All Monsters Attack (1969, Honda Ishirô)

I don’t know if I wish All Monsters Attack were better or if I just liked it more. Because I wanted to like it more–I wanted it to be as wacky as the concept would allow. The concept–a little boy (Yazaki Tomonori) gets valuable life lessons involving working parents, bank robbers, bullies and even criminal mischief all thanks to his imagined playtime with the various Toho giant monsters–is ripe for wackiness.

But All Monsters Attack never gets particularly wacky. It’s straight-faced in tone. It’s a movie made for kids. It’s didactic. Sekizawa Shin’ichi’s script is painfully lacking in enthusiasm. It’s not even a question of ambition–no one has any, except maybe some of the effects guys on the footage from previous films. Attack recycles old Godzilla movie fight footage. It’s done pretty well, but it’s hard to know whether Attack’s editor, Himi Masahisa, chopped it up a little or if it’s uncut from the first film. I’m not enough of a Godzilla aficionado to look up such details. One has to draw the line somewhere.

Because, for a while, Attack kind of works. It’s weird and it’s obvious and it’s trying too hard, but there’s actual payoff in the giant monster fights. Director Honda paces it well. Then, as Yazaki eventually befriends (a female-voiced) Son of Godzilla, Attack tries too hard to manipulate. There’s too much subtext to the wimpy giant monster having a female voice. There’s too much about Yazaki having to “man up.”

Now, it would help if Yazaki were any good. He’s not. He’s bad. He’s not even bad in amusing ways. He’s particularly bad during the scenes when he’s kidnapped–the physical action scenes–and there’s no way it shouldn’t be funny for him to be bad in those scenes. But it isn’t. It isn’t funny. Because there’s just something a little off about Attack. It’s too “perfectly” targeted at its audience–it is for kids who already give a shit about Godzilla.

It just then goes ahead and tells them they are weirdos but should instead be weird bullies. The moral of the story is… if you’re going to have a youth gang, take over another youth gang, don’t start your own. And praise Minilla.