Godzilla's Revenge

1969’s All Monsters Attack (sometimes known as Godzilla’s Revenge in the United States) is one of the most divisive of Godzilla movies. The 10th film in the series and the seventh directed by Godzilla creator Ishiro Honda, it’s divisive in the sense that it was one of Honda’s favorites, while almost everyone else views it as one of the worst. You can understand both points of view.

The movie had the odds against it. The previous year’s Destroy All Monsters was intended to be the last Godzilla film, but was popular enough that the series kept going with lower budgets. A brief craze for kaiju cinema was fading, and the mass audience was deserting movies for television. The film was made cheaply and quickly; the first draft of the script was apparently finished early in September of 1969, production started in October, and the film was released in December.

The reduced budget meant most of the kaiju action takes the form of clips from earlier movies. Since Godzilla’s suits varied a little with each film, this means he looks different from shot to shot. There’s a nominal justification for this. Technically, all the monsters in this movie are only the dreams or fantasies of a single child.

More than ever, Toho was after the kid demographic. Honda, meanwhile, was interested in talking about latchkey kids, an increasingly prominent social issue at the time. He and veteran Godzilla scriptwriter Shinichi Sekizawa created a story following one such child, Ichiro Miki (Tomonori Yazaki), as he deals with bullies and maintains a friendship with a man named Minami (Hideyo Amamoto), a toymaker who lives in the apartment next door. Ichiro loses himself in his kaiju fandom, but when bank robbers show up, Ichiro’s taken hostage.

Inspired by the fables of giant monsters he’s seen or imagined, Ichiro escapes from the robbers and sets up traps around the abandoned factory where he was held prisoner. If previous Godzilla films had kaiju wandering into other genres (science fiction, Bondian espionage, Tarzan movies), here Godzilla anticipates Home Alone. It’s not a good fit, but then this is a kind of afterschool special that has guest appearances from Godzilla more than it’s a typical kaiju film.

The comedy’s not particularly good, and the acting’s earnest and arguably effective but not engaging. The movie’s competent, and might work for a very specific age range, but doesn’t fit in with other Godzilla films. Still, you can see reasons why Honda would like it. The Godzilla movies had become more child-oriented over the last few installments; there’s an honesty in the directness of the approach. It’s a film for children who like Godzilla, about a child who likes Godzilla.

It’s also a movie that’s aware of Godzilla as a piece of media, as a story that affects young viewers. It’s the simplest kind of metafiction possible, but that’s what it is: a story about a story, and about how the stories of Godzilla and his kaiju buddies affect a kid’s determination and belief in himself.

There’s a line near the end where Ichiro’s father reflects of Minilla (the son of Godzilla) that “He’s like a higher power… Adults believe in gods, so why can’t kids have their own gods too, like Minilla?” It’s weirdly resonant, putting the kaiju on a higher level of reality than the everyday world.

The toymaker next door to Ichiro has a specific part to play in the plot, calling the cops at a critical moment, but it’s hard not to see him as Honda’s alter ego. There’s a sense that in making these movies Honda’s creating intricate toys, amusements not just for diverting kids but also for inspiring them. The toymaker as an ambiguous magical figure recalls Drosselmeyer, the godfather-toymaker of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.” Minami doesn’t have any weird powers, but his avuncular relationship to Ichiro speaks to the kind of connection Honda and his creations had to his viewers.

But Hoffmann’s “Nutcracker” (and Tchaikovsky’s adaptation thereof) work in ways that All Monsters Attack can’t dream of. Some of that’s the genius of Hoffmann (and Tchaikovsky), a lot of it’s probably to do with the movie’s low budget and rushed production, but some of it’s a function of how the movie handles its genre. Fantasy usually works best when it’s treated as real.

When you step back and start winking to the audience, the impact of the story’s weakened. If storytellers don’t fully enter into their story, it’s difficult to make it work. Honda isn’t winking to the audience, not exactly, but the problem’s the same. The awareness of Godzilla as a story weakens the series. The idea of kaiju as gods could have made up for that, but never comes to dramatic life.

You can see why the movie resonated with Honda personally; it’s still not very good. It’s slow and predictable and the monster action, even the new stuff, is unengaging. It’s an interesting attempt to do something different from the usual kaiju formula while staying within Toho’s budget requirements. But it was put together too quickly, with too little attention to the script. Given the production schedule, it’s amazing it ended up as coherent as it did.