Destroy All Monsters (1968)
aka Kaijûsôshingeki
aka All Monsters Attack
Directed by Ishirô Honda
Written by Ishirô Honda & Takeshi Kimura

Though the images of the World Trade Center and Oklahoma City bombings are indelibly stamped into our collective brains as the worst possible examples of terrorist destruction, even those pale in comparison to the horrific 1999 near-total ruin of Tokyo when the city was besieged simultaneously by Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan, and Manda, the giant snake. Destroy All Monsters is a haunting and powerful documentary of this terrible event, filled with footage that makes 9/11 seem like child's play.

What? This isn't a documentary? Wow—and it was made in 1968?! Whoa! Well, the filmmakers brilliantly predicted the future, because the room-size computers and tin-foil spacesuits sure as hell look like how I remember 1999. So wait, Tokyo was never almost completely destroyed in a monster attack? Hm.

OK, I'll dispense with the sarcasm for a moment and recommend Destroy All Monsters wholeheartedly on the basis of being wholly absurd all the way through, and for featuring a WWF-style smackdown involving eight or ten of Japan's most feared giant monsters! In addition to the famous ones mentioned above, you also get Angilas (an Ankylosaurus kind of thing), Gorosaurus (a T-Rex kind of thing), Kumonga (a giant spider!), Minilla (the strangely cherubic Son of Godzilla), Barragon (another T-Rex kind of thing), and Ghidorah (a flying three-headed dragon sort of thing).

The story begins with the monsters confined to "Monster Island," where they live in relatively peaceful coexistence until they are set free by the Kilaaks, an alien race intent on … on … well, on releasing the monsters, I guess.

So it's up to a hotshot spaceship captain to track down the Kilaaks and once again contain the monsters. There is plenty of monster carnage along the way, as well as plot developments only marginally less ridiculous than the dubbed dialogue (which hits a high point with two rural Japanese men speaking like pure American hillbillies).

Fortunately for the space-crew (and the panicked people of earth), the monsters instinctively turn on the Kilaaks once they release Ghidorah upon them, and the resulting survivor-match is fucking terrific, capped by Godzilla and Son cheering victoriously after they beat down the three-headed beast. (Wait, that sounded too much like a masturbation euphemism. Ah, well.)

It's an econo-pack of monster madness, fleshed out with an occasionally boring Moon-base plot that nevertheless remains at least amusing, and more often, wonderfully lazy and misguided. Destroy All Monsters is so not a good movie that it is much greater than most of the greatest movies ever made. Even if it isn't a documentary.

Review by La Fée