Destroy All Monsters (1968)
Directed by Ishirō Honda
At the turn of the century, all of the Earth's monsters have been rounded up and kept safely on Monsterland. Chaos erupts when a race of she-aliens known as the Kilaaks unleash the monsters across the world.
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What critics compared Destroy All Monsters to
Diehards will recognize elements of the quaint 1968 Toho studios import “Destroy All Monsters” underneath the digitized flash.
In fact, the best thing that can be said about it is that director Michael Dougherty (“Krampus”), working from a script he wrote with Zach Shields (though the Japanese writers of “Destroy All Monsters” deserve at least a head nod), doesn’t skimp on the monsters.
Ever since my youth, when I first caught him in the 1968 all-star creature romp Destroy All Monsters , the three-headed Ghidorah always struck me as the most dynamic of all Toho grotesqueries.
The plot is mostly faithful to the original Toho movies and there are nice little nods to the likes of Destroy All Monsters , Mothra and other films for die-hard fans, including reprises of the Godzilla and Mothra themes in the music cues.
Fans have been clamouring for a modernized all-out brawl featuring their favourite Godzilla creatures in the vein of Destroy All Monsters for years, and with King of the Monsters that is certainly what they’ve been promising.
Had he been able to make his Destroy All Monsters with a studio budget behind it, I imagine I would have enjoyed this a ton more, as he clearly wants to go there!
We learn that she’s been studying Kong on his home base of Skull Island for 10 years, recalling the setup for 1968’s awesome Destroy All Monsters , which found Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan, and the gang reduced to guinea pigs before breaking loose for a climactic Royal Rumble that may be the best sequence in any Godzilla movie ever.
The film nods to such 1960s guys-in-foamy-suit epics from Toho Studios as “Destroy All Monsters.”
Pacific Rim (a flat title, though a good setup for the inevitable porn version) doesn’t even have the charm of such Toho beanbags as Destroy All Monsters, War of the Gargantuas, or the underappreciated King Kong Escapes — in which Kong battles “MechaKong,” the creation of the dastardly Dr. Who (not the TARDIS one).
Fervent aficionados of these pictures, of whom there are very many, can probably quote whole swatches of silly dialogue from Mothra vs. Godzilla or the multi-behemoth Destroy All Monsters .
I don't know about you, but not counting the Mothra twins or the sparkly space alien women in Destroy All Monsters -- the greatest kaiju film of all time -- I barely remember the people from any installment of what I can easily admit is my favorite genre of schlock.
Edwards has already stated that he would like to make a sequel in the vein of the classic Destroy all Monsters, which would minimize the disinteresting human exposition and expand the kaiju-related action to truly epic proportions.
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This is not smart cinema, and it’s not trying to be; rather than a reinvention, it’s like a de-invention, back to the time of Destroy All Monsters.
He is a bad man, obviously, even if his ideas for training dinosaurs for war would make for a possibly entertaining update of Destroy All Monsters.
Creature feature collaborations are almost always fun watches with films like Destroy All Monsters and the old Universal monster mash-ups feeding our imaginations and childhood desires.