All Monsters Attack.

Review #2391: All Monsters Attack.

Cast: 

Tomonori Yazaki (Ichiro Miki), Kenji Sahara (Kenichi Miki), Machiko Naka (Tamiko Miki), Hideyo Amamoto (Shinpei Minami), Sachio Sakai (Sembayashi), Kazuo Suzuki (Okuda), Junichi Ito (Sanko Gabara), Hidemi Ito (Sachiko), Haruo Nakajima (Godzilla), Marchan the Dwarf (Minilla; Midori Uchiyama as the voice of Minilla), and Yasuhiko Kakuyuki (Gabara)

Directed by Ishirō Honda (#167 - Godzilla [1954/1956], #711 - Mothra, #1092 - Gorath, #1224 - King Kong vs. Godzilla, #1225 - Mothra vs. Godzilla, #1226 - Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, #1623 - Invasion of Astro-Monster, #1999 - Matango, #2250 - Destroy All Monsters)

Review: 

"When I make a monster film, I never think that it will be for children. As a director, I’m a man who wants to imagine and express a story. But when it’s distributed to the theaters it’s always the children who are the most interested ... particularly those in the primary schools.”

You might think I am perhaps a bit generous to select films of the Godzilla franchise, at least within its early years. Ebirah, Horror of the Deep (1966) was the low point for me in the first batch of movies*, if I remember correctly. Anyway, let's deliver some context to what the hell this movie is in the first place: Destroy All Monsters (1968) was planned to be the final Godzilla film at one point in time...until it wasn't the plan. They thought of developing an animated series with Filmation and while that collapsed, the idea to do a Godzilla movie centered for the children's market with a focus on doing it fast and cheap was an obvious one for Toho to latch onto. Outlandish ideas for young audiences wasn't a new concept for Honda anyway, as evidenced by films he did such as King Kong Escapes (1967), a co-production with Rankin/Bass Productions that dealt with North Pole hideouts and guys named "Dr. Who". The movie started production...in October 1969. For release in late December 1969. Ishiro Honda directed his eighth (out of nine) Godzilla movie, one that saw the special effects scenes shot alongside the drama sequences (Eiji Tsuburaya was given credit out of respect), with each being filmed in the same (small) studio. For whatever reason, when the movie was released in America (with edits and dubs, naturally) in 1971, it was called "Godzilla's Revenge", complete with being on a double feature with Island of the Burning Damned. According to one Honda book, the film was the first of a new breed of Godzilla films that would be part of the Toho Champion Festival, which dealt with entertaining children with films (some re-edited, like King Kong vs. Godzilla) that would occur three times a year - the festival would run for nearly a decade. This was the penultimate Godzilla script that Shinichi Sekizawa did all by himself while Honda (who stated his liking of the finished film) directed two further movies in the 1970s. The next Godzilla movie would be Godzilla vs. Hedorah in 1971.

Sure, the movie can have a few neat little moments, mostly in the fact that it does have some moments that are shot well, and it does try its best to aim for its selected audience. And the acting in the film is generally about what you would hope for a goofy little movie that surely wouldn't be subject to heavy editing for audiences in distant places, suffice to say. Now let's take a hammer to the egg: it easily is the lamest film of the Godzilla movies in the 1960s. I'm not sure how low it will rank among the lesser of the films of the ever-expanding series (does one count the 1998 American abomination in rankings because of the name?), but it fundamentally is just not a consistent movie in its ambition and execution. It may have a few nice shots, but you can still see the seams in this being a fast-and-cheap rush job. It isn't so much that the movie is expressly terrible in action or in its story, it just so happens that it fundamentally doesn't have enough its foundation to make a whole film. It tries to cover an actual issue (note: latchkey kids) but just comes off as short of making it seem authentic beyond "be more assertive" that comes off as hollow, the kid just seems a bit "timid" more than really troubled. Calling it a movie for kids almost sounds like a shield for something that is packaged like a product ready to be churned and churned over than an actual experience. I wonder if one could re-imagine the film to involve a person (young or not) being so gloomy or so warped that they resort to fantasy to try and cope with their life**. Yazaki may not have become a noted name, but he did fine here for a kid actor, which mainly involves seeing a young soul that is caring and imaginative enough to make you want to root for him in his curious trails (spent in his imagination or otherwise). Amamoto is encouraging enough to make an adequate support (remember that you see more of a neighbor than the parents of the lead character, so that tracks), while the paper-thing characterization of Sakai and Suzuki is about what you expect (incidentally, there are a few folks you might recognize from prior Honda productions). There isn't anything worth going volcanic over, even when you consider that going from Godzilla having a son to having said son depicted as talking is not nearly the worst thing possible. I also think it is a bit funny to have a kid-monster talking about being told to fight one's own battles only to have a climax where the kid ends up helping the poor bastard (catapults, rocks, and stuff) anyway. You'll see a few familiar elements from older films without groaning at it being just a "Greatest Hits" collection, at least.

I particularly find the climax ludicrous, nitpicky or not. So you have a kid cornered by robbers (sure) who decides to take action and goes at one of them while it keeps cutting from the robber to Gabara. Cowardly or not, it seems strange to imagine fighting someone that has a knife by pretending they are a monster (to say nothing if it was an adult being shown imagining it). After this and getting to go home, the kid then goes and has a scuffle with that bully by slideshow presentation (get it, because showing violence by kids isn't as ideal as showing monsters doing it to each other) before the kid decides to honk the horn (get it, because it will lead to an adult getting a bit distracted and goof up in paint, get it). I guess one could replace timidness with brat-nature, but whatever. As a whole, this is a movie removed from the usual Godzilla experience that may or may not be worth a watch for its sheer, well, curious strategy for entertainment. It's not a good movie, but you at least see where one could justify spending 69 minutes maybe once.

Overall, I give it 5 out of 10 stars.

*For the purpose of just outlining every Godzilla movie of the 1960s, here's a list with a blurb: 

King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962) - Godzilla fights King Kong to a relative draw.

Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964) - Mothra joins the mash!

Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964) - A monster so important it made the title

Invasion of Astro-Monster (1965) - Nick Adams in: Spaceman's Adventure

Ebirah, Horror of the Deep (1966) - Terrorists, lobsters, and more.

Son of Godzilla (1967) - A real family drama

Destroy All Monsters (1968) - Mash like it's 1999 in Monsterland

**Taxi Driver came to mind, imagine a Godzilla-Taxi Driver mashup. I may be an idiot, but at least I try to throw you a curveball.

Ebirah, Horror of the Deep.

Review #1668: Ebirah, Horror of the Deep.

Cast: 

Akira Takarada (Yoshimura), Toru Watanabe (Ryota Kane), Toru Ibuki (Yata Kane), Chotaro Togin (Ichino), Hideo Sunazuka (Nita), Kumi Mizuno (Daiyo), Pair Bambi (the Shobijin), Jun Tazaki (Red Bamboo Commander), Akihiko Hirata (Red Bamboo Captain Ryuui), Hideyo Amamoto (Red Bamboo Captain Naval Officer), with Haruo Nakajima (Godzilla) and Hiroshi Sekita (Ebirah) Directed by Jun Fukuda.

Review: 

"All I can remember is that making GODZILLA VS. THE SEA MONSTER was like pouring two cups of water into one. I had to cut one sequence after another."

The funny thing to remember about Godzilla is that most of the movies end up with him fighting a big monster for perilous enjoyment, and they all build up to it in their own respective ways (i.e. cliché) that can lend for distinct movies. So far, Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster and Invasion of Astro-Monster have proven better in the first few of the Godzilla sequels, although obviously Godzilla vs. Mothra is also up there. Most of those films took place within military settings or within a city to build the set-up, which got considerably lighter after the first film. All is not quite what it seems with the island setting for this film. For one thing, the original working title was "Operation Robinson Crusoe: King Kong vs. Ebirah"; Rankin-Bass Productions, who was working on The King Kong Show (1966-1969) with Toei, rejected the idea, but Toho liked what they saw while replacing Kong with Godzilla. At any rate, Toho and Rankin-Bass would team up for King Kong Escapes (1967), which combined elements from the show alongside the spy genre as the second and last film that Toho made with the license on the character. Unlike other movies of the series, this movie was distributed in the States only on television, for which it was known as "Godzilla versus the Sea Monster". At helm for director is Jun Fukuda. Born in Japanese-occupied China, Fukuda studied in Japan with Japan Art University before serving in World War II. He was hired to work with Toho in 1951, where he would start as an assistant director. For the next ten years, he worked under directors on films such as So Young, So Bright (1955, directed by Toshio Sugie) and Rodan (1956, directed by Ishirō Honda) before getting his chance to direct in 1959 with Osorubeki hiasobi. He would do a variety of genres until his retirement in 1977 that ranged from action to comedy to science fiction. He was the third person to direct a Godzilla film and the first one to replace Ishiro Honda since Motoyoshi Oda helmed Godzilla Raids Again (1955). Over the next eight years, he would be tasked to direct four more Godzilla features from Son of Godzilla (1967) to Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1974). Over the course of his career with Godzilla, he would approach the films as action dramas, albeit ones that would be tightly filmed in budget and shooting. A modest man, Fukuda enjoyed working with the cast of this film (singling out Hirata and Mizuno), but he did not find any of the Godzilla be his favorites in his career. In one interview, he even was asked if there should have been any sequels to Godzilla in the first place, and he actually answered no (he also noted that he enjoyed making his comedy films more so than the monster movies), where even being sent a copy of the film he made by Toho was "like opening up an old wound."

For the first time in the series, Eiji Tsuburaya was not the director of special effects, since he shifted to supervisor; instead, it was Sadamasa Arikawa that served as special effects director, although he did not take kindly to the cheap demands by Toho, which Arikawa felt was because he could pushed around by them more so than with Tsuburaya (who had his own company and reputation by then). This was the fifth writing effort out of ten Godzilla features done by Shinichi Sekizawa. So instead of Godzilla rampaging the countryside of Japan, he is instead dormant for most of the movie on an island that also has Mothra in the distance in slumber while the focus is on a quartet of humans that are there after being shipwrecked by the title character (Ebirah; ebi incidentally is a shrimp prominent in Japanese cuisine) after looking for a missing brother...after losing a dance marathon contest that would've won a sailboat. Oh, and the island has a group of militants exploiting the land for a formula that keeps the crabby monster at bay. So...yeah, we are talking about a movie where Godzilla eventually fights a shrimp/crab that only seems to fight in the water and can be repelled by militants with a special island powder. I guess Mothra (making her fifth of six appearances in the original series, albeit with a somewhat deteriorating costume) fights Godzilla, in that it involves dust. Godzilla isn't exactly at the "Earth's defender" stage yet, merely placed in the "Well, I destroyed cities, but now I have shifted my interests to being my monster self, so muck off Mothra/Ebirah". Of the cast, Takarada, Hirata, Mizuno, Tazaki, and Nakajima are the most seasoned actors present in this film, and they are fine here, with Takarada and Hirata generally being the most interesting (although Mizuno makes impressions here and there, although the scene spent with Godzilla looking at her like Kong is a bit...weird). The others aren't boring, but the light pace mixed with its tone doesn't exactly make them quite interesting. I admire the scene where they think about their escape and about Godzilla "helping" them before they yell at him to jump off the soon-to-be exploding island; one could find it cynically amusing and ponder the fact that Godzilla lives on again to potentially "visit" another place in time only because someone told him to ump.

So yeah, one is really here to see what stuff will happen with Godzilla, for better or worse. Did I mention there is a condor fight? It actually is the worst fight scene of these films so far, mostly because one can't even see the fight clearly, and it seems appropriate that Godzilla fires it out of existence. Godzilla awakens in a sequence clearly meant to evoke other monsters: a lightning strike. I suppose it goes along with all the non-Godzilla aspects that make for a really cheesy pastiche of clichés, all of which start with comic bumbling and lead right into playing rock volleyball with Ebirah (the icing on the cake is a tribute shot to another movie with a character rubbing their nose...Godzilla, having just done a dance in the film before that). The pace is lighter, but it doesn't mean the movie moves any faster for enjoyment, particularly if one desires to see some interesting Godzilla action, and I suppose it could only set the stage for weirder entries in the series that will range from the offspring of Godzilla to a monster mash to children getting involved with the monsters - there were eight of these films made in the 1960s, and this was the fifth of those released.  If the music by Masaru Sato (a favorite of the director) is memorable for any reason, it is probably because the electric guitar manages to reverb like the James Bond theme, which can either be thought of as distinctive or distracting. In general, the movie acts as yet another cut into the burrowing decisions by Toho and others to shift Godzilla for children with a goal of doing it as fast and cheaply as possible. That isn't to say that Fukuda failed in brining in a new perspective with the film, because he does do a fine job here, but as a Godzilla movie it certainly does fall a bit flat in the lasting enjoyment department. If one can get through some filler to get to parts involving rubber suit monsters, you might have a time here, although the 87 minutes will either feel really short or tolerable enough to finish yet another Godzilla adventure. I can't give it a positive notice, because it doesn't exactly prove a triumph, but I can acknowledge it as a curiosity that may suit others in mind, five decades after the fact. 

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.