Destroy All Monsters

#13 in my ranking of Ishiro Honda’s filmography.

#3 in my ranking of the Showa Era Godzilla films.

This was supposed to be the end of the whole Godzilla thing. Honda thought so, at least. It was a grand sendoff for everyone involved since the beginning with Honda, Eiji Tsuburaya, producer Tomoyuki Tanaka, and composer Akira Ifukube getting one final assignment from Toho to end the franchise on a grand note. And a grand note it is. This is epic silliness, and it is silly. However, Honda and Takeshi Kimura, while getting lost in the early nonsense for a bit, commit fully to doing the silliness with the correct attitude, giving the focus where people want it to be while keeping the human element at an appropriate distance from the monster smashy action. It’s still not fully embracing what these films could be, taking them to the top of this approach to kaiju movies but not above it.

The part of the story that most interested Honda, it seems, was the opening montage, something he wanted to greatly expand into the film but was prevented by Tanaka and budgetary concerns: it shows Monster Island, now occupied by all of the earth-bound monsters that Toho could dig up and still had the rights to (Kong having reverted back to RKO means he’s not around). They’re kept on the island by specialized traps that prevent them from walking off like Godzilla or flying off like Rodan would like to. At the same time, Captain Yamabe (Akira Kubo) is leading a mission to the moon where there is an existing base. He’s the one who gets called…all the way back to Earth…to investigate when all contact with the base on Monster Island is lost. There, he discovers that the scientists on the island, including his girl Kyoko (Yukiko Kobayashi) have been taken over by mysterious aliens called Kilaaks, led by their queen (Kyoko Ai). She brings messages of peace, but they are not to last, of course. The monsters from Monster Island start showing up around the world, causing disaster wherever they go.

The conflict between man and monster is never supposed to be even. The monsters are huge, should represent some kind of larger, elemental force, and cannot be pushed back on. Also, they’re supposed to be really hard to defeat, hence the whole challenge of it all. So, do you have the puny humans beat back Godzilla one more time, making him decreasingly threatening with every success? Or do you redirect the human efforts in another direction? The latter is better for the longevity of the franchise (especially when you’ve spent the last few movies trying to make Godzilla a good guy), and that’s what Honda and Kimura decided to do here. The enemy isn’t the monsters. The enemy is the Kilaaks, and the humans have to figure out how the aliens are controlling the monsters, where they are, and how to stop it.

It really is a men on a mission film where the thin characterization is less of an issue. What’s more of an issue is that the whole effort is kind of confused and doesn’t make the most amount of sense. Why is Captain Yamabe the best guy to investigate Monster Island when he’s days away on the moon? The whole flying around on a rocket to get from place to place feels silly. The efforts to track down the base feel almost random and coincidental. The explanation of how the Kilaaks need super-heated environments so they don’t become rocks is weird. However, it’s never outright bad. It just has this level of silly boys’ adventure novel logic that is amusing to watch but falls apart the second you think about it.

The meat of it all is the final act which goes full monster action as the humans figure out the signaling device, reverse it, and use the monsters against the Kilaak base in Mount Fuji. It’s a very large set with nearly a dozen monsters marching alongside each other. I was honestly surprised to see Kumonga from Son of Godzilla because he seemed so hard to puppeteer well (the special effects team did very well in both films), but he’s just one of several including even Minilla, the son of Godzilla, Rodan (whose suit hasn’t been updated since his original appearance looks so stiff and unnatural that it’s a shock they included him at all), and Mothra…in larva form. Seriously, I find it hard to believe that there are any Mothra fans who want to see the larva instead of the moth. There’s some business about the control over the monsters failing but the monsters knowing which side to fight on (because good guys now, long since is forgotten Godzilla smashy-smashing Tokyo in 1954).

So, the appeal is the boys adventure plotting (which makes no sense), the characters working through a problem, and then the grand special effects showcase. This was an expensive way for the Godzilla and related kaiju movies to go out, and it really feels like Toho spared no expense. It’s grand, and it’s very fun. All of the monsters have something to do, and even when King Ghidorah shows up, they can come together and work as a team. It’s honestly quite satisfying.

It’s just that the setup is kinda dumb, you know? This is why I say that this represents some of the heights of the kaiju era as it was being done. They were ultimately all dumb adventure stories, not all that well told, and largely hanging on the execution and breadth of their monster action. It’s bright, colorful, inventive, and fun. The story does enough to justify it and keep it from feeling like a complete waste of time (fighting for control of the monsters is better than fighting the monsters themselves).

If there was to never be another Godzilla movie, this would have been a good way to go out, giving the people what they came for.

Rating: 3/4