[HorrorScience] Destroy All Monsters (1968)

Reading time: 5 minutes

Qualification

Kaiju Soshingeki

Year

1968

Duration

88 minutes

Director

Ishiro Honda

Distribution

Akira Kubo, Jun Tazaki, Yukiko Kobayashi, Yoshio Tsuchiya, Kyoko Ai, Andrew Hughes, Kenji Sahara, Chotaro Togin, Yoshifumi Tajima, Seishiro Kuno, Wataru Omae, Naoya Kusakawa, Yasuhiko Saijo, Kazuo Suzuki, Toru Ibuki, Susumu Kurobe, Minoru Ito, Seishiro Hisano, Ken Echiyo, Haruo Nakajima

Script

Ishiro Honda, Takeshi Kimura

We continue the classic Godzilla saga with Destroy All Monsters, known in Japan as Kaijū Sōshingeki and in Spain as Alien invasion.

This ninth installment It is one of the most remembered and popular films in the saga., partly because of the return of the director who started it (Ishiro Honda) and his entire team, but above all because it was the movie that included the most monsters so far, something that advertising tried to exploit by attracting the public to the cinema, since viewers were dropping alarmingly from one film to another.

So, Destroy All Monsters It brings together almost all of Toho's monsters in one film, introducing many of them into the Godzilla universe.

In total we will see Godzilla (from gojira), Mothra (from Mothra), Rodan (from Rodan), Anguirus (from Godzilla strikes back), Varan (of Varan), Baragon (from Frankenstein Conquers the World), Gorosaurus (from King Kong Escapes), Manda (of Binge), Minilla and Spiega (from Godzilla's son), and King Ghidorah (from Ghidorah the three headed dragon).

In the late 90s (the future, because the movie is from the late 60s) the giant monsters that have attacked Japan on many occasions, They have been imprisoned on an island equipped with specific systems to keep them inside it and repel any type of escape from it. The security of this “Monster Island” is in charge of United Nations scientists who control everything from inside it.

[HorrorScience] Destroy All Monsters (1968) — Varan is back (or almost) and in full color!

For reasons unknown to me, the base of Monster Island has something to do with some astronauts who are on a space mission, in which they believe they see a flying saucer.

Control of the island disappears and the monsters are released, destroying everything in its path, except Japan which cannot be a coincidence. The astronauts who were on the space mission go to the island to discover what has happened and find that some of the scientists act strangely, because are under the orders of aliens called Kilaaks.

The Kilaakians' invasion plans include using a secret base in Japan while controlling the monsters to cause chaos on the rest of the planet.
Can our heroes do something about it?

Despite his enormous fame (within the Godzilla saga) Destroy All Monsters It is a film that tends to be boring at times (which is quite unfortunate considering the enormous number of monster scenes there are). The main reason for boredom is that The human plot is too reminiscent of what was seen in previous films and is not really interesting. Although it is true that all the aliens in the Godzilla saga are quite ridiculous in appearance, it seems to me that the Kilaaks took it too far.

The monster scenes are much more striking (although many are reused from other films) and constitute the main attraction of the film, since it is not common to see things like the massive final battle against Ghidorah or the monsters destroying different parts of the world (since they normally focus their attack on Japan).

Pero en términos generales, Destroy All Monsters es solo una película correcta, con momentos muy divertidos y otros bastante olvidables, vamos algo muy similar a lo visto en otras películas de Godzilla de la misma época, con un pequeño plus por añadir muchos monstruos a la vez. Quizás es por eso que me da la sensación de que desaprovecharon la oportunidad de hacer algo expectacular y se conformaron con hacer una nueva versión de lo que ya vimos en Godzilla VS Monster Zero.

Curiosidades de esta película.

En la película se dice que Baragon está atacando París pero resulta ser Gorosaurus el que lo hace. Esto se debió a que las escenas de París iban a estar protagonizadas por Baragon, pero al final lo cambiaron por Gorosaurus. Para aumentar la confusión podemos ver a Gorosaurus saliendo de debajo de la tierra (como haría Baragon). Este error permaneció en los doblajes e incluso en el tráiler de la película.
En esta película se modificó el diseño de la cabeza de Manda, la serpiente marina, supuestamente por ser demasiado similar a la de King Ghidorah. Lo gracioso es que con el cambio, Manda quedó con un diseño muy similar a la serpiente marina de King Kong Escapes.
Baragon y Varan apenas aparecen en la película porque al parecer sus trajes estaban en muy mal estado, lo cual obligó a limitar sus escenas al máximo y los privó de formar parte de la batalla final.
Ebirah (de Godzilla VS Sea Monster) y Maguma (de Gorath) iban a aparecer en la película, pero finalmente no fue así.