"Destroy All Monsters" My Thoughts!

Destroy All Monsters (1968)

Directed by Ishirō Honda, Special effects by Sadamasa Arikawa, Screenplay by Takeshi Kimura & Ishirō Honda, Produced by Tomoyuki Tanaka, Music by Akira Ifukube, Cinematography Taiichi Kankura, Edited by Ryohei Fujii, Starring Akira Kubo, Jun Tazaki, Yoshio Tsuchiya. 

All the nations of Earth now live in peace and have colonised the moon, Mankind has also successfully confined the giant Kaiju into an area known as Monsterland. The alien race “The Kilaaks” frees the Kaiju and manipulates them through mind control, sending them to wreak havoc in major cities.

This film is… in a word, Charming. 

Far from perfect and could be described as nonsensical but charming nonetheless.

By 1968 the popularity of kaiju was on the decline and the writing was on the wall for Toho studios to pull the plug on all Godzilla-type productions after the muted response to “Ebirah, Horror of the Deep” (1966) and “Son of Godzilla” (1967) (neither of these being  directed by Ishiro Honda)

Honda last made a Godzilla picture in 1965 “Invasion of Astro-Monster” which was successful at the Japanese box office and had a theatrical release in America, whereas “Ebirah, Horror of the Deep” & “Son of Godzilla” went straight to TV in the states.

So Toho Studios planned the next film to either revive the genre or be a big send-off for the motley crew of Kaiju. 

So Toho went back to the well and assembled the Kaiju masters,

 Ishirō Honda will direct, Akira Ifukube will do the score, Eiji Tsuburaya as special effects supervisor and his protege Sadamasa Arikawa will be the special effects director. Sadly the writer of the great Kaiju movies Shinichi Sekizawa did not return to do this project instead we got Takeshi Kimura who was also a screenwriter for Toho studios and had worked with Ishiro Honda before but never on a Kaiju movie I get the impression he may thought this project was beneath him. 

Toho made it clear they wanted all the Toho Kaiju in one movie together because… more is better! They even approved a healthy budget to make sure this was possible. 

So in the film, all the Kaiju have been sent to live on an Island off the coast of Japan called “Monsterland” They are held there via science gadgetry.

On the Island, we have the Toho studio monsters even though a good percentage of these creatures were killed in earlier Toho movies.  

Earth is invaded by an alien race called “The Kilaaks” who take control of Monsterland and send the Kaiju to destroy major cities around the world.

A group of earth scientists enlist the help of a crew of astronauts who were based on the moon to help them fight the Aliens and take back control of the Kaiju.

Earth's military struggles to contain the monsters but the Astronauts foil the Kilaak's plan by knocking out their mind-control beams emanating from the moon.

The scientists then take back control of the Kaiju sending them to attack the Kilaak’s earth base beneath Mount Fuji.

As our monster attack the Kilaak summon King Ghidorah a giant three-headed space dragon who attacks the Kaiju and an epic battle breaks out. 

Working together Earth's monsters defeat the space dragon then Godzilla destroys the Kilaak base. 

Earth is saved and the Monsters go home to Monsterland. 

That is what happens but the film is a lot less direct. 

The guys in the monster suits are great but the real stars of this is the model work.

The tanks and helicopters and especially the astronaut's rocketship 

the Moonlight SY-3 is such a great design and a wonderful model. 

The moonbase and the rocket SY-3 and the rocket landing inside mountains and a ramp coming out of the rocket and them driving a buggy vehicle out of the rocket reeks of Gerry Anderson’s Thunderbirds. That show was massive in Japan at the time. An obvious choice to try and revamp the Godzilla brand and it is a lot of fun. 

I mean you can’t criticise the script because I think when it is dubbed into English they just say random stuff that kinda fits with the mouth movements.

With any production with loads of characters, the biggest mistake you could make is having a stacked cast and not giving each character enough screen time! 

This is 100% the problem with this movie. You expect more monsters in this monster movie and when we do get a monster it's a tiny clip unless it's Godzilla who gets the lion's share of the Kaiju screentime which is a cracking 8min 40sec in this 88 min movie.

Is this film worth a watch? Yes!

It's just a bit more of a Thunderbirds fan film than a monster movie but the final battle is great. 

Sadly this film is a bit of a pain to get.

Even though people online will tell you you are mad for buying physical media because EVERYTHING! Is streaming, The Toho monster movies are a great example that that statement is untrue.

Look for a used DVD or Blu-ray but they sell for a premium.

The film is included in the Criterion collection Godzilla Box Set which is £150.00 

There is a possibility you could stream it for free via the PBS website but good luck with that.