Still image from the 1969 film Destroy All Monsters.

Destroy All Monsters

Directed by Ishiro Honda

Aliens have released all the giant monsters from their imprisonment on Monster Island and are using them to destroy all major cities on the planet. It is up to the daring crew of the super rocket ship X-2 to infiltrate the aliens' headquarters before the Earth monsters and King Ghidrah annihilate the planet.

1969 1h 28m Action TV-PG

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CAST
see full cast & crew at TCMDb: view

1

Akira Kubo, Capt. Katsuo Yamabe
106000|8003
Akira Kubo
Capt. Katsuo Yamabe

2

Jun Tazaki, Dr. Yoshido
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Jun Tazaki
Dr. Yoshido

FULL SYNOPSIS

By 1999, all the monsters that have terrorized mankind have been corralled on the Japanese island of Ogasawara for scientific observation. One day, the sudden appearance of a strange gas destroys the island's electronic barriers and frees the creatures. Soon Godzilla attacks Paris, Mothra invades Peking, Manda (a giant lizard) devastates London, and Rodan threatens Moscow. After scientific experts determine that an extraterrestrial force controls the monsters, Captain Yamabe of Moon Rocket SY-3 is instructed to land his spaceship on Ogasawara and contact the scientists there. On the island, Yamabe is introduced to a zombie-like woman who claims to be from the planet Kilaak, whose people intend to conquer Earth by imbedding remote-controlled devices in the necks of the scientists and monsters. As the creatures attack Tokyo, the experts determine that this is only a diversionary tactic; the Kilaaks' real objective is to build a subterranean base beneath Japan. Yamabe and his crew find and demolish the Kilaaks' lunar control base, and the invaders, flushed from their simulated environment, turn to stone. To save themselves from the monsters, now controlled by earth scientists, the Kilaaks summon space dragon Ghidrah and a fiery flying saucer to crush the Earth monsters. Ghidrah is defeated, SY-3 stops the saucer, and Godzilla destroys the Kilaaks' base. The monsters then return to their peaceful retreat on Ogasawara.


ARTICLES
Ishiro Honda's Destroy All Monsters (1968) is a film I saw a long time ago--one in a pile of Gojira movies I pulled from the shelves of the local Hollywood Video and forced disinterested friends to watch late into the night. I remember staring at the screen, sitting impatiently through the dull chatter of the scientists and forced romantic subplot, waiting anxiously for that first shot of Godzilla emerging from the sea or cresting over the tree-line, eyes downturned and furious, his back a leathery pin-cushion of spines, arms awkwardly swinging left and right as his tail razed a row of sugar-box buildings. Created almost a decade after the nuclear bombs laid waste to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the monster emerged in the wake of questions and concerns over man's newfound ability to harness mass destruction in a shell and served as a symbol of terror for children and social commentary for filmmakers and critics. Like most aspiring filmmakers within the Japanese studio system, Ishiro Honda came up as an assistant director. He worked alongside a young Akira Kurosawa and eventually served as AD on the latter's searing-hot crime drama Stray Dog in 1949 before finally helming his own pictures. A workhorse who kept his head down, he was described by The Japan Times as "a quietly competent professional" with unwavering loyalty to Toho, the studio that made him and kept him employed until the end of his life. Since 1954, Godzilla, Toho's most famous export (second only to...

NOTES

Released in Japan in August 1968 as Kaiju soshingeki. Includes scenes from The War of the Gargantuas, q. v.

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