Destroy All Monsters

Starring: Akira Kubo, Jun Tazaki, Yukiko Kobayashi, Yoshiro Tsuchiya, Kyoko Ai, Andrew Hughes
Directed by: Ishiro Honda
Rating: G
Genre: Action, Horror, Science Fiction
1968

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A group of female aliens take control of the Earth's monsters and turn them against humanity.

Review:

Tim: In my never-ending quest to watch movies, there are some that just escape me for one reason or another. I watch a ton of movies on Netflix, borrow from the local library, occasionally catch one on TV. Sometimes, a film I want to see isn't available through the typical channels, so I have to dig deeper. Destroy All Monsters is one of the those movies. It actually took me years to finally track it down. I was watching all of the Godzilla movies in chronological order, and I got stuck on this one. Eventually, I did find it. In some ways, this film will always have a special place in my heart, simply because it was so hard to find (and I wasn't going to shell out $100 to buy it on amazon). Unfortunately, the movie itself is fairly lackluster.

I am usually pretty forgiving of the Godzilla movies. They are fun, and I try hard to overlook the poor dubbing and special effects. They aren't very good movies, but I do enjoy watching them. I anticipated I would really like this movie, since it features a stunning 11 different monsters- Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan, King Ghidorah, Anguirus, Minya, Spiega, Baragon, Gorosaurus, Manda, and Varan. That's crazy. I've seen Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan, Ghidorah, and Anguirus, but the rest were fairly unfamiliar to me. I love the idea of one movie containing all these different monsters. That was hands-down the best part of this entire film. I loved seeing all these monsters together, especially during the battle scenes. That leads me to the highlight of the film- the crazy, all-out throw down between King Ghidorah and the Earth monsters. That fight scene was pretty incredible. I was shocked how brutal it was, even with the lackluster special effects. I loved that this film embraced the gruesome side just a little bit. That was the highlight of the film for me.

Unfortunately, the story itself leaves a lot to be desired. We have these female aliens who take control of the monsters. The space aliens, the UFO, the moon base- we spend way too much time on all of these. Those scenes weren't half as interesting as the monster battles. I understand some of this is due to budgetary reasons, but this film was given the biggest budget yet, as it was intended to be the final Godzilla film. I wish the movie would have spent less time on the very uninteresting aliens and more time on the monsters. That was a huge flaw. This movie also suffers from the typical Godzilla complaints, chiefly that the human characters are woefully underdeveloped and not at all interesting. That means the scenes with humans slow the movie down. I was bored for long stretches of this film, which is just impossible to recover from.

If you are a fan of Kaiju films, this movie is a must-see. Up to this point, it was the biggest such film made. The sheer quantity of monsters alone makes this a film deserving to be seen. Unfortunately, quality was sacrificed for quantity. There's too many plot holes, too much ridiculousness, and too many boring sequences for this to be a good movie. If you only watch the monster battles, you will incredibly entertained. The fight with Ghidorah might be my favorite monster battle in any Kaiju film I've seen. Unfortunately, taken as a whole, this film is just far weaker than it should have been.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 5.5



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: Gojira, Godzilla Raids Again, Mothra vs. Godzilla, Ghidorah: The Three-Headed Monster