All-Out Kaiju Battle Royal in Destroy All Monsters (1968)

Godzilla may roar and strut and sit atop the throne as King of Monsters, with each new cinematic journey considered a major movie-going event, but for a long time he was suffering commercial drought. Never mind how creatively inspired and exciting it is to watch most Showa-era Godzilla movies; the side effect to Toho releasing roughly one every year saw dwindling box office returns. 1962's King Kong vs Godzilla still has the highest Japanese attendance record for a Godzilla film, with over 11 million tickets sold in its first theatrical run, but later installment Ebirah, Horror of the Deep (1966) sold only 3.45 million tickets, and Son of Godzilla (1967) even less with 2.48 million. Toho saw Godzilla as a sinking ship, so went forward with another under the intentions of making it work as a possible Final Chapter. What better way to put a cap on a decade-and-a-half series and subgenre of giant monsters attacking cities and one another than with a movie featuring all the monsters attacking all the cities, and ending with them fighting each other all at once? The ninth Godzila outing, Destroy All Monsters (1968) is that movie.

"The 20th century is nearing its end." Destroy All Monsters' opening line said via narrator, as they go on to explain the technological and militarist advancements made by Japan since the modern era.  Every previous Godzilla film occurs in the then-present, so we have to assume this is a version of Japan 30 years after dealing with the regularly occurring ecological disasters of Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964) and Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964). The film's opening 30-second dolly shot pans over the sophisticated United Nations Science Committee (UNSC) base constructed from miniatures; a base busy with activity, the bustling of cars, helicopters taking off, even a futuristic rocket ship seconds away from blasting into orbit. The rocket's destination: Monsterland, Japan's latest pacifist-ish solution to their giant monster problem. Monsterland is an island with no near-by bodies of land, described by the film's scientist characters as a "research habitat of giant fearful monsters". In an amusing sequence, we see the Godzilla franchise's most casual on-screen kaiju introductions. "Godzilla is here", a narrator helpfully informs us right as Godzilla is seen walking out of a cave, seemingly yawning and stretching. Debuting in the film at the 3 and a half minute mark, this is a significant departure from earlier films waiting 30 or 40 minutes to introduce its title character. The kaiju roll-out continues, with shots of Rodan [a goofy looking pterosaur, debuted in Rodan (1956)], Anguirus [an ankylosaurus mixed with a crocodile, debuted in Godzilla Raids Again (1955)], Mothra (giant moth goddess who was killed in a previous film, name now carries over to larva offspring, debuted in Mothra (1961)], Gorosaurus (regular looking giant dinosaur, debuted in Toho's King Kong Escapes (1967)], and Minilla (clumsy child kaiju with resemblance to Godzilla, who acts as a father to the child, debuted in Son of Godzilla (1967)]. The island's magic-science is briefly explained, being that there are psychic and magnetic barriers which mentally and physically prevent the monsters from ever leaving Monsterland, or even venturing more than a few meters into the sea. The narrator informs us that the facility also acts as an underwater farm, constantly cultivating a large supply of animal life for the carnivorous creatures, with the island itself being ripe with enough vegetation for the herbivores. The kaiju are prisoners and the island their quarantine, but with Japan's sophisticated science, it is worth noting they're keeping Monsterland stocked with food, implying that they could have chosen to simply let the kaiju all starve to death or eat each other. The continued existence of these creatures is important; maybe to try and better understand them, and to give them their own place on the Earth, eliminating the possibility of them harming other civilization; they have chosen not to deprive them of life. There's no easy answer for what exactly to do with hundred-meter-long monsters walking the planet, beings which are simply too large to exist within the rest of the world, and the government's approach in Destroy All Monsters is one of the more thoughtful kaiju responses in any of these movies, flaws of imprisonment notwithstanding.

Deep underground we see the interior of the research facility, with dozens of uniformed scientists conducting business. A different kaiju is seen on every TV monitor; every creature is being monitored 24/7 (one must feel a little pity to the person on Minilla duty, whose life is a constant series of embarrassing pratfalls). When a mysterious cloud of fog forms throughout Monsterland, all communication, monitoring and quarantine devices are shut down, causing a panic and immediate investigation by the UNSC. Before the world has time to react, the monsters escape. Rodan attacks Moscow, creating wind gusts which pierce through buildings. Gorosaurus attacks Paris, digging up through the earth, causing historic monuments to collapse. Mothra is in Beijing, Manda [sea dragon, debuted in Atragon (1963)] in London, and Godzilla is in New York City. Godzilla lays waste to shore-side blocks with raging breaths of fire. No musical score accompanies this destruction, the sounds of emergency sirens and fire drown out every other noise in the world. News broadcasters around the globe suffering grief and shock in real time while being forced to describe the ongoing horrors. "The world's treasure is about to be destroyed by the monster." After several light-hearted movies from director Jun Fukuda which relocated all monster action to deserted islands, and an Ishiro Honda directed family installment that places its major battles in outer space, Destroy All Monsters sees a return to the Godzilla of motivated urban destruction. Cities are not the collateral damage of monster melee, they are the target. It's a scene that may have shocked some original audiences, acting against Godzilla's gradual face-turn throughout 1964-1967, with Honda reminding people what these movies used to be about. Destroy All Monsters is a have-its-cake-and-eat-it-too sort of movie, as it places its eventual climax in uninhabited terrain without a building or civilian in sight, but these earlier city attack sequences are fantastic, with some of the finest effects work the series has done in the 1960s. The miniature sets are large and gorgeous, and the explosions and fires feel mammoth. 

Haruo Nakajima dons the Godzilla costume for yet another round, having played Godzilla in every film from 1954 to 1972 (with the exception of Son of Godzilla, which required a much larger suit and taller actor to better emphasize the size difference between father and son). The seasoned suit actor wears Godzilla as comfortably as his own skin (incredibly impressive considering how physically uncomfortable and sometimes painful those heavy costumes were to wear), with each cocky strut and posture exuding overwhelming arrogance and self-assurance. Something the Japanese suit actors and Toho understood well that American studios do not is that audiences respond well to kaiju exhibiting human-like behavior. Nakajima and other Toho suit actors give their characters distinctive personalities, rather than CGI monsters animated to possess alien animal-like behavior. There's no emotional connection to be had there. There are too many degrees of separation between those monsters and the viewer. Toho's kaiju seem almost like people; giant, irradiated and pissed off at what humanity's weapons have caused them to become.

All of the kaiju spending their first moments of freedom on a Tour of Destruction 1999 could have been explained as a means of the monsters taking out their anger on humans after being trapped on Monsterland for years (they would all believably revert to this mode except for Mothra, who never attacks senselessly), but instead they're under alien control. The Kilaaks are a feminine humanoid alien race with mind control devices, which influences monsters and humans alike. On their quest for Earth domination, they've taken control of some of the UNSC's highest ranked scientists along with the kaiju, and attempt to negotiate power and Earth's surrender using the city attacks as their leverage. This alien takeover and monster manipulation subplot is a retread on the sixth Godzilla movie, Invasion of Astro-Monster (1965), but it's a little more sensible and coherent this time. Astro-Monster is notoriously silly, even to its detriment, but Honda had a firmer hand in Destroy All Monsters, and never liked taking kaiju too lightly. Even in a pulpy sci-fi evil alien narrative, Honda understands to treat the threat of world annihilation seriously, and to handle the gigantic creatures with care, even being used as pawns in a larger intergalactic struggle. Honda also directed Invasion of Astro-Monster, but at that time he was losing some creative say to the special effects director, Eiji Tsuburaya.
Eiji Tsuburaya was a brilliant special effects artist who first made a name for himself creating miniature set-pieces depicting real-life battles in propaganda and other World War II based films. Tsuburaya worked on war dramas with Ishiro Honda, The Eagle of the Pacific (1953) and Farewell Rabaul (1954), depicting flight battles and crafting explosions. His collaborations with Honda continued with Godzilla (1954), which brought special effects heavy movies into Japan, creating the tokusatsu genre (the kaiju movie being a sub-genre under tokusatsu), a term which roughly means "special effects filmmaking". A decades-long fan of King Kong (1933) and Willis O'Brien's groundbreaking stop motion animation, Tsuburaya longed to make a movie like that for Japan. The budget and time constraints he was under prevented him from utilizing stop-motion, so out of limitation, suitmation was born. Through a combination of actors wearing monster suits, miniature sets, and matte compositing, Tsuburaya invented a budget and time saving method for creating giant monster movies. He worked closely with Toho and Honda thereafter, and was part of every Godzilla movie and many other kaiju movies up through Destroy All Monsters. When his workload grew so large, he formed Tsubyraya Productions, which oversaw more work than he could ever handle on his own. In tokusatsu productions, the special effects director is often given the utmost control over special effects sequences, while the director handles everything else, thusly to ensure a kaiju production's success, obviously the special effects director is of equal importance to the director. As the Godzilla series grew in popularity over the early to mid 1960s, it became apparent families and children were turning up to watch them, more and more. Tsuburaya found a calling, and wanted to entertain children above all else. Honda was against this gradual transformation, but Toho sided with Tsuburaya. When Honda quit the Godzila series after Astro-Monster, the movies remained in light hearted family territory for two more movies, under director Jun Fukuda. It's likely a combination of factors that led to Toho allowing Destroy All Monsters to have scenes of darker material following three kid's movies. Happy to have Honda return to give Godzilla a proper send-off, they allowed him to dictate more control over the entire picture (he is credited co-writer, as he was on the original film). Tsuburaya was less hands-on in the final years of his life (he died in 1970), assuming a supervising role instead of proper effects directing. He was also increasingly occupied with TV in the late 1960s, developing and showrunning the hugely popular Ultraman series. Tsuburaya's career in tokusatsu is bookended with the births of the two most iconic franchise's in the history of the genre, dominating cinema and television. Destroy All Monsters is the final Godzilla movie Eiji Tsuburaya worked on.

In a ferocious mid-film battle, Godzilla and other kaiju storm through Tokyo together, but are matched by the military's artillery. Missiles are fired again and again, angering and slowing down Godzilla, as he wails, the city becoming engulfed in the smoke of gunfire. Close-ups of Godzilla's feet as he crushes the road below him, flails his arms through buildings, and fire swelling around him. Akira Ifukube's score bellows; the familiar tones of his iconic Godzilla arrangements, but a new composition for a new devastation. Even more striking than the gunfire and the monster rampage is the immediate aftermath; as fire literally covers the screen, we fade into the wreckage. A slow dolly pan lingering on debris, fallen buildings, a Tokyo no more. As day crawls to night, the purple sky mourns, a darkish red hue painting the scene below. Ifukube's music becomes a funeral tone. Godzilla did not cause this devastation alone. Man had a helping hand. This is about as dark as Godzilla gets in the '60s, but there is still one key component which prevents this from reaching the tier of utter tragedy and horror of Godzilla (1954). Just prior to the attack, sirens warn the population of the approaching monsters and the film is deliberate in showing us a lengthy city-wide evacuation. During the close-ups on Godzilla's feet, there are no attempts to illustrate the presence of any civilian. The town is deserted. While an entire populace losing their homes is a significant tragedy, the people have their lives, and perhaps the opportunity to rebuild someday. The populace in the original Godzilla are granted no such luck; that film focuses just as much on the deaths of countless people as the loss of infrastructure. For the atomic bomb metaphor to fully work, this is essential to depicting the horror of Godzilla. That original film is now an extreme (and probably the best film to ever depict any kaiju), as Toho has often been reluctant to return to those lengths, especially in the family friendly era of the '60s and '70s. Destroy All Monsters goes hard for its era, but it's still a film of compromise, teetering back-and-forth between horror and excitement, between the saturated hues of fog filled annihilation and brightly coloured monster battles.

The UNSC finally gain the upper hand when they destroy a Kilaak base on the moon, and take the mind control device for themselves. They force all the kaiju to relocate to Mt. Fuji to destroy the secret Kilaak Earth-base and rid themselves of the alien threat permanently. Cut to Mt. Fuji. It is "quiet, as if awaiting the impending full-scale giant-monster attack against the Kilaak base", a news broadcaster tells the audience. This kicks off the finale, and what follows are 17 of the most purely enjoyable minutes in monster movie history, and the lengthy sequence which is largely responsible for giving Destroy All Monsters its strong reputation. This a film made stronger and more interesting not in spite of its contradictions, but because of them. It embodies so well both the horror and fun that can come from the kaiju movie, and while up to this point the film's action scenes have largely focused on the former, the finale rests completely on the side of the latter. The '60s Godzilla movie tradition is followed of locating the final battle to an unpopulated stretch of land, and appropriately, we've got a live commentator on hand, calling back King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962), the first of the fun monster vs monster movies, and perhaps the first Toho kaiju film to deliberately channel the essence of professional wrestling in its action. The posturing, ego taunting, grappling, flair for the overly dramatic art of wrestling is all over the Godzilla movies of the 1960s, so what could they possibly do in this potential series finale to make a lasting impression? How about a battle royal.

The reporter's play-by-play enthusiastically announces each kaiju's appearance towards the battle field, and the fact that they all show up one slightly after another is all the more theatrical; each monster gets its own entrance. The commentator doesn't shy away from nicknames either, hyping up Godzilla as "the king of monsters" as he walks into frame. Anguirus is announced as "Anguirus from the Asagri Plateau"; considerate of the announcer to give a hometown billing.  Destroy All Monsters couldn't be more wrestling if it tried. Godzilla. Minilla. Mothra. Rodan. Anguirus. Manda. Gorosaurus. Baragon [subterranean reptile, debuted in Frankenstein vs. Baragon (1965)]. Kumonga [giant spider, debuted in Son of Godzilla (1967)]. All monsters have entered the battle field.

All the kaiju edge closer, menacingly taunting one another. All eyes are on Godzilla, awaiting his first move, but before he does anything, the Kilaak's have a monster of their own. King Ghidorah [three-headed dragon, debuted in Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964)] materializes in Earth's atmosphere, and flies over the Earth monsters. Brainwashed into protecting the Kilaak base, Ghidorah lands in the middle of all the other kaiju and attacks, breathing lightning bolt rays out of its mouths, kicking up clouds of dust. Godzilla, with arguably the most upper body strength of the Earth kaiju, sneaks up behind Ghidorah who was focused on Baragon, and tries to wrap his arms around the dragon. With Ghidorah squirming to break loose to no avail, Mothra and Kumonga launch a joint offensive from back aways, simultaneously shooting sticky webbing over Ghidorah's body. Anguirus clamps its teeth around one of Ghidorah's necks, but the foe is not so easily defeated, pushing free and flying high above. He bites Anguirus back with another head, causing the shell-bearing creature to fall many meters, crashing into the ground on its back, causing a minor earthquake. Ifukube's iconic score plays throughout this epic battle, but what is audibly more striking is the nearly constant shrieks and shrills and battle cries being made throughout. Every kaiju has a different voice and varying pitches; cries of pain are more wounded than the confident cries of determination. It all comes together to form a memorable cacophony of monster cries.

King Ghidorah has always dwarfed over the other monsters, but Destroy All Monsters showcases his size so well when compared to ten other kaiju, from a larva Mothra, to baby Minilla, to who's basically a smaller-less-efficient Godzilla in Gorosaurus. There is such a diverse sense of scale that it can be easy to forget there are people inside these costumes. To have so many costumed performers in one stage choreographing multi-pronged fights captures a sense of awe. Some monsters are more complicated, too, particularly the three heads of Ghidorah and the eight legs of Kumonga, which required on-set help to manuever in real-time. Ghidorah is eventually thwarted by the combined efforts of the Earth kaiju, and it's exciting and strangely cathartic to see the three-headed jerk get pummelled and humiliated so badly (Godzilla even calls over his boy Minilla to get a shot in, as Ghidorah lays limp on the ground). Some kaiju get more to do than others in this movie, however, with one of the oddest moments coming from a one-second cameo from Varan [giant flying squirrel monster, debuted in Varan (1958)], as if to steal a bit of the spotlight for having done literally nothing in the fight against Ghidorah. To connect this to wrestling again, Varan is the coward heel who hides underneath the ring during the entirety of the Royal Rumble only to crawl out and slide back into the ring at the very end.

Destroy All Monsters's all-out approach proved beneficial to Toho, with the film earning a warm reception, and a slightly higher box office gross than the preceding Son of Godzilla, temporarily pausing the series' downward trajectory. The King of the Monsters was far from dead after all, and Toho would actively churn out a nearly annual installment until the mid 1970s. At least commercially, those would be the dark days of Godzilla, with Destroy All Monsters being seen as one of the final triumphs of the Showa era. It certainly placed a precedent for every giant-monster all-out-attack movie to follow, and still casts a shadow over monster movies to this day.

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Historical information lifted from Godzilla FAQ, written by Brian Solomon, published by Applause: Theatre & Cinema Books

As of this writing, Destroy All Monsters is available for streaming on The Criterion Channel along with these other Showa-era Godzilla movies: Godzilla (1954), Godzilla Raids Again (1955), Godzilla: King of the Monsters (1956, US dub of the original), Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964), Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster (1964), Invasion of Astro-Monster (1965), Son of Godzilla (1967), All Monsters Attack (1969), Godzilla vs. Megalon (1973), Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1974), Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975), and Rodan (1956)

In 2016 as I watched through many Godzilla films (most for my first time), I chronicled my viewings of the first eight, spread across four posts.
Godzilla (1954) and Godzilla Raids Again (1955)
King Kong vs Godzilla (1962) and Mothra vs Godzilla (1964)
Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster (1964) and Invasion of Astro Monster (1965)
Ebirah, Horror of the Deep (1966) and Son of Godzilla (1967)
I likely will not be re-writing these earlier essays/reviews anytime soon and hope to continue moving forward. I believe stepping back for a few years proved beneficial, as I think I can approach kaiju movies more thoughtfully today than I did three years ago. These earlier pieces will remain up and are a decent-enough introduction to the early Godzilla movies.