"Destroy All Monsters" (1968) d/ Ishiro Honda

Growing up in the seventies, seeing tonight's review listed in the TV Guide for the coming week usually led to prolonged bouts of unbridled kid giddiness, if not lengthy negotiations with the M & P to stay up late and watch, if it was on after that grey, fuzzy area known in my house as "bedtime". After all, this wasn't just Godzilla and Mothra, or a couple of Gargantuas, this was ALL MONSTER territory. Besides the usual culprits: Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan, and the three-headed King, you were getting Gorosaurus, Kumonga (Spiga here), Manda, Angillas, Minya, Baragon, and even Varan the Unbelievable shows up for a brief pair of shots. That's unbelievable. Read on...


Remember when astronauts wore this lemony get up, way back in 1999?
In the distant future of 1999, the United Nations Science Committee has somehow managed to rustle up all of the earth's giant monsters and supplant them on an impossibly tiny island they've christened "Monster Land". They're all there despite long shots that make the place look cramped for even two guys-in-suits. Everything is controlled from a subterranean base on the island, until it isn't. On the human front, you've got Dr. Yoshido (Jun Tazaki) dispatching his sixties-tastic Moonlight SY-3 rocket spacecraft and crew to investigate the sudden loss of communications with ahem, Monster Land. Wouldn't you know it, the researchers stationed there have been slipped a gaseous mickey and rendered subservient to a race of pushy alien women in silver lame capes n' hoods known as the Kilaaks. All the monsters are sent out on a worldwide rampage by the interstellar bitches, with Godzilla stomping the Big Apple, Gorosaurus burrowing up into Paris (Why does Gorosaurus burrow anyway? Strikes me as a poor man's T-Rex.), Rodan flaps through Moscow, Mothra headbutting oncoming trains in Beijing, and Manda flopping around limply in London, respectively. We foolish earthlings are indeed in for it now.


"I removed the transmitter from behind your ear. I may also have elbow-titted you in the melee. Sorry."
While the world deals with its sudden monster infestation, the Kilaaks are building a stronghold under Mt. Fuji. The UNSC manages to uncover the extraterrestrial (While we're at it, why do the alien races all look like Japanese in these movies. Just a thought, I'm not complaining about hot Japanese cooze in go-go outfits, trust me...) plot, and most of the trainsmitters they've supplanted in rocks...coconuts. Basketballs. Yeah. Anyway, with control of the daikaiju transferred back to the good guys, the Kilaaks send for their three-headed trump card in the form of King Ghidorah, who squares off against the whole damned lot of them. Ghidorah manages to bully Angillas some, before ultimately getting punked the fuck out by an Angillas neckbite, Gorosaurus jumpkick (Why didn't he break out this stuff against King Kong two years earlier?), and Godzilla roughhousing, topped off with a silk casket woven by Kumonga and Mothra in unison. Godzilla stomps one head into the dirt, and as a final slap in the face, Minya smoke rings the last conscious head into defeat. The Kilaak's final hope lies in a mysterious Fire Dragon, which turns out to be little more than a flame-engulfed flying saucer, and that, too, is pulverized. Hooray for Earth. Wave goodbye to the monsters, cramped once again on their archipelago.


"Spare us your lightning, you're about to get clowned, bitch."
I don't wanna sound too much like the kid who grew up into Mr.Elitist Prick, but overall, if you're not into Godzilla, King Ghidorah, Mothra larva, Rodan, Manda, Angillas, or Gorosaurus, there's not nearly as much daikaiju as advertised, hardly enough to merit "All" in the title. And though Godzilla, Gorosaurus, and King Ghidorah are all cool as fuck, nobody's settling in,  in front of the big screen, jonesing to cheer on a flimsy-looking Manda puppet or the perpetually piss-weak Angillas. Not even a gaggle of ironic kaiju hipsters in fedoras. I'm doubting Mothra larva's fan base as this juncture, too. Still, gonna lay two Wops upon it, in any case. Worth a look, for hardcore daikaiju freaks.


As a Vikings fan, Godzilla did a lot less of this, especially in playoff games last season. Oof-ah!

"Invasion of Astro Monster" (1965) d/ Ishiro Honda

Man, this one was a Saturday afternoon staple of mine growing up, seemingly always on television, much to the dismay of my old man, who never passed up the opportunity to point out how fake the suitmation effects were from the comfort of the living room couch, and/or how stupid the movies were because of said special effects, though he could never be bothered to get up and change the channel, despite his feigned disgust. That's right, woprophiles, in the mid-70s, there were no remote controls to speak of, and if you wanted to change the channel (to one of the other seven or eight available) you had to get up off your lazy ass and twist a massive channel knob on the front of the set to do it. Anyway, tonight's review marks the sixth Godzilla film in the Showa series, and the first Japanese/American co-production of a such a movie.


"No, I don't want to drive to West Nanticoke for promazine and pierogies, Adams..."
Fuji and Glenn (Akira Takarada, Nick Adams) are sent on an interstellar mission to the mysterious Planet X, where they're taken into an underground base by the leather-clad Xilien race, as led by the hand gesturing Controller (Yoshio Tsuchiya), who points out that his people have been fearfully forced to move their operations under the planet's surface to avoid the regular lightning attacks of Monster Zero, instantly recognized by the astronauts as the fearsome King Ghidorah, who'd wreaked havoc on Earth once before. In return for a cure for cancer (or any disease you can think of, according to the English dub), the Controller requests the use of two of Earth's monsters, Godzilla and Rodan, to combat their flying three-headed pest on Planet X, sending the men back to their own planet with his proposition. Also, there's an inventor named Tetsuo (not to be confused with the Iron Man) who's romantically linked to Fuji's sister, who's kidnapped by Xilien spies after getting scammed out of a deafening siren he's whipped up.


Q: Are we not men? A: No! We are Xiliens.
Our space travelling heroes begin to suspect things are not what they appear after three Xilien spacecrafts make the scene on Earth to transport Godzilla and Rodan, both in hibernation, back to Planet X in massive energy bubbles. Fuji, Glenn, and a scientist named Sakurai accompany the monsters on their trip, and it isn't long before the astronauts encounter multiple lookalikes of the businesswoman (Kumi Mizuno) who shafted Tetsuo out of his invention among the Xilien ranks. The controller sends the men back to Earth with a tape containing the miracle cure instructions after Godzilla and Rodan successfully drive away King Ghidorah on the surface of X, but when the tape is played for world leaders, it sounds nothing like a formula for drugs and everything like an ultimatum to the people of Earth to surrender their planet to the Xiliens else they will face the combined force of Godzilla, Rodan, and King Ghidorah, who's been controlled by the alien race the whole time. Should have used PayPal to avoid a transaction dispute, I'd imagine.


- 1 Wop :Still not the most preposterous thing Godzilla's ever done on camera, but damned close.
Tonight's movie, which comprised half of a great double bill in 1970, under the alternate "Monster Zero" title and paired with War of the Gargantuas (1966),  stands as one of two Toho films that Nanticoke, Pa. native, Nick Adams, would appear in, also co-starring with Boris Karloff in the British production of Die Monster Die! (1965), before an accidental overdose claimed the actor's life in 1968. You can visit his grave in Berwick. Akira Takarada had appeared in the original Godzilla (1954), Mothra vs Godzilla (1964), Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster (1966), and King Kong Escapes (1966), before returning triumphantly to daikaiju films in 1992's Godzilla vs Mothra reboot and 2004's Godzilla: Final Wars. I'm not a huge fan of any of the monster suits they used here, with a middling Godzilla, the clumpy-looking toupees of Showa King Ghidorah, and my least favorite Rodan, looking like he rides the kaiju short bus, to date. At least Godzilla doesn't have his '64 eyebrows, I suppose. Opinions are funny like that. Still, there's enough entertainment here to warrant a pair of Wops overall. Check it out for yourselves.


It's like thunder, lightning, the way I love Ghidorah is frightening. He'd need arms to knock on wood, though.

"Matango" (1963) d/ Ishiro Honda

We've got some Japanese fungi on the menu tonight, courtesy of the folks at Toho, as directed by Ishiro Honda, who helmed all the biggest Godzilla titles over the course of his career for the studio, and starring Akira Kubo, who you'll remember from decades-spanning genre staples like Destroy All Monsters (1968) and Gamera: Defender of the Universe (1995). Also on board is Kumi Mizuno, an actress famous for roles in cult favorites like Invasion of the Astro Monster (1965), War of the Gargantuas (1966), and most recently, Godzilla: Final Wars (2004). If you're expecting giant radioactive lizards squashing fleeing citizens and blowing toes up destruction rays in tonight's entry, you're bound to be disappointed, as the threat is human-sized this time around, though probably doubly weird and infinitely more ambient than most films of that nature, securing its status as an authentic cult classic of horror/sci-fi, to be sure.


"On a clear day, you really can see the edge of the rear projection screen."
At the outset, we're met by an asylum denizen as he graciously relates his lunacy-packed backstory to the audience, maintaining his own sanity throughout, or so he says...After a mercilous storm (getting pelted in the mush by off-screen buckets of water, you know the type) interrupts a carefree day trip on a yacht full of Japanese personalities, including, but not limited to the celebrity yacht owner Kasai (Yoshio Tsuchiya), the singer Mami (Kumi Mizuno), Naoyuki the skipper (Hiroshi Koizumi), the millionaire and his wife, the professor aaaand...Mary Aaaaaann... Yeah, you get the picture. After all of that, and days adrift at sea with a somber radio broadcast assuring there'd be no rescue parties to mention, they land upon a deserted Gilligan's Island, if by "Gilligan", you mean a thick green fungus wallpapering every thing in sight, and huge mushrooms that nobody'd better eat on account of possible toxicity. You know, I bet you somebody's gonna eat some of those later on, and cause irreparable damage, death, and destruction to all castaways involved, you just wait and see...


"When we agreed to be Jets, we were Jets all the way from our first cigarette to our last dying day."
After much fruitless hunting and collecting, a search party stumbles across a shipwreck steeped in the aforementioned fungi and surrounded by a wooded area permeated with huge spores, as well as ponds full of collected rainwater, leading our survivors to speculate the area had been used for secretive nuclear testing at some point in the past. Much treachery ensues between them, as a black market for turtle eggs and birds develops(I'd eat a turtle egg, you kiddin' me?), and such luxury items are much too difficult to procure for yourself if you're, say, suntanning all day instead of digging for paltry potatoes and grabbing puny seaweed snacks like the shipwrecked plebeians are forced to exhaustively do. Naturally, Kasai is far and away the most entitled shitface of the bunch, often going on late night raids into the party's rationed food supplies, and it isn't long before...surprise, certain of our heroes, decide to veto the usual potato and seaweed diet, in favor of some of those big, beautiful mushrooms that surround them. Cue: death fungus mushroom people. Score a copy for yourselves and see how it all winds up.


"Alriiiiiiight! Ze WAAAAANGGGGO MATAAAAAANGO! One! Two! Three! Four!!"
Honda helmed nearly sixty films in his career, with titles like Godzilla (1954), Mothra (1961), King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962), Frankenstein Conquers the World (1965), and Destroy All Monsters (1968) to his credit. Special effects were provided by none other than Eiji Tsubaraya, the man responsible for the suitmation technique (man in a rubber suit interacting on a set full of miniatures with the action slowed down slightly to add size to the proceedings) still popular in Japanese film culture today. Tonight's review is an admittedly very groovy and stylized in delivering a nightmarish undercurrent, originally weakened by bad dubbing and a silly re-title for American audiences and later resurrected for the home video crowd in a special remastered, restored edition on dvd (the one I screened for this review, cost me all of five bucks in a used bin at f.y.e.). Matango is just weirdly effective enough in it's bleak outlook to keep your attention throughout it's brisk eighty-nine minute running time. A respectable Two Wops should suffice here. Check it out.


"I picked you an ounce of these macro caps, breh! Let's party!"