You have no idea of the illation I feel when those three words scrawl across my screen.
Pff! Silly me. Look who I'm talking to. If anyone is going to sympathize with the inherent joy of watching a Godzilla movie, it's gonna be you guys. We're all fans here, right? Of course.
So, yes, I did partake of Destroy All Monsters. It did sit my ass down
and watch it all in one sitting and found that it was good. Though not nearly as good as
I'd hoped.
The ninth Godzilla movie to hit the screens, DAM is considered the greatest monster opus of this, or any, time. Featuring eleven giant monsters from across Toho's vast, varied and not particularly coherent continuity: Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra (back in larval form, so this must be the 3rd generation Mothra), Anguirus, Ghidorah, Manda, Baragon, Gorosaurus, Spiga, Minilla . . . hot dignity, makes you drool just thinking about it, doesn't it? Adding to the Drool Factor is the return of the old G-masters: Honda, Ifukube, Tasuburaya and Tanaka all climbed aboard for this, the most ambitious daikaiju movie ever made.
Too bad it isn't the best. It deserves to be, sure. But you've got to earn a title like that. DAM, for all its monsters, has a ways to go.
The year is 1999. Man has entered an era of peace and prosperity. A stable moonbase has been established. Shuttles leave for the Base as easily as buses leave for school. And the Earth's monsters have all been rounded up and contained on a South Pacific Island chain called Ogasawara. They're kept in special holding pens, with force fields and poison gas keeping them contained in their (*ahem*) natural habitats. Everything's going just fine.
Until Something Goes Wrong. Something always Goes Wrong, it's tradition. And in this case, the Something is an alien race who (surprise) wants to take over the world. Never saw that coming.
The Kilaaks quickly seize control of Monsterland's inmates, and send them across the
planet. Godzilla trashes New York, Rodan does Moscow, Mothra goes to China, and so forth.
All across the globe humanity struggles to over come the threat of these creatures. Oh,
what is a planet to do?
Why, call Akira Kubo, of course.
Why, yes. Akira Kubo, Man of Action! In his third Godzilla picture, Kubo plays Katsuo, Captain of Moon Rocket SY-3. Apparently, Katsuo is also the only capable employee in the Japanese military. Throughout the course of the movie, Katsuo and his crew jump from Moon to Earth, land their ship inside two volcanoes, shoot it out with aliens, battle monsters, coordinate huge military campaigns, and basically end up everywhere at once. Often, I found myself wonder if Kubo had been replaced with an 8 year-old in microshorts.
But no. Kubo is Kubo. The decision to make him the only hero of the picture is probably a financial one more so then a thematic one. When you have eleven monsters destroying major cities, your budget shrinks pretty fast.
And considering the amount of hardware bequeathed to special FX man Tasuburaya, you can instantly tell that Project Destroy All Monsters was positively stacked. And he pulls things off excellently; coordinating as many as eight different monsters at once in the climactic battle royal that must be seen to be believe.
Yes, I do sound like a publicity blurb, but I don't care. I ain't afraid to admit it. This movie is a fantasy come true for all of us stunted twelve year-olds who've never grown out of watching giant monsters fight each other.
If only those damn humans would shut up.
As ever, humans are at the forefront of the action. Just why is far beyond me. Make no mistake; Kubo (Man of Action!) can act. But thanks to AIP's dub, Kubo is strapped with a stupidly macho voice. It fits his character, in a "channeling the spirit of John Wayne" sort of way, but if I'm supposed to pay attention to what this guy's saying, no luck, mister.
Kubo draws the long straw. Other . . . characters . . . speak in a . . . STUNTED . . . speech pattern, over en . . . unciating words and putting stress IN all the wrong places. Dubbing provided by William Shattner.
Plus he ripps his girl friend's ear rings right out of her ears. Sure, she's under alien zombie control but, dude, that's harsh. To say nothing of the fact that Katsuo is the worst person in the world to explore outer space. How does he confront an alien species for the first time? With death threats. This kind of ruthless xenophobia would put even the most militant Cardassian to shame.
I rip on Kubo because, well, he's the only real character present. Other humans walk around like window dressing, some looking even more rubbery then their monstrous costars. The only humans who are supposed to look like faceless automatons are those under alien control. The Kilaaks, like their predecessors, the Xians, take prisoners with mind control. They aren't too sneaky about it, but at least they get the basic tactics of infiltration down. None of them run around dressed like Devo.
No, the Kilaaks all dress in sparkly spandex.
I don't know . . . I just
can't be afraid of aliens who dress in sparkly spandex.
Though, if nothing else, it is fun to see how 1968 Japan visualized the turn of the millennium. With day-glow space uniforms, 1960s cars, cool laser tanks, and rocket ships that leave a big plume of smoke as they fly (that floats upward into the vacuum of space), one has to wonder: where the hell did the future go?
But you're here for monsters, right? Well, thankfully, Godzilla and co. get good props from their producers this outing, never once becoming campy clown-o-saurs. Except for The Little Bastard (a.k.a. Minilla), but that's to be expected. And the seven-on-one battle with King Ghidorah (the bitch of every alien race in the galaxy) is not only technically brilliant, but masterfully executed. For once, I was too busy gaping in stupefied joy to search for the strings.
And that's the real charm of Destroy All Monsters. We all know the strings are there. Most of us can spot the zipper on Godzilla's suit. Do we care? Not really (well, I do, but I speak generally). We just want to see a fight.
And do we ever get one. As that final battle draws to a close, we stop laughing and learn why we love these old Toho pics. No matter how much time they take, they always deliver the goods.
