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At the end of the 20th century, the United Nations Science Committee (UNSC) has captured and contained all of Earth's monsters in a region dubbed "Monsterland" on one of the islands in the Ogasawara chain. The island is monitored from a special underground control center staffed by scientists who ensure the monsters stay secure as well as study them. One day, a cloud of knockout gas suddenly appears over the island, knocking the monsters and the human researchers all unconscious. Soon after, the monsters begin to appear in major cities all across the globe: Godzilla attacks New York, Rodan appears in Moscow, Mothra terrorizes Beijing, Manda assaults London, and Gorosaurus destroys Paris. With communications with Monsterland mysteriously severed, the UNSC sends Katsuo Yamabe and the crew of the Moonlight SY-3 to end their patrol on the Moon and investigate the island. They find the island badly damaged and all of the monsters gone. Yamabe and his men enter the research base under the island and find the staff all alive, but acting strangely. Lead researcher Dr. Otani and Yamabe's sister Kyoko bring the SY-3 crew further into the base and introduce them to a group of mysterious women wearing silver robes. The leader reveals that she represents the Kilaaks, an advanced species of aliens that have come to stake their claim on Earth, and that they have used mind control to turn all of the Monsterland staff as well as the island's resident monsters into their servants. The Kilaak Queen demands that the human race surrender to her species immediately, or else they will be forced to annihilate human civilization. Yamabe and his men refuse and open fire on the Kilaaks, but find they are defended by a force field. The Kilaaks escape and order their mind-controlled slaves to kill Yamabe and his men. The SY-3 crew fights its way through the Kilaaks' servants and manages to escape the island with Dr. Otani. Otani is brought to a UNSC base and interrogated by Yamabe and Dr. Yoshida, but refuses to reveal any details about the Kilaaks' plans. While Yamabe and Yoshida are talking in another room, Otani commits suicide by jumping out of a nearby window. Kyoko and a group of Kilaak-controlled armed men arrive to recover Otani's body, but are attacked by the UNSC's special police force and retreat. The UNSC conducts an autopsy on Otani, and discover a strange device implanted in his head. They quickly determine that this must be how the Kilaaks are controlling Otani and the others.
With the world's attention drawn away from Japan, the Kilaaks establish an underground base near Mount Fuji and direct their next attack at Tokyo. Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra and Manda all attack Japan's capital at the same time, catching its defenses completely off guard and annihilating the city with little opposition. While Tokyo is destroyed, the UNSC manages to capture Kyoko (who has come to them personally to give them and the world another ultimatum from the Kilaaks) and Yamabe frees her from the Kilaaks' mind control. Unfortunately, Kyoko has no memory of the Kilaaks' plans and cannot provide the UNSC with any useful information. Elsewhere in Japan, an old man discovers a bizarre device inside a rock found near a village. The UNSC analyzes the device and learns it is used to broadcast the Kilaaks' mind control waves over a certain area. Many other such devices are found all around the world, but the UNSC learns the Kilaaks have begun broadcasting their signals directly from a base under the lunar surface instead. Yamabe and his crew board the Moonlight SY-3 and embark on a desperate mission to the Moon while the JSDF battles several of the Kilaaks' monster slaves near Mt. Fuji. The SY-3 arrives on the Moon and its crew infiltrates the aliens' hidden base. After a fierce gunfight, the SY-3 crew destroys the Kilaaks' mind control device and damages the base's environmental controls, forcing the Kilaaks to revert to their true forms, metallic slug-like creatures. This reveals the invaders' weakness: low temperatures. The Kilaaks thrive in artificially high temperatures, but will revert to their true forms if exposed to low temperatures.
With the Earth monsters all freed from the Kilaaks' mind control and now controlled by the humans, the UNSC directs them all to the Kilaaks' base at Mt. Fuji, intending to put an end to their invasion once and for all. The 10 Earth monsters all arrive, led by Godzilla. As they approach, the Kilaaks unleash their trump card: King Ghidorah. The triple-headed Destroyer of Worlds confidently lands amidst the Earth monsters and begins his attack. Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra, Anguirus, Kumonga, and Gorosaurus lead the counterattack while Minilla, Manda, Varan, and Baragon look on. King Ghidorah breathes out his gravity beams at the monsters, with one of them sending both Rodan leaping into the air and Mothra sprawling. Anguirus bites down on one of King Ghidorah's necks, but the space monster then takes flight, with Anguirus still hanging on with all his might. King Ghidorah finally bites Anguirus on the neck with one of his free heads, sending him plummeting to the ground. Anguirus lands in a ditch, and King Ghidorah promptly lands on top of him and stomps him into the dirt. King Ghidorah flies over to Godzilla and his other four attackers, while a humiliated Anguirus shakes the dirt off his back and re-enters the battle. The Earth monsters struggle against King Ghidorah until Gorosaurus quietly goes behind King Ghidorah and then delivers a devastating kick to his back from behind, causing him to fall to the ground, briefly stunned. Godzilla then seizes the opportunity and, respectively, begins brutally stomping on King Ghidorah's left neck, causing him to cough up blood and screech in pain, while Anguirus bites down hard into his right neck until it, too, bleeds. When only the center of King Ghidorah's three heads is left alive, it is subsequently suffocated by one of Minilla's radioactive smoke rings. Mothra and Kumonga then cover King Ghidorah's corpse in silk and webbing, respectively. Refusing to admit defeat, however, the Kilaaks unleash a "burning monster" they call the Fire Dragon, which terrorizes the monsters before destroying the humans' control devices on Monsterland. Godzilla proceeds to the Kilaaks' base and blasts it repeatedly with his atomic breath, only for the base's shield to resist it. Godzilla then kicks through the base's shield with his foot and personally destroys the base, triggering a chain reaction of explosions that consumes the entire base and opens a fissure in the ground under King Ghidorah's corpse, which falls into it and also explodes. The Moonlight SY-3 gives chase to the Fire Dragon and successfully shoots it down, revealing it as a flaming Kilaak flying saucer. Earth is saved at last, and the alien invaders are no more. The monsters are all returned to Monsterland to live out their days in peace. Some time later, Yamabe and Kyoko accompany Dr. Yoshida in a helicopter which flies over the island. From the helicopter, they observe the monsters living peacefully on the island, including Godzilla and his son Minilla, who stare contently at the chopper and roar at it as it flies off.
Staff
Staff role on the left, staff member's name on the right.
American International Pictures released Destroy All Monsters theatrically in North America in 1969. The Americanization was handled by Titan Productions, formerly Titra Studios.
There were some minor alterations done to prepare the film for U.S. release:
Dialogue was dubbed to English (featuring the voices of actors such as Hal Linden).
Dialogue: The first line of opening narration was changed from "It's the end of the 20th Century," to the specific year, "The year is 1999."
Deleted: Opening credits; Moved to the end of the film and changed to white credits against a black background with the original Akira Ifukube cue.
Deleted: Shot of Minilla covering his eyes while King Ghidorah drops Anguirus.
This version has been replaced on home video and television by Toho's international version. While uncut and widescreen, it features an English dub track produced by William Ross' Tokyo-based Frontier Enterprises used to sell the film to overseas markets in 1968. When American International Pictures was provided with this dub initially, it found the dubbing to be substandard and handed the film over to Titan Productions in New York to record a new English dialogue track.
Box office
Destroy All Monsters had a budget of roughly ¥200,000,000 and received an attendance of 2,580,000 on its original August 1, 1968 Japanese release.
Reception
Destroy All Monsters has received acclaim among Godzilla fans. The New York Times did not review the film upon release, but film critic Howard Thompson gave it a positive review on a re-release at a children's matinee with the Bugs Bunny short, Napoleon Bunny-Part, in December of 1970. He commented that "the feature wasn't bad at all of this type. The trick photography and especially the blended sweep and skill of the miniature settings provided the visual splash. The human beings, with good dubbed English voices, were a personable lot as they wrestled with some outer space culprits who had rounded up Japan's favorite monsters and turned them against the planet Earth."
Among modern critics, Steve Biodrowski of Cinefantastique wrote, "In the end, Destroy All Monsters is too slim in its storyline, too thin in its characterizations, to be considered a truly great film. It is not as impressive as the original Godzilla, and it is not as hip as Monster Zero. But for the ten-year-old living inside us all, it is entertainment of the most awesome sort." Matt Paprocki of Blogcritics said the film is "far from perfect" and "can be downright boring at times" but felt that "the destruction scenes make up for everything else" and "the final battle is an epic that simply can't be matched."
Other Details: 2.35:1 aspect ratio, 88 minutes run time, 1 disc, Japanese version
Trivia
This film has the highest number of monsters to appear in one Godzilla movie of the Showa series, and the second highest number out of all the films, only surpassed in 2004 by Godzilla: Final Wars. While the film stars many familiar faces from the Godzilla series, such as Mothra, Rodan, King Ghidorah, Minilla, Kumonga, Anguirus, and of course Godzilla himself, the film also incorporates several other monsters that had previously appeared in Toho's non-Godzilla films. These monsters are Baragon, Manda, Varan, and Gorosaurus.
This film marks the return of Anguirus, who had not appeared in a Godzilla film for thirteen years. Anguirus would later play important roles in Godzilla vs. Gigan and Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla.
Art depicting the original draft of Destroy All Monsters
Originally, the film was meant to feature King Kong, Ebirah, and Maguma. Both were replaced by Anguirus, Minilla, and Gorosaurus.[5]
In Godzilla: The Series, the three-part story arc called MonsterWars heavily resembles the plot to Destroy All Monsters—in it, aliens known as the Tachyons take control of the monsters of Earth, sending them to attack the planet's major cities.
Destroy All Monsters was intended to be the last Godzilla movie, but due to its success, Toho decided to continue producing more films. However, the next film, All Monsters Attack, was composed primarily of stock footage from previous films due to the massive budget required for Destroy All Monsters.
This film marks the second time Godzilla, Rodan and King Ghidorah were under alien mind control since Invasion of Astro-Monster. This is also the only time Mothra was mind-controlled by aliens.
Of all the kaiju in the film, Baragon and Varan are the least prominent: both monsters are only seen in two brief shots in the entire film. This is because the suits used for both creatures were in a state of disrepair during the shooting of Destroy All Monsters. This is due to the state of the Varan and Baragon suits, with the 11-year-old Varan not in good shape, and the Baragon suit having been altered considerably to portray different multiple different monsters in Tsuburaya Productions' Ultraman series. Repairs on the Baragon suit continued even during shooting of the monsters; Baragon himself only appears in one shot during the final battle and later on Monsterland during the film's ending. Varan is portrayed using only a small prop that appears briefly during the same two scenes.
Due to the repairs, the planned scene of Baragon's attack on Paris had to be altered. Gorosaurus was placed in the sequence instead, meaning the monster gained Baragon's burrowing ability. In the scene where news of the monsters' attacks on the world's major cities is reported on TV, the news anchor states that the monster attacking Paris is, in fact, Baragon. This inconsistency occurs in both the original Japanese and altered American versions of the film.
The 1968 manga adaptation of Destroy All Monsters includes several significant differences from the film, most notably Baragon, Manda and Varan directly taking part in the final battle against King Ghidorah. The Fire Dragon is also more true to its title, assuming the full-fledged appearance of a dragon made of flames, despite still being a Kilaak UFO within. Baragon takes the place of Gorosaurus during the attack on Paris, while Manda's rampage in London is also shown.
Chronologically, Destroy All Monsters takes place in the then-near future at the end of the 20th century (specifically said to be 1999 in both English dubs), even though it was made in 1968 and all other movies in the Showa series are set in the year they were made. This also explains King Ghidorah's appearance in Godzilla vs. Gigan despite him being killed in this movie.
In the movie Monsters vs. Aliens, the evil alien Galaxar commands his army to "destroy all monsters". In the film's the commentary, the creators mention that the line was put in as tribute to the Toho movie, which they also consider as the greatest movie of all time.
