Destroy All Monsters (1968)

 

The year is 1999, and all of the Earth's kaiju have been collected and confined in a special reserve known as Monster Island. Under the island lies a control centre where United Nations scientists continuously study the monster for research purposes, while also monitoring the reserve to ensure that the monsters remain secured.

After communications with Monster Island are suddenly and mysteriously severed, all of the monsters begin attacking world capitals.  Captain Yamabe and the crew of his spaceship, Moonlight SY-3, are sent to to investigate the research centre.  There, they discover that the attacks are the work of an alien race identifying themselves as the Kilaaks, who demand that the human race surrender, or face total annihilation.

Humanity reacts to this ultimatum with defiance, but unless the Kilaaks' control of the monsters is interrupted, this defiance is futile bravado.  Captain Yamabe and his crew must find a way to restore freedom to the monsters of the Earth, or they will destroy us all.

I reviewed almost all the Japanese Godzilla films back in 2014 and 2015, but a few entries in the franchise eluded me, as they were not included in the box sets I owned.  Among the movies that were MIA was this, the ninth Godzilla film. Fortunately, streaming services have finally allowed me to see it.  The question is, was it worth tracking down?

Overall, I think the answer is a qualified 'yes'.  Certainly, if you're a kaiju fan, there are far worse Big G outings you could sit through.

But lets dig down into the details and unpack what's notable about Destroy All Monsters, which - as its title suggests - is one of the franchise's "let's use a whole bunch of kaiju in the same film" offerings.

My first impression of the film was that it had a very Thunderbirds look to its miniature sets and vehicles.  We see quite a lot of these at the start of the movie, as the film introduces us to the UN base on Monster Island.  Was someone on the production a Gerry Anderson fan, or is this 'look' merely an artefact of the technology in use at the time?  I'm not sufficiently informed to be able to say, but if you're familiar with his work, I expect you'll notice the similarity as well.

The opening of the film - at least in the Englishy language dub - also  introduces us to the phenomenon I dubbed "Breathless Narrator Man".  I found his bombastic enthusiasm and gushing 'rah rah' delivery to be quite entertaining. It reminded me of those "gee whiz modern science!" TV commercials of the 50s, in which the virtues of washing machines and other modern conveniences were gushingly extolled.

After the pleasingly fast-paced intro and neat miniatures, the film quickly dives into the real meat of its premise, which is throwing lots of monsters on screen and letting them do their thing.  On the whole, this is actually pretty successfully done.  The multi-monster rampage in Tokyo is a particular highlight of entertaining destruction.  I think it helps that the kaiju are all operating individually and doing their own thing.  Fight choreography can often be a weakness of kaiju films because it's hard to move smoothly and dextrously in those big suits, and the action often looks stilted as a result.  Not having the monsters interact with each other much reduces that problem.

Of course, eventually a fight must happen, and the film's climactic battle  of the "Earth monsters" against perennial villain King Ghidorah is honestly a bit of a let-down.  The technical limitations of "people in heavy suits pretend to fight" definitely inhibit the flow of the scene.  Little of the contact between enemies seems to carry much weight, and there's a definite sense of the various participants "waiting their turn" to do their bits.

Those technical limitations are absolutely something that a kaiju fan should be well familiar with, however, and the movie is blessedly free of obnoxious "cute" kids and other such blights.

Overall, this is one of the more fun 60s Godzilla offerings.