Destroy All Monsters (1968)

“For the ten-year-old living inside us all, it is entertainment of the most awesome sort.” — Steve Biodrowski, Cinefantastique

SYNOPSIS

Toho empties the monster closet in Ishirō Honda’s deliriously ambitious kaiju spectacular that assembles Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan, Anguirus, Gorosaurus, Manda, and seemingly every other giant creature the studio could squeeze onto the screen. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, Earth’s monsters have been peacefully contained on the remote island sanctuary of Monsterland…that is, until communications mysteriously cease and the creatures suddenly appear across the globe, laying waste to cities from New York and Moscow to Paris and Tokyo. The culprit is an alien race known as the Kilaaks, whose plans for planetary conquest depend upon turning humanity’s most colossal adversaries into their own unstoppable army. Honda and special-effects master Eiji Tsuburaya transform the premise into a globe-trotting eruption of miniature cities, spacecraft, alien intrigue, and gargantuan destruction before bringing Toho’s celebrated stable of monsters together for one of the great creature throwdowns of the Showa era. Conceived as a grand culmination of the studio’s kaiju cycle, Destroy All Monsters delivers exactly what its title promises: monster mayhem on an almost irresistible scale.