Following the release of Son of Godzilla, the decision was made to end the franchise due to its waning popularity. Ishiro Honda, who was absent from the series following Invasion of Astro-Monster, returned to direct this intended finale. Given that this was meant to be the last film, Toho decided to go all out and include several monsters. In addition to past Godzilla monsters, they also brought in monsters from King Kong Escapes, Atragon, and Varan the Unbelievable. Unfortunately, due to rights issues and budgetary limits, certain monsters couldn’t be used, including King Kong, Gaira, and Sanda. Speaking of, Honda wanted to explore concepts such as undersea farming and hybrid monsters but couldn’t because of the budget. This film also used stock footage from Ghidorah, The Three-Headed Monster, a trend that would continue in future installments. Destroy All Monsters was released to Japanese theaters in August of 1968.
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Synopsis
In the far future of 1999, the United Nations Science Committee has confined all of Earth’s monsters to one location. Said location, an island known as “Monsterland”, is monitored by a team of researchers working to keep the monsters contained. Unfortunately, the island is attacked, and both the research team and the monsters have been kidnapped by a mysterious group. Dr. Yoshido (Jun Tazaki) tasks Captain Katsuo Yamabe (Akira Kubo) with leading a team to investigate the island. Once at the island, they discover that the researchers and monsters are under the control of aliens called the Kilaaks. The Kilaaks send the monsters to attack major cities: Rodan attacks Moscow, Mothra invades Beijing, and Gorosaurus decimates Paris. Eventually, the UNSC regains control of the monsters, but the Kilaaks have another ace up their sleeve: King Ghidorah. It’s an all-out brawl with Earth’s monsters versus the three-headed space dragon.
Review
Given that this was originally meant to be the last film in the series, Destroy All Monsters is pretty disappointing. While it’s a step up from Son of Godzilla, it doesn’t quite give fans the send-off they were promising. Aside from some brief appearances and quick cameos, there’s hardly any monster footage for a majority of the runtime. Most of it is spent focusing on the human characters, and the monsters take a back seat for their story. Of course, the other films have had side stories focused on the human characters, but those were usually B-plots. Here, almost the first hour of the film is devoted to the humans up until the last 20 minutes. After a while, the human plot starts to get boring as you’re waiting for the monsters to show up. It’s odd considering the film literally has the word “monsters” in the title.
In fairness, the last 20 minutes are the highlight of the film as the monsters go up against King Ghidorah. Just seeing some of Japan’s most famous monsters duke it out is a treat for any Kaiju fans. Unfortunately, it comes a little too late as you have to sit through an hour of boring human stuff. It wouldn’t be as bad if more monster footage was sprinkled in, but even then, it’s only a few seconds. Granted, the lack of monster footage could be attributed to a lower budget given the dwindling returns. For what it’s worth, the monsters still look good, there are some fun destruction scenes, and the score is great. The movie is fairly brief at 88 minutes, and the last 20 minutes almost make it worth watching. Overall, Destroy All Monsters isn’t the worst, but it had plenty of potential for a solid monster movie.
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