December 9th: Destroy All Monsters (1968)

Avengers assemble! Or whatever the equivalent for Kaiju films would be, because that is effectively what this Destroy All Monsters (1968) is. A massive who’s who of all the previous monsters, as well as some from other Toho properties that have not appeared in Godzilla films. The story of the film sees a world somewhat at peace with its monsters, with them all being housed and secured on an island where they live peacefully. That all changes when a group of female aliens manage to take control of the monsters using mind control gas and start using them to destroy major cities around the world in an attempt to take over. It is up to a group of astronauts and scientists to locate the device being used to control the monsters and take it for themselves to fight after the alien menace.

When I say this a who’s who, I really do mean it. Of course we have Godzilla, but also appearing are Mothra, Rodan, Minilla, Kumonga, Anguirus and King Ghidorah, but making appearances from other Kaiju films are Baragon, Gorosaurus, Manda, and Varan. With the massive number of kaiju being involved the film does have a bit of an issue of several of them being shafted and basically appearing for only minutes if not seconds with not much to do. But I do think the film focuses on the correct monsters and so I don’t have too much complaint with how that was handled. Ishiro Honda came back for this one which means that the tone has gone back to being much more serious, or at least as serious as these films can be at this point. Rather than that surf rock, tongue in cheek style that the previous two films had, this one goes back to being a fairly straight sci-fi monster film. Not that this is a bad thing, in fact it really works for this film. While there is an aspect of ‘oh we’re doing aliens again are we?’ and that means it does sort of play off some of its predecessors, it is still a solid narrative that makes sense and has reason for all these monsters being there causing havoc. It also makes sense for Ghidorah appearing at the end as the final boss, with him being from space himself.

That being said, the film is absolutely at its best when its focus is on the monsters destroying stuff. After all, isn’t that what we have all come for. And this is probably some of the best monster action we have seen in these films for a while. While granted the miniature work is very shabby compared to previous films in terms of making it believable, when you’re doing this much havoc with it I don’t really care. And the final battle between Ghidorah and the group of monsters is a hell of a lot of fun, especially when it comes to Ghidorah’s death. For what these films have been in terms of their fight scenes that whole section is really quite gnarly, and I am not complaining. It looks more authentic than previous films where, while fun, are clearly two guys in suits going ham on each other. And look I’m not saying that this film is completely exempt from that, but it is much better at making it look real. Also, before I leave you for today, I would like to thank Honda for making Godzilla look good again. The design of him here is great and is possible up there as one of my favourites in the whole franchise so far.  

This film is up there as one of the better ones. For the kind of Godzilla film that it is, it feels like the pinnacle so far. This might change going forward, but id you are wanting to watch Godzilla films for men in monsters suits crushing miniature sets and punching each other, with no real theme or greater narrative, this is the film that does it best.