Destroy All Monsters
Japanese Title: Kaiju soshingeki
Director: Ishiro Honda
Actors: Akira Kubo, Jun Tazaki, Yukiko Kobayashi
Year Released: 1968
Genre: Kaiju
See Also: Godzilla Final Wars, Gojira, Terror of Mechagodzilla
I can't fathom why anyone would prefer a dub to subtitles. Even a good dub. As a kid I remember seeing movies like Treasure of the Four Crowns and being really weirded out by the fact that the voices didn't match the mouths. I wasn't sophisticated enough to understand what was happening, I just knew I didn't like it. So I would much rather have watched a subbed version of Destroy All Monsters (or in Japanese, Kaiju sohingeki, the more literal "All Monsters Attack"), but hey, you take what you can get.
And what I got was a whole lot of hilarity.
It really is amazing how a truly terrible dub can make the difference between a bad movie and an uproarious movie. Witness the Sandy Frank versions of the Gamera movies on MST3K, or the ADV DVD of Destroy All Monsters (which doesn't even have a menu or chapters!). Odd pauses, sidelong glances and frequent, unnecessary statements of agreement ("That's right") are all the result of shoehorning English into the rhythms of Japanese without caring about how it appears on-screen. But when you've got a less-than-moderately entertaining movie like Destroy All Monsters, a truly horrendous dub can do wonders.
Yes, that's right, I said, "a less-than-moderately entertaining movie." For all its Toho kaiju star power and legendary status, Destroy All Monsters is kinda lame. I'd much rather watch King Kong Vs. Godzilla or even director Ishiro Honda's eleventh-hour return to the Godzilla franchise, Terror of Mechagodzilla. Cheesy though it be, Terror manages to be more exciting than Destroy All Monsters, even with all the monsters running around in the latter.
It's the year 1999 (how quaint). Aliens release all the monsters from "Monsterland," an island off the coast of Japan and use mind control to make them attack the cities of the world. Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra (in larva form), a T-Rex-looking guy called Gorosaurus, Anguiras, and a bunch more from various Toho franchises (Godzilla and non-Godzilla alike) get busy around the world until some boring guys in yellow fire suits save the day by taking out the aliens' moon base. The film culminates with the monsters—now freed of the humiliating mind control—battling with Gidorah, the go-to space monster for invading Toho aliens. I love Gidorah—love Gidorah—but he doesn't get to do much here. In fact, he gets his ass kicked pretty quickly. The Gorosaurus drop-kick is hot, but really, I expected more from a movie called Kaiju soshingeki.
So what have we learned, other than you shouldn't get too excited about an exploitation movie's title? That female aliens in silver bathing caps, even if they have a three-headed monster at their disposal, can't defeat the power of badly dubbed boring guys. Amen.
Otaku Alert: Andrew Hughes, who played the token white guy, Dr. Stevenson, was appointed by international court after WWII to defend Japanese war criminals. I'm not sure if this role was his reward or punishment.
Comments