All Monsters Attack
a.k.a. Godzilla’s Revenge
Release Date: 20th December, 1969
New Monster: Gabara
Description: A green, horned, bipedal fanged dino-ape with electric powers
Origin: Lives on Monster Island, or maybe borne of a child’s imagination
Destruction: Beaten up by Minilla
Actor(s): Yu Sekida as Gabara, Haruo Nakajima as Godzilla, Little Man Machan as Minilla
Ancillary Monsters: Kamacuras, Gorosaurus, Manda, Ebirah, a giant condor (all in stock footage)
What the heck?
At a mere 69 minutes, this is the Godzilla clip-show sequel that I referred to in this article’s introduction. Much of the film’s footage is taken from Son of Godzilla, but is re-purposed to tell a new story. There is some new monster footage, mostly of Minilla, and it’s here that Minilla will actually speak Japanese to human characters, actually be called “Minilla” aloud for the first time (he is voiced by Midori Uchiyama and Michiko Hirai), and spend most of his time complaining about how hard it is to be a baby Godzilla. Minilla also seems to have the ability to change size; when he talks to our hero, he’s only about four feet tall. When he fights monsters, he grows to his usual 20 or 30 feet. The tone of the film is most certainly child-friendly, and the story seems almost lifted from a Disney film of a similar vintage. Seriously, I could see our young hero replaced by Matthew Garber from Mary Poppins and not bat an eye.
The premise, however, makes one wonder if any of the proceedings on Monster Island are real. Our hero is a young boy in short shorts named Ichiro (Tomonori Yazaki). He has no friends his own age, preferring to hang out with a creepy old computer technician-slash-toy inventor named Shinpei (Hideyo Amamoto). Ichiro is picked on by bullies, and is too timid to stand up to them. One night in his room, he tinkers with a radio that he appears to be in the middle of building, and it shocks him. Ichiro then falls into a weird semi-spiritual fugue state wherein he meets his spirit animal, who is Minilla. Minilla is his size, and talks to him about bullies. Minilla has a bully of his own in the form of Gabara, which is a green-skinned lizard/albino ape/hyena mashup creature. Gabara can shock Minilla and Godzilla with his bare hands. After a few minutes, Ichiro will wake up. It’s unclear if he was dreaming the whole thing, or short of shunting his consciousness over to Monster Island where he was actually communicating with Minilla.
In a subplot, a pair of bank robbers (Sachio Sakai and Kazuo Suzuki) have been hiding out in a local warehouse, waiting for the heat to blow over. Eventually the bank robbers will kidnap little Ichiro. Ichiro will eventually learn to enter his fugue state without the aid of a broken radio, and contact Minilla on a whim. He will also bear witness to footage from Son of Godzilla and Godzilla Versus the Sea Monster. A lot of it. Indeed, aside from one fight scene, I don’t think there is any original footage of our star monster. I already kind of hated Minilla, so having a film that is all about the creature, speaking aloud, teaching lessons about bullies to a young boy in creepy short shorts (seriously, do Japanese people not realize how scary those shorts are?), is really one of the more obnoxious experiences I could have with this series.
You would hope that, with a title like All Monsters Attack, the film would be more a monster mash like the last film. No such luck. This is a kid-friendly spin-off movie that should hardly even count in the series. Gabara will make no more appearances, and Minilla will no longer speak. Sorry to make you sit through that.
An actual lyric from this movie’s theme song: “Marching of Mr. Monsters with the style.”
And that’s where we’ll leave it for this week, my little monsters. Sorry to go out on such a lame note. Luckily, we have five more weeks in The Summer of Godzilla, and many many more monster fights to watch. Next week, I will be covering the 11th through the 14th films in the series, wherein Godzilla will fight a smog monster (!), a hook-handed metal bird (!), Megalon, and, of course, one of the high points of the series, Mechagodzilla. Mechagodzilla is a bionic version of Godzilla. Yes, Mechagodzilla is amazing. The following week will feature the second film with Mechagodzilla, which will be the final film in the Showa/Toho era of Godzilla movies. In that week, I’ll also be talking about the first two films in the Heisei era, and the American reboot therein, Godzilla 1985. It’s just getting more and more fun. Stuck around, my buckaroos.
Witney Seibold is a featured contributor on the CraveOnline Film Channel, co-host of The B-Movies Podcast and co-star of The Trailer Hitch. You can read his weekly articles B-Movies Extended, Free Film School and The Series Project, and follow him on “Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind. If you want to buy him a gift (and I know you do), you can visit his Amazon Wish List.
