FANTASIA OBSCURA: Godzilla Leads the Ultimate Monster Mash
There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.
Sometimes, though, when everyone gets together and teams up, it doesn’t end up being all that great…
Destroy All Monsters (1968)
Distributed by: Toho Studios
Directed by: Ishiro Honda
The 1960s were a great time for Kaiju films. All the big monster movies from the decade before were finding new audiences on television, and new films with big beasts were being made all over the world.
But, every era comes to an end, and not all of them have the luxury of just fading out quietly as something new comes about. Some of them crash, quite loudly and unavoidably in plain sight:
We find ourselves as the film opens in the far-off year of 1999 (in the American version; in the original Japanese it’s 1994), where we’re told that the UN Scientific Committee has established a moon base. We get to see the daily commute to the moon on the rocket ship SY-3, which gets the same fawning attention that Tom Clancy used to give weapons systems in his earlier novel.
We also get told that by this time, out among the Ogasawara Islands, there is a facility where all the Kaiju have been assembled, called “Monsterland.” Here the humans have placed all the giant monsters (that were featured in Toho Studios’ many monster pictures up to that time), among them Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra, and others that if you missed their work as supporting Kaiju on these three creatures’ films, you won’t have missed much.
We get a few moments to appreciate how the future is all in bright primary colors in the sets and spacesuits during a phone call from the Moon to Monsterland between cute couple Captain Katsuo Yamabe (Akiro Kubo), commander of the SY-3, and the biologist studying the monsters (monsterologist?) Kyoko Manabe (Yukiko Kobayashi). The call is cut short, however, as Monsterland gets gassed and cut off from the rest of the world.
The UNSC doesn’t have much time to ask what happened, as the monsters start appearing around the world, with a (rather brief) set piece showing Godzilla’s first trip to New York:
(The less said about his “actual” first visit in 1998, the better…)
The crew of the SY-3 is deployed back on Earth to go to Monsterland, where they find Kyoko as one of the humans on the island now pressed to serve the alien Kilaaks. They’re so confident of their abilities, having placed all the monsters and some of the people of Earth under their control, that their queen (Kyoko Ai) just wheels out to the spacemen to tell them her plan.
And for a while, it looks like she may well be recognized as the Mother of Drago- um, Queen of Earth, whose agents are putting transmitters around the globe to direct the captured monsters. That is, until their plans are foiled by what feels like Captain Yamabe and the crew of the SY-3 doing every damn thing that needs be done all by themselves, like going to where the action is for everything and using their rocket to get there.
They seem to be the best defense Earth has, maybe the only defense. That is, if you discount the Japanese army, which is mainly there to only semi-effectively keep the monsters distracted from doing more damage than we get to see them do, which includes a number of them finally getting to destroy Tokyo, as these beasts are wont. Though it’s not hard to imagine that at some point, the UNSC thought about sending the SY-3 to clean up the job if the army didn’t do better…
About the SY-3: This vehicle gets more screen time than most of the monsters. Whether having a film where the hardware matters so much is a precursor to such later TV series as Space Battleship Yamato and the Macross saga is an argument for others to hold; all we need recall here is that we see a lot of this craft, at the expense of the other monsters.
Mind you, the Kaiju do have their moments, include a big set piece in the final act when the beasts, now free of their control, gang up on the Kilaaks near Mount Fuji. Fans who appreciate the choreography of a Toho monster fight aren’t disappointed by this or the other scenes of battles and wanton destruction, when they get it. It’s long overdue when it happens, and somewhat satisfying, to see all of them going after their oppressors en masse, after which they’d expected to go back to Monsterland.
Which was not the original plan; the reason Toho named this film Destroy All Monsters was that they wanted to wrap up their Kaiju film series. They brought in Honda, the director that was the master of such efforts (having practically birthed their franchise by directing the original Gojira in 1954) and told him essentially to use everything he could, assuming that this would be it for them.
Honda, directing one of his stars in an earlier pic, Godzilla vs. Monster Zero
Yet despite their being more Kaiju then there are stars in heaven, the film feels less than the sum of its parts. The only way you can get into this film, despite its reliance on too few people for a disaster this big against an alien menace that, well, isn’t that menacing really, is to be willing to just wallow in it and not ask too many questions. You know, show up with all the sophistication of young children.
Which proved to be fatal to its stars. When the film did much better box office than Toho expected, they belayed their plans to end the films; worse, they looked closely at Destroy All Monsters and concluded that, since the kids loved it, that future Kaiju films they’d make through the 1970s would be geared towards them:
The next monster jam, 1969’s All Monsters Attack, started putting the franchise into cheesy territory, as a young kid in his mind visits Monsterland, renamed Monster Island for the rest of the series, and befriends Godzilla’s child. By the time we get to 1972’s Godzilla vs. Gigan, the Kaiju are speaking to each other, and the rest of the 1970s are just a wash.
It would not be until The Return of Godzilla (aka Godzilla 1985) that it would be safe to go to the movies to see these creatures again without needing to drag a kid along for cover. It required a hard reboot to bring these Kaiju from Toho back to their roots, ignoring everything in between 1954 and then.
Would that we could, too…
NEXT TIME: Dave’s not here, man; he went out to see this film at midnight…
