbed voice), I feel the cast, made up of a lot of genre and series favourites, all did well. Kubo makes a great hero, and is the polar opposite of his slightly goofy good guy from the last movie, and Jun Tazaki is also an always reliable performer.
One of the movie's strongest aspects however, is the score from Akira Ifukube. The man never disappointed with his scores, and his work on Destroy All Monsters easily matched the scale of the movie. He brings back some of his wonderful Daikaiju Baran music, as well as crafting some of his most memorable and pounding music for the film. His militaristic music for the battle scenes would be re-used in many of the Heisei era Godzilla movies, and with good reason.
At the end of the day, while Destroy All Monsters is quite probably the most over-rated Godzilla movie, it's easy to see why people like it so much. If you go into it expecting a really fun, slightly cheesy Sci-Fi monster-fest, then you won't be disappointed. While it goes against my better judgement, and I know the movie probably only deserves 3/5, I'm giving it 4. There is something about the film that refuses to allow you to dislike it, and while it have flaws so big that you could fit some of the monsters through, it still manages to hold together to be quite simply one of the most entertaining movies, not only of the Godzilla series, but in general, that I've ever taken in. When I was in Primary School, I recall having to write about your favourite film, and I wrote about Destroy All Monsters. While I wouldn't quite say I rate it that highly these days, much of the things I loved it for then remain potent now.
I can't really say truly bad things about a movie with the balls to attempt to cram in 11 Kaiju, especially not one that does it, even shortchanging some monsters, yet still comes out so entertaining.
Year: 1968
Titles: Kaijû sôshingeki
Destroy All Monsters
All Monsters Attack
Operation Monsterland
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