Destroy All Monsters

 

Crouching Eiga,
Hidden Dragging

Destroy All Monsters
aka Kaijû sôshingeki
Japan 1968 Directed by Ishirô Honda
Toho/Criterion Collection
Blu Ray Zone B

Well, the next up in my rewatch of The Showa Era Godzilla films, courtesy of Criterion’s lovely Blu Ray Book Edition, is Destroy All Monsters and... well it’s a bit of a curio. Especially since only one monster is actually destroyed in it.

Depending on which version of the film you are watching (Japanese or American), the film takes place in Earth’s far future... at the end of the century (Japanese) or 1999 (American). After being introduced to some of the characters on the moonbase we are straight into a title sequence that, for some reason, I have no recollection of in terms of visuals but... well... the opening title music is absolutely stunning and you can tell right away that Akira Ifukube was back on board. One of the biggest strengths of this film is its wonderful score and, even if the visuals and drama in this were terrible, it almost wouldn’t matter because I spent most of the film tapping my toes along to the music.

As it happens, it doesn’t have terrible visuals or drama. Like Honda’s previous films in the series, this one is strong on story and plot twists but, unlike his earlier works, this one gets straight to the monsters after the end credits. It seems that in our future, the monsters from various Toho films all live together on Monster Island... so Godzilla, Minilla, Baragon, Mothra, Rodan, Varan, Manda, Gorosaurus and Kumonga. Eagle eyed monster movie spotters will no doubt wonder why some of these creatures are still alive, having been killed off in earlier kaiju eiga but, I’m afraid I don’t have an answer for you on that one.

Anyway, tragedy strikes as the people in the control sections of Monster Island (referred to as Monsterland in this iteration) are gassed... along with all the monsters. What is going on? Then tragedy strikes as the ‘escaped’ monsters start attacking the rest of the world. Rodan attacks Moscow, Baragon (kinda) destroys Paris, Mothra sorts out Beijing, Manda is malevolent in London and Godzilla takes out New York. What’s going on?

Oh, wait. The monsters didn’t escape at all. Instead they, along with the human staff of the island, are under the control of the Kilaaks, a race of space aliens who want to take over our planet. It’s up to Captain Katsuo Yamabe (played by series regular Akira Kubo... who you might recognise from films like Mantango - Attack Of The Mushroom People and some of Kurosawa’s masterpieces) and his trusty moon rocket crew, with the aid of Dr. Yoshido (played by another Gojira and Kurosawa regular, Jun Tazaki) to help the military resist and get up to all kinds of shenanigans as each twist and turn of the plot is revealed.

Luckily, the humans finally defeat the aliens who have been calling the shots on the moon and then regain control of the various ‘Earth kaiju’ so they can lead a big, all out monster attack on the alien’s not so secret base under Mount Fuji. One complication is, as an eleventh hour surprise for everyone, the aliens summon space monster King Ghidora. There is much glee from the alien antagonists as they tell their human enemy, “Earth’s monsters are no match for him.” Which seems to be a bold claim and I can only assume the aliens haven’t watched the previous Godzilla films to feature King Ghidorah. The Big G has needed much less aid than he has in this one to try to take down his old, three headed foe and, predictably, the ‘big monster team’ fight ferociously and suffer no casualties as they defeat the behemoth. Little Minilla, Godzilla’s son, puts in a finishing touch by blowing one of his cute, trademark smoke rings over Ghidorah’s last, surviving head, which proves to be the surprising last straw that breaks Ghidorah’s defensive back. What’s more surprising though, for a film set in the Earth’s far future in the year 1999, is that little Minilla hasn’t grown to become a big Godzilla like his father already.

This film probably has both more monster and human VS alien action in it than the majority of Honda’s work in the Godzilla series but, in amongst all the set pieces, he still finds time to give us bright colours, nicely lit sets and some creative shot designs. There’s a scene where a doctor who has been taken over by the aliens is being interrogated by Katsuo and Dr. Yashida, in which a kind of decorative screen is placed between the three actors and the camera. The elabourate screen has three circles in a row going the whole width of the shot and from the top to the bottom of the screen. The back of the doctor’s head is large and more than fills the middle circle. However, with the perspective of the shot, the other two actor’s heads are perfectly framed in the centre of the two circles on either side of this character. Yeah... there’s some great stuff here.

This was supposed to be the last hurrah for the Godzilla films as the box office returns for the kaiju eiga were diminishing with every new entry... thus the idea to have a load of monsters in the one film (it would be many decades later before this many monsters in the series would be matched... or exceeded, in fact). However, this was a pretty entertaining movie and, I guess the audience thought so too at the time because, this one was a huge financial success for the company and kept them going with the Godzilla series for quite a few more films comprising the Showa era.

And I honestly don’t have much more to say on that. I think Destroy All Monsters is one of the most fun in the series of films and, despite the unintentional hilarity of many of the scenes (or possibly because of it), it’s certainly one I’d watch more enthusiastically than some of the others. Next up for the series, though, would be a very different kind of Godzilla movie indeed. I’ll let you know about it after I’ve watched it again soon.

Son Of Godzilla

 

 

 

It’s A Dad, Dad,
Dad, Dad World

Son Of Godzilla
aka Kaijûtô no kessen:
Gojira no musuko
Japan 1967 Directed by Jun Fukuda
Criterion Blu Ray Zone B

Jun Fukada returned in the next Godzilla film in the franchise, after his work in the previous film in the series, Ebirah - Horror Of The Deep (reviewed here). This one, Son Of Godzilla, sees the transformation or, some might say, devolution of the Godzilla character completed, going from out and out villanous menace in the early films, slowly evolving into heroic defender and protector of Japan and, for this one, he and his son Minilla (or Minira in the original Japanese, obviously, as short for Mini-Gojira, I suppose) are pretty much the cutesy comic relief of the film.

The movie starts with an insert shot of some planes in stormy weather who stumble upon Godzilla at sea, who himself seems to be mysteriously called to an island. The timing seems almost off here in terms of the timeline of events in the movie as Godzilla arrives (again) on the island later in the film but I’m guessing that, since the film is mostly ‘monster light’ for the first half, this and another scene showing a Kamacuras, one of the giant preying mantis creatures that populate the island which is the film’s only setting, are here to give us a glimpse of what we are all waiting for later in the story when the plot decides to get out of the way.

Said plot includes a Professor played by Tadao Takashima... we all know he’s a professor because barely a shot goes by with him in it where, no matter what is going on, he doesn’t have a pipe dangling out of his mouth... and his team of volunteer researchers who are doing weather experiments to try and freeze the island so we can later, in 100 years or so, transform fallow regions of the Earth like the Sahara desert into something which a starving and over populated mankind can grow things in to feed the planet. However, a young reporter played by Akira Kubo travels to the island to get a story about what they are doing there. Cue the usual antics until the reporter and professor bond and the reporter is allowed to stay... although nobody believes him when the sees the only woman on the island, played by the very interesting but underused actress Beverly Maeda, who has survived on the island alone since the death of her archaeologist dad in the 1950s.

However, their experiments go wrong as the calls from a giant egg upset the delicate controls of the experiment and they end up making it even more tropical and unlivable as an island. This causes the mantises to grow even larger and, also, for the egg to hatch to be Minilla, Son Of Gozilla, who is in immediate peril from said Mantises until his father finally arrives to kick ass, teach his son how to blow fire... in a wonderful and much re-used sequence in the movies where the cute, young tyke keeps blowing little smoke rings instead... and see off the other main monster in the film, a giant spider called Kumonga.

It’s a playful and fun film, for sure but, it’s a real sea change in the series for fans of The Big G as he originally used to be, continuing the trend from the last installment. Right from the start, with Masaru Satô’s quite wonderful and dynamic score, the stage is set with the whimsical and comic nature of the film played full throttle in terms of the musical content. It’s a fun listen away from the movie and equally appropriate to the on-screen visuals but... it’s a far cry from the serious but beautiful melodies of the films scored by Ifikube. Still, great stuff though.

One strange thing that happens, around about the twenty minute mark, is that the film suddenly takes on a narrator for about a minute, to explain to the audience just what is going on as a result of the failed experiment of the professor and his crew. It’s almost like the producers decided the plot was somehow just a little too convoluted for the target audience and decided to over explain things at the post-production stage, with absolutely no context as to who the narrator is and why his voice suddenly enters and then exits the narrative so inexplicably. It doesn’t hurt the film as such... just seems to be fairly superfluous in a story which doesn’t use this kind of technique from start to end so, yeah, a strange one.

The fight choreography is similar to the bizarre shenanigans when Godzilla fought the giant crab monster Ebirah in the previous film but, this time, the emphasis is on trying to put Minilla in comic situations where he gets inadvertently bumped for his troubles or, a lot of the time, is trapped by his enemies and has to call out for his poppa to come and help. For example, when Godzilla throws a rock at two mantis creatures they catch it, batting it back and forth between each other before launching it in Godzilla’s general direction, only for it to hit Minilla on the head instead and send him comically falling backwards. It’s that kind of film but... no argument from me because, at least it’s a fun movie and sometimes the potency of a really good, broad entertainment is forgotten with ‘serious’ film makers.

That being said, the film doesn’t have much in terms of substance to it, as you can probably tell and, when it ends, with the island freezing in the snow after an experiment goes right, allowing the pesky humans to escape, it takes one of the characters to tell us that Godzilla and son will be fine, they’ll just go into hibernation for a bit. Not often that kind of reassurance was given for the monster characters in a lot of these movies and I’m surprised they didn’t decide to bring back the bizarre 'narrator of the moment' to tell us this instead.

But there you have it, not much more to say other than this is an immensely enjoyable film and Criterion’s Godzilla - The Showa Era set gives us a nice, Blu Ray transfer which is the best way to see the movie. By this time the writers seem to have run out of ideas but some of the more interesting (and even more fun) Showa Era films were still to come.

Invasion Of The Astro-Monster

Crouching Eiga,
Hidden Dragging

Invasion Of The Astro-Monster
(aka Godzilla VS Monster Zero
aka Kaijû daisensô)
Japan/USA 1965 Directed by Ishirô Honda
Toho/Criterion Collection Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Some spoilers in this one.

So the next in my watch through of the newish Criterion Spine 1000, Godzilla - The Showa Era, is one of my all time favourites of this period... Invasion Of The Astro-Monster. It’s also a direct follow on, in some ways, to the previous film in the series, Ghidorah, The Three Headed Monster (reviewed here).

Once again directed by original Godzilla director Ishirô Honda, this film displays one of what I will more often than not describe as one of the strengths of this particular director working on the franchise (although sometimes also a weakness, as I have concluded in another of these reviews previously), that of having the monsters manifesting quite selectively, perhaps even at their most minimalistic in terms of screen time and only used as a way to fulfil the needs of the underlying story, rather than be an all out monster slug fest as many of the later ones could be considered.

So, for example, the film starts off with some absolutely brilliant music by classic Godzilla composer Akira Ifukube, taken from my favourite, secondary march from the very first film in the series, accompanying a sequence of still images from the movie which very much push the ‘astro’ part of the title... so the rocket that the astronauts fly, a flying saucer and shots of a giant radar dish (all of which are models) and absolutely no monsters here at all. Despite the trailer for the movie probably showing off that three of the main monsters from the franchise were back in action in this one, Honda is playing it real cool and not giving away his hand at this point that this is, indeed, a Godzilla movie.

In fact, it takes a while for the monster aspect to emerge as the story follows, like King Kong VS Godzilla, two plots... one involving the main action and one involving an invention which will eventually help save the day.

For the main part of the plot, we have two astronauts flying into space to check out a mysterious new moon of Jupiter named, perhaps demonstrating somewhat less imagination than one might hope for... Planet X. The two space aces are Fuji, played by Akira Takarada (who, like some of his co-stars in this movie, starred in many Godzilla films in different roles as well as films by Akira Kurosawa) and Glenn, the American played by Nick Adams. Presumably named Glenn to give a nod to real life space hero John Glenn, Nick Adams was good friends with both James Dean and Elvis Presley but his downwardly spiralling career in films like this and some of AIP's features (before all this stuff was re-evaluated by modern cineastes and nostalgia driven contemporaries) may well have contributed, among other things, to his probable suicide by drug overdose three years later.

One element about this film which is truly awesome is the special effects created by series regular Eiji Tsuburaya and his crew and, in particular, in the outer space settings. The rocket miniatures are awesome and there’s some really beautiful and very colourful stuff when the rocket lands on the brightly hued, textured surface of Planet X. There, in a plot far more convoluted than any of the previous films in the series, the ‘commandant’ (if the subtitles are to be trusted) of the Xiliens, the alien race native to the planet, offer up our species a cure for cancer in exchange for us allowing them to ‘borrow’ Godzilla and Rodan to fight the scourge of their own planet, Monster Zero... who it turns out, is King Ghidorah, fled there from the last movie (or recalled there, perhaps).

Meanwhile, Fuji’s sister Haruno, played by Keiko Sawai, also works for the Japanese equivalent of NASA... but Fuji doesn’t trust her new fiance. Her new fiance, Tetsu (played by Akira Kubo) is the other part of the ‘good guys’ plot, as he has invented a portable alarm system which nobody wants until a lady called Miss Namikawa (played by Kumi Mizuno), who also winds up as Glenn’s new girlfriend, buys it for her shady organisation.

And then, after a brief but entertaining interlude where Godzilla and Rodan defeat Ghidorah on Planet X (including a little victory dance by The Big G), the convoluted plot twists start to come as it turns out the Xiliens really just wanted to conquer the Earth, with the help of Godzilla, Rodan and King Ghidorah, so they can rule us and use our water. But luckily, before we are destroyed by the aliens, Fuji and his scientist friend construct weapons which will nullify the effects of the aliens... sorry, Xiliens... evil, electromagnetic control over Godzilla and Rodan.

Meanwhile, the other plot twist is gradually revealed as it turns out the organisation that bought Tetsu’s new personal alarm invention were just doing so to keep it off the market. The sound it emits completely sends the Xiliens into paroxysms of agony (and also short circuits a lot of their technology, somehow, it seems to me). So Tetsu and Glenn, after escaping from the Xiliens Earth, base, construct a super duper version to broadcast to radios and amplify around the world. You can’t blame them for being captured earlier on in the film though... after all, the aliens usually have a dark strip of a visor in front of their eyes and a radio antenna coming out of their head... which makes them all look a little like Alfalfa from Our Gang/The Little Rascals. When they’re undercover on Earth though, they dress just like us. Not easy to spot when you’re used to their regular look, I suppose.

The film brings in the usual monster showdown at the end, starting with all three kaiju stomping the country until the signals from the saucers are jammed and Godzilla and Rodan then re-team up to defeat King Ghidorah. Godzilla even tries some ‘float like a butterfly, sting like a bee’ boxing moves out on the three headed monster. And it’s an entertaining movie with some interesting moments and, given the amount of really good looking effects and beautiful sets, some obvious cost cutting exercises in other areas. Such as the various riots internationally following on from the Xilien’s ‘ultimatum’ announcement taking the form of documentary style black and white stills montaged together to try to hide the fact that... well... this was the cheaper way to do it.

For me, though, Invasion Of The Astro-Monster is one of the very best in the series... part of that is because the sequences on Planet X are quite bright and well composed... and partly because Ifikube’s score for this one is just so much fun that my toes tend to tap along most of the way through it. Not my absolute favourite but, certainly a runner up for me. Criterion’s new Blu Ray transfer is awesome when it can be but there are some fairly blurry moments too (possibly due to some of the stock footage from previous films in a couple of places). Either way, this was always one of the selling points of their new box set and it’s a great addition to any cineaste’s shelves... or even the casual viewer like me.