Well it's that time again, for another entry of the Godzilla Chronicles! Last time, I looked at what is to many the crescendo of the original Showa series, Destroy All Monsters. This time, I'm gonna slow things down a bit, and talk about what to many fans, is the lowlight, the least, of those films.
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| One of the VHS covers. |
As I've mentioned in the past, in the early to mid 90s, as a kid gradually heading into my pre-teen years, I was obsessed with monsters and monster movies. And nothing truly helped fuel that for me MORE, than TNT's MonsterVision. In that pre-Joe-Bob Briggs era (bless him), that less people seem to remember or be familiar with, I was hit with wave after wave of awesome (and sometimes kinda terrible) old movies, most of which I had never seen before. MonsterVision helped me to experience many Ray Harryhausen films I'd never yet seen. It also helped me to see many other films considered classics, such as This Island Earth, and The Thing From Another World, and The Time Machine.
But MonsterVision, through a couple of (to child me) incredibly awesome weekend marathons, ALSO allowed me to experience FAR more Godzilla and related Toho films than I otherwise would have been able to. After we finally got a VCR in 1990 or so, I was able to talk my grandmother into buying the occasional Godzilla VHS tape from Walmart. This is how I came to own some of my first Godzilla films, perhaps the first I'd ever seen, such as favorites Godzilla vs. Monster Zero and Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster, as well as a stand-alone film like Rodan. Thanks to these "Godzillathons", I was able to see movies like Mothra vs. Godzilla, War of the Gargantuas, Godzilla vs. Gigan, and Terror of Mechagodzilla. My grandmother even let me use blank VHS tapes to record these movies off of TV, to technically add to my collection.
But there was ONE movie that was part of that set, that was not like quite like the others...
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| Just a lonely boy... |
Called "Godzilla's Revenge", it's American title, this 1969 curiosity was like nothing else I'd seen. But at the time at least, not necessarily in a good way. Directed by Ishiro Honda, the main guy behind a majority of the best known Showa era Toho monster/sci-fi films, this film known as All Monsters Attack, was the result of, I believe, a combination of Toho being cheap, and Honda himself perhaps getting tired of doing monster movies, which by that point in his career, was all about all he made anymore. Instead of your typical Godzilla flick, focusing on some alien mystery, or new monster threat roaming the countryside, this was a much more small scale, intimate story.
It centers around a little Japanese boy named Ichiro Miki, who is a so-called "Latch-key" kid, meaning both of his parents work and are gone from home a lot, so he will often find himself at home, alone, after school. Ichiro is a lonely boy who seems, at least at the outset of the story, to have almost no friends, except for a girl named Sachiko, and his neighbor Shinpei Inami. Shinpei is an older man, and a toymaker, who also happens to help look after Ichiro sometimes, cooking him dinner, and things like that. Ichiro's main source of strife in his life, besides his loneliness, are a group of school bullies, led by big-kid Sanko Gabara, who seem to torment him on a regular basis on his walks home from school.
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| Friends come in all shapes and sizes. |
Now, just on the surface, it would seem that there was certainly a lot that kid-me could relate to in this film. Ichiro is a lonely, only child, with barely any friends, who uses his vivid imagination as an escape, and is obsessed with monsters. That was basically me growing up, to a T, minus the fact that I didn't even have parents as he did, but rather, a (sometimes tyrannical and somewhat abusive) grandmother. But the thing is, at that age, around 12 or so years old, I wasn't watching MonsterVision, let alone GODZILLA movies, for a story about a little boy and his lonely life. While I'm sure I recognized the parallels with my own life, I wasn't able to really appreciate that then, because what I was there for, as ANY "Monster Kid" would be, was, you guessed it, the MONSTERS!
And the thing is, All Monsters Attack HAS those. Just not quite the way it should have. To help him escape his boredom and loneliness, as well as a way to cope with the daily stress of being bullied (something else I would come to identify all too well with, years later in my teens), Ichiro used his powerful imagination to dream up fantastical things. In particular, using parts given to him by Shinpei, he would utilize a little TV/radio type set, to daydream that he was travelling to Monster Island, where Godzilla and the other monsters are now kept. He would go there to visit his friend, Minilla, the eponymous Son of Godzilla, who in this tale could shrink down to his human child size.
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| Meet Gabara, the King of Jerks. |
In Ichiro's daydreams, Minilla (alternatively called Minya), is having his OWN troubles with a big bad bully, who just so happens to ALSO be named Gabara. This Gabara, however, is a giant, no-good monster, with green scales and a magic horn, who seems to be able to electrocute with a touch. He tries to goad Minilla into fights, picking on the weaker monster of course, seemingly just for fun. Much like Ichiro himself, Minilla simply doesn't know how to deal with this, and doesn't truly WANT to fight.
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| Overmatched. |
Of course, he does try to fight him, because his pops, Godzilla, would want him to. Unfortunately, he's just too small, and hasn't yet mastered his dad's thermo-nuclear radioactive breath attack. Gabara winds up beating him, and he winds up having to have his dad come to his rescue. Much like in his own debut film Son of Godzilla.
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| Father and Son. |
And really, especially for kid me, there-in lies the problem: the monster fights. I think I would have enjoyed this movie a lot more, and really been able to better appreciate it at that age, if not for one thing: most of the monster fights are canned! Meaning, that in a very cheap move on Toho's part, most of the monster scenes are stock footage, taken from Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster and Son of Godzilla. No joke. The scenes with Gabara are brand new, and he is an interesting enough monster, even though he only exists in Ichiro's dreams. But as a kid, starving to see NEW Godzilla films with NEW Godzilla fights, the fact that it just re-uses a lot of scenes of Godzilla battles from OLDER movies, was really lame. To be perfectly honest, I felt very let down and cheated by that.
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| The new Blu Ray art. |
In the course of the story, Ichiro finds himself being taken hostage by a couple of numbskull bank robbers, who hold up in some abandoned factory, trying to avoid the police. Naturally, Ichiro uses his imagination as both an escape and a means to cope with this situation. And through watching Minilla grow up and learn how to stand up for himself against the monster Gabara, he himself learns to find the courage to escape from the robbers. He later even finally stands up to HIS real-life Gabara, as well.
At its core, All Monsters Attack is far from a bad film. In fact, I think at its heart, its a very GOOD story, with a good message, that as an adult I'm able to fully take in and appreciate. In some ways, the human story happening in the film is probably one of the best that Honda ever directed. But as a MONSTER movie, as a GODZILLA movie, specifically because of the lazy use (or even OVER-use) of stock footage fights, it winds up being rather lacking. It could have, and should have, been a stronger film that it is, and its unfortunate that it was undermined by Toho's cheapness. Because really, it ISN'T a bad movie, and doesn't deserve most of the hate it gets.
As I always say with these articles, if you are someone who hasn't seen many, or ANY, of the old Godzilla movies, I would not recommend this one as something to start with, at all. You aren't going to miss it if you never see it. BUT, if you ever do wind up watching this obscure and curious little gem, I think there are things here worth seeing. I definitely think for anyone who has kids, this would be a good movie to watch with them, ESPECIALLY if they aren't able to recognize the old stock footage fights!
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For now, for any who may have missed them, here are the other Godzilla Chronicles articles, in order:
1. The Beginning
2. Gojira (aka Godzilla: King of the Monsters)
3. Godzilla Raids Again
4. King Kong vs. Godzilla
5. Mothra vs. Godzilla
6. Ghidorah, The Three-Headed Monster
7. Invasion of the Astro Monster (aka Godzilla vs. Monster Zero)
8. Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster
9. Son of Godzilla
10. Destroy All Monsters
