Review: Godzilla’s Revenge/All Monsters Attack

Young Tomonori Yazaki gets bullied at school and largely left to himself at home. In between school and visits to a kindly toymaker friend (Eisei Amamoto) the boy imagines himself on Monster Island, where he watches Godzilla and son Minilla/Minya battle nasty monsters like Gabara. Somehow a bunch of bank robbers find their way into the plot.

Man, sometimes movies make it tough on me to grade. Case in point, this 1969 kaiju film from director Ishiro Honda (“Gojira”, “Godzilla vs. Monster Zero”, “Destroy All Monsters!”) and screenwriter Shinichi Sekizawa (“Mothra”, “Godzilla vs. Mothra”, “Godzilla vs. Monster Zero”). Considered by most to be among the worst in the history of Godzilla films, it’s certainly among the cheapest and silliest. There’s stock footage galore, and Godzilla’s cutesy son Minya/Minilla has unwisely been given the power of English-speaking skills. I can definitely see why people consider it a bad film. Hell, it probably is a pretty stupid film even by cheesy monster movie standards, though I’d argue it’s better on that level than “Son of Godzilla”. Personally, I was too busy enjoying it to notice whether it was a good or bad film. I’d much rather watch this than something tedious like “King Kong vs. Godzilla”.

Of all the Showa era Godzilla films, this is definitely the one most geared towards children (probably inspired by the “Gamera” series of kiddie-oriented kaiju films), and perhaps that’s where some of the ire comes from, in addition to the plethora of stock footage for the monster fight scenes. However, from the opening scenes of the Japanese version of Bjork singing an awful title tune, I knew this one was going to be ‘special’. Seriously, the song is just…WTF? The entire music score by Kunio Miyauchi (who worked on the “Ultraman” TV series) is very juvenile. There’s certainly a lot of monsters appearing in this one. In addition to Godzilla and son, we get Ebirah from “Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster”, Anguirus, Kumonga the spider, Kamacuras the giant praying mantis, and a one-and-done monster called Gabara. Gabara looks like a mixture of the dopey Pekingese-looking Kingseesar and Godzilla, but with what look like giant pimples on its back. Looking like it has suffered a major peanut allergy reaction, it looks silly-as-fuck in a film that already has Minya/Minilla. What really pisses me off about Gabara is that we eventually discover that it can electrocute someone/something with its hands. Like, why were you not doing that the entire time, then? Use that shit all the time, dude. It’s the one cool thing about you! Gorosaurus is here and is his usual third-rate dinosaur self. Rodan is mentioned but never seen, instead we get a giant condor called Oowashi. Godzilla slaps the ever-lovin’ piss out of it in short order. The monster action as I’ve said is mostly stock footage, but to be honest I didn’t know until after the film, so it still worked for me.

I actually don’t think the central idea of the film is too bad. This kid is being bullied at school and imagines a bunch of monsters on Monster Island that represent his bullies. The presentation is a bit too annoying cutesy and cheap, but the ideas are interesting and I think young Tomonori Yazaki just about gets away with being cute without crossing over into complete irritation. The overall weirdness is also interesting, cheap or not. This is a very, very weird LSD-trip of a film and it’s compelling for that very reason. I mean, once I heard Minya/Minilla starting to speak I had to check that I wasn’t having some bizarro dream. He’s also the same size as the kid, with presumably a little person/dwarf inside the suit. The funniest thing is that because this is cheap-arse stuff and it’s a person in a suit, the poor creature sounds like its voice is muffled like no one bothered to loop the dialogue in post. As for the humans, in addition to young Tomonori Yazaki, we have solid work by Eisei Amamoto as the Gepetto-looking toymaker friend of the kid, though Kenji Sahara doesn’t get much to do as the boy’s train driver father. In addition to the stock footage, I’ve also got to say the final 10 minutes are dull as they focus on the kid vs. robbers subplot. It’s a shame, because the rest of the film is so loopy that it’s hard to resist. On top of that is an ending that seems to encourage schoolyard violence and copying what the monsters do. I’m not sure that’s a very good idea, but um…OK then.

Look, objectively and artistically the film’s kind of awful and cheap. I can hardly believe a genuinely solid filmmaker like Ishiro Honda directed it. It’s certainly of a lower technical standard of his other Godzilla films. 66 minutes and some of it is stock footage. It sounds terrible. However, if you’re scoring on entertainment alone, this one deserves a recommendation for its chosen audience, young and old. It’s highly watchable and nuttier than a fruitcake. Whatever you make of it, you’ll not soon forget it.  

Rating: B-