Destroy All Monsters (1968)

directed by Ishirō Honda

Japan

89 minutes

4.5 stars out of 5

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Somehow it's been three years since the last time I saw this. I watch most of the other Godzilla movies yearly if not bi-yearly, but this one slipped through the cracks.

This film begins by fleshing out the idea of Monster Island, something which continues to pop up within Godzilla media to this day: a remote island where the world's most notorious monsters get sent for being very naughty, able to live in seeming harmony with each other while being kept away from civilization. I'm honestly surprised that more isn't made of this within the film, but it's established that Monster Island has been a thing for at least the past 20 years by the time the story begins, so I guess people had time to get used to it. But to me, creating a place where every monster that had once terrorized the world can live in peace, away from humankind, is one of the most monumental achievements within this franchise - and of course it all goes wrong, because this is an Ishirō Honda film and no hubris can go unpunished.

When an invading race of aliens, the Kilaaks, put the monsters of Monster Island - as well as some human scientists - under mind control, the obvious flaw in keeping all those monsters in such close proximity to one another becomes apparent. The monsters scatter across the planet, wreaking havoc in every major city as commanded by the Kilaaks. What exactly the Kilaaks want with Earth is never explained in great detail, but we all know the genre conventions by now. It's enough to see aliens show up and announce that they plan to take over the world, we don't need to know why.

The thing that struck me upon rewatching this was that the human characters are shockingly competent. In general, the human story is mixed with the kaiju action in a superb way, and I'll talk about that in a minute, but I want to dedicate this paragraph to appreciating the fact that everybody in this movie just gets stuff done. There's not a lot of depth to the character development (the old man, played by Ikio Sawamura, who accidentally retrieves the Kilaak's homing beacon and mentions that his son works on the moon base has more character development than any of the main cast) and so most of the characters mainly exist as embodiments of whatever their job description is than individual personalities, but it works really, really well. The film doesn't even allow the mind-control plot to overstay its welcome when it comes to the human scientists who the Kilaaks use to spread their message. They get their mind-control implants removed and it's immediately back to business. No messing around. The military has their obligatory confrontations here and there, but for the most part it's the Monster Island crew, the moon base workers, and some associated scientists, who know exactly what has to be done and exactly how to do it.

This is really Toho at the peak of their special-effects prowess. Sadamasa Arikawa was director of special effects, and you can see the influence of Teruyoshi Nakano starting to become apparent in the prominence of missile-barrage sequences and other explosions. What I'm impressed by the most is the way scale is established, and how huge, impossible things - not just the kaiju but also scenes like the Kilaak home base - are integrated within the human world. There's no moment where it feels like the human actors and the fantastical space-age world around them are separate, even though they are; the cuts between a monster showing up and everybody standing around goggling at it all feel like they were shot at the same time. Destroy All Monsters establishes its world so well that, even though it's intended to be the future, it fits right in with the time it was released. The film invites you to believe everything in it is plausible, and makes you forget that it isn't. This is, I believe, a perfect example of tokusatsu as an art form.

The plot is pretty thin when you actually sit down and consider it, but when the visual storytelling is this good, that all feels like it's not a big deal.

I think this is a movie to recommend to people - of which there are many, for some reason - who are unconvinced of the importance of human characters in kaiju film. No, there's no intricate personal storylines like in the first Godzilla film, or in Terror of Mechagodzilla or Minus One, but this movie shows that just having characters who are good at their jobs is more than satisfying enough. Watching a clear, crisp print of it where you can appreciate the cinematography and beautiful lighting and color palette is a really rewarding experience, even for me as somebody who already knows they like Godzilla a lot.