Destroy All Monsters (1968)

"The Earth does not belong to you humans!"

I love me a very silly monster film, and this is the silliest yet. It's the unimaginably far future, the year 1999, and naturally the UN has a base on the Moon and regular space trips there by scientists. Even more naturally, it's all controlled from a Japanese island and absolutely everyone involved is Japanese barring one token speaking foreign scientist and a couple of extras. Oh, and the social mores and interior decor are very much of the late ‘60s, and everyone smokes. Well, the men at any rate.

Oh, and all the monsters from previous films (some of which I don’t recognise but the main ones like Mothra and Rodan are all there) are kept on that very same island, prevented by technology from wandering off for a spot of marauding. Minilla doesn’t seem to be any older at all in the far future, but let’s discreetly ignore that.

But along come some nasty alien conquerors, made of metal and immortal but appearing as women and doing a lot of exposition. These fiends are using all the monsters to attack major world cities, including a major set piece in which Tokyo is destroyed yet again. You can tell it’s coming as soon as you see the nice model monorail. I love how this is such a very ‘60s idea of the future.

Fortunately good old human ingenuity and heroism wins the day, and the monsters are used to attack the aliens- but not before a massive and rather fun climactic battle between all the monsters and King Ghidorah.

This is the sort of fun, undemanding, hugely entertaining film that they just don't make any more.

Son of Godzilla (1967)

“The smell of a story attracts me...”

Another Godzilla film, I thought, thinking I knew what to expect. Imagine my surprise. No Godzilla destroying Tokyo; indeed no Tokyo at all, as the entire film takes place on a fictional island on the South Pacific. None of the co-star monsters like Mothra or King Gidorah. Just some big preying martises, a massive spider, Godzilla, and... a cute baby Godzilla who looks bizarrely as though he's been animated by Jim Henson.

And yet... silly though it is, with most of the baby Godzilla sequences being accompanied by music to inform us that this is supposed to be comedy... it somehow works. It certainly starts well, with an intrepid reporter, and our POV character as so often before, stubbornly parachuting on to the island to get a story, and discovering sci-fi weather control experiments to solve world hunger by making "waste areas" fertile. I'm sure that won't harm the ecosystem in any way whatsoever.

We get the usual quotient of human drama, a mysterious girl, an unnerving disease with a high fever (interesting whenever one comes across such themes when quarantining) and an egg, almost pecked to death bu praying manises. But none of that is the real point of the film. No, that's to see Godzilla as we've never seen him before, looking after his Muppet Baby of a son, teaching him to roar, to emit ray beams and to fight giant spiders. And we end with Godzillas Senior and Junior embracing in the face of an unnatural cold, both surviving.

This is not your usual Godzilla film. It's utterly mad. But it's actually refreshing to see something a little bit different, and the whole thing is just absurd enough to work. I'm not sure I should have enjoyed this, but I did.

Invasion of Astro Monster (1965)

"Glen, I cannot become an earthling..."

It's a week or two since I've seen a Godzilla film, and it's good to get back into the swing- especially with this little delight, a film that leans so much into its profound silliness that low camp always becomes high camp.

We begin with exposition telling us that "Planet X" was discovered in "196X", and that, several years later in a future that looks suspiciously like the '60s, two astronauts- Fuji and Glen-are on a rocket there. Glen is there as the token American leading man (speaking Japanese throughout), but this manned mission beyond Jupiter is mainly a Japanese affair, with mission control in Tokyo.

Even more impressively, Planet X is introduced- to the obligatory theremin fanfare- as it is revealed just beyond Jupiter, apparently immune to the giant planet's massive gravitational pull, but let's just run with it. On board this alien world (of course, the Japanese astronaut sets foot on it first) are a race of suspiciously humanoid and creepy shades-wearing aliens, apparently under threat from King Ghdorah and needing Godzilla and Rodan to help- but this is, of course, just the prelude to a sudden yet inevitable betrayal as, to no one's surprise, they turn out to be baddies who want to take over the Earth using all three monsters. Who'd have thunk it?

The personal drama is dialled back a bit due to sheer quantity of plot, and it's only towards the end that we get those satisfying scenes of monsters smashing Tokyo to bits yet again, but this film is splendidly entertaining right throughout. Eleven years on, and the franchise is in rude health.