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.

Godzilla (1954, Honda Ishirô)

Godzilla is a peculiar picture. It’s intensely serious, with director Honda never letting the viewer get a moment’s relief. This approach is all throughout the film, which opens with a documentary feel. Honda and co-screenwriter Murata Takeo set up their main characters quickly and without a lot of fanfare–Takarada Akira and Kôchi Momoko’s first scene sets up their relationship before sending them away–she actually just disappears for a while, while he becomes a background player during the first act.

Their romance is the best character work in the film, with the possible exception of Suzuki Toyoaki’s grieving orphan. Takarada and Kôchi’s romance is never quite star-crossed but it’s always difficult. They’re both excellent. All of the film’s emotions play out through Kôchi; it’s like the film has greater need of her than to just have a difficult romance.

Honda moves Godzilla through a few phases–mystery, exploration, devastation–always ratcheting the tension a little tighter. The creature’s destruction of Tokyo is exhausting and relentless. The film implies subtext to those scenes–the creature discovering man’s world–but Honda doesn’t explore them. He presents them matter of fact, the documentary style returning.

The last act is where the film stumbles; Hirata Akihiko gives a histrionic performance. Some of it is the writing, most of it is Hirata. The film already has problems with Shimura Takashi, in a similarly poorly written role. There’s way too much strained symbolism in the finish.

The music, photography and editing are all exceptional.

The film is thoughtful, intricate and affecting.

Godzilla, King of Monsters! (1956, Terry O. Morse and Honda Ishirô)

Morse didn’t just direct the added American scenes for Godzilla, King of Monsters! but also did the hatchet job editing it.

The concept–adding in footage of a reporter reporting on what would be an international news event–isn’t bad. But Morse (aided, undoubtedly, by Al C. Ward’s awful scripting) contrives a way to shoehorn Raymond Burr’s American reporter into all of the original Godzilla story. Even though Burr doesn’t have a single scene with Hirata Akihiko’s scientist, Monsters makes them old college chums and Burr inexplicably talks to Hirata’s stand-in on the phone.

I suppose Morse and Ward thought it was necessary to tie plots together, but at most it added two and a half minutes of runtime. Morse could have just recycled the “stairs to the hospital” shot a fourth time.

As for Burr, he’s not very good. The cheapness of his scenes–particularly the one where he’s in a helicopter but sitting in an office–probably hurt the performance. For example, when he’s actual in a torrential downpour, he’s convincing. However, Morse could have spent that money better making sure Burr had a real presence in the third act instead of standing in the background.

The voiceover cast is uniformly terrible, ruining the performances of the original actors. The other American cast is fifty-fifty–Frank Iwanaga is great as Burr’s sidekick (Monsters‘s should’ve been focused on them), but Mikel Conrad’s atrocious as his boss.

With the original version readily available, Monsters should be avoided.