Godzilla's Revenge: An Unfair Review of a Really Bad Film

Welcome to 2010 sugar junkies! (I don't know why it took so long to come up with sugar junkies as an affection term for my dear readers, but now that I have, I think I prefer it to 'confections').

Every once in a while, I'm going to praise a movie despite the fact (and I mean, FACT, not opinion) that it's a BAD movie. I don't just mean doughnut holes either, because let's cut through the bull: some doughnut hole movies ARE extremely enjoyable. I'm talking about praising a movie that is straight-up BAD. One that NOBODY likes. One that is so bad, it would plunge an entire film franchise into mediocrity that it would rarely ever again rise above.

Imagine a film adaptation of the book, Where the Wild Things Are. Okay, well, you don’t technically have to imagine it because they did it recently, but imagine what you would have imagined it to be before they released the movie. Your movie version runs about as long as the 15 minutes it takes to read the book doesn’t it? Now imagine an hour and a half long film version that replaces the little boy with, a little boy and monsters with, monsters…

say WHAT? Ok, the little boy gets replaced with a little Japanese boy and the monsters get replaced with Godzilla characters. Sort of…there’s a bit more to it than that (or is there less?) but at its core, Godzilla’s Revenge (aka All Monsters Attack aka Godzilla, Minilla, Gabara: All Monsters on Parade aka Gojira Minira Gabara Ōru Kaijū Daishingekiis the story of a little boy whose imagination whisks him away to a land full of monsters and he generally has a lot of fun there (yes, I can hear you groaning already…).

The movie starts out with a neat title sequence (with some really cool, slightly trippy music) where the credits play out in front of recycled scenes from Destroy All Monsters (get used to recycling; incidentally, when I first saw this movie, I’d never seen Destroy All Monsters and I often wondered why these scenes were not in Godzilla’s Revenge). We are then introduced to our main character Ichiro.

In an interesting side note, Ichiro was likely MUCH more familiar to American kaiju fans than any of his counterparts in the Gamera film series or any of the host of foreign monster films that employed the use of small children as a vehicle to market a monster movie to children. In those films, the young boy character is usually called Ken (or Kenny; even in Godzilla vs. Hedorah a young boy named Kenny appears). Thus I find it interesting that all annoying children in every single monster movie are thus dubbed “Kennies.” For example, Ichiro is our “Kenny” for this film. It’s an interesting piece of nerd slang, I suppose, one whose origins I don’t care to delve much deeper into other than to wonder why we don’t call them “Ichies” (with the possible explanation that we may then confuse the term with a hoard of mice from a cartoon within The Simpsons universe).

Ichiro is currently talking with his friend (who I never realized was a girl until I started reading and writing reviews…that’s probably something like 20 years of my life I thought Ichiro’s friend was a boy when in fact it’s a girl…that’s one butt-ugly girl), when a troupe of three boys lead by their ring-leader Gabara catch up to them. They tease and bully Ichiro and his friend, daring them to be bad (they want him to honk the motorcycle horn of a guy painting a billboard), and taking their stuff (Ichiro found a vacuum tube and they take it from him). I’d also presume they make fun of him for wearing shorter shorts than Daisy Duke herself. When Ichiro finally escapes from the evil Gabara’s clutches, he goes home to his empty house.

Ichiro is a latch-key kid, you see. His parents both work day-jobs and sometimes they don’t get home until he has gone to bed (they presumably weren’t around to tell him it’s DAISY Duke and not DAVEY Duke). They even occasionally pawn him off on their eccentric neighbor, a toy inventor by the name of Shinpei Inami (played by Eisei Amamoto, an actor whose credits astonished me when I looked them up, spanning several Toho films from Gorath, to Ghidorah, all the way up to GMK). Shinpei’s apartment is where Ichiro goes after fleeing from Gabara. The toy maker gleefully shows Ichiro his newest toy, a miniature (HA!) computer for children. Ichiro mentions that Shinpei should make the computer take you to MonsterIsland and show you all the monsters there.

This is potentially the best place to tell you this. This movie does NOT play its action out in the “Godzilla” Universe. Rather, it all takes place within “our” world where Godzilla is a monster from the movies. Thus, Ichiro likes to pretend that he visits MonsterIsland and he’s obsessed with the monsters there. In fact, when he goes home, he plays make believe that he’s on his way to MonsterIsland. This is mostly just a way to justify the excessive use of stock footage, but if Ichiro exists in “our” world, then his only point of reference for when Godzilla fought Ebirah is from Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster, likewise, his only point of reference for Godzilla vying with Kamacuras is from Son of Godzilla. Thus Godzilla takes on those appearances when he fights these monsters in the boy’s imagination.

In the 1960s, everybody was on drugs, and evidently Mr. Honda was no exception. Ichiro’s imagination (or possibly an acid trip) whisks him off to MonsterIsland on an airplane. Ichiro makes it to MonsterIsland and after looking around and taking stock of the monsters there (Manda, Anguirus, Gorosaurs, and Gai [the giant flying carpet sample from Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster] among them) via some stock footage splicing, he sees Godzilla fighting some of the monsters from Son of Godzilla. After taking in the fight, one of the Kamacuras gives Ichiro chase through the jungle, and during the chase, Ichiro falls down a hole (or into yet another acid trip). Now at this point, I’d probably imagine myself awake, or some underground kingdom where I would take control and get all the girls (yes, even at the age of seven I’d know that women were prizes to be won for being manly), but Ichiro instead imagines a vine rope gets lowered to him.

When he climbs the rope it turns out that it was lowered to him by none other than the son of Godzilla himself, Minilla. Important to mention here, is that in Ichiro’s imagination, Minilla can alter his size so that he’s either as tall as Ichiro or as tall as we are familiar with him being from his previous appearances. That might be eye-rollingly bad by itself, but perhaps more egregious is that when Ichiro asks Minilla what he’s doing, he responds…in ENGLISH (or Japanese if you’re watching the subtitled version). Minilla explains that he too has a bully that pesters him and rather than that bully be one of the monsters we’ve already come to know, it’s a new monster called…Gabara.

That’s right, just to confuse the ever-loving crap out of seven year old kids, the monster and the bully have the same name; let’s not blur the lines between fantasy and reality or anything like that…

Just when Gabara (the monster) and Ichiro come face to face, the boy wakes up. He imagined himself into a corner, so he just woke up. See how that kind of thing can really kill any suspense in the MonsterIsland part of this story? Anyway, Ichiro sets out for a walk, and while he’s out, he sees Gabara (the boy) coming so he goes to run into a nearby abandoned building that he likes to play in. At the same time, a pair of bank robbers (Sachio Sakai of Gojira and Half-Human, and Kazuo Suzuki from Godzilla vs. Monster Zero and Terror of Mechagodzilla) are hiding in that building to escape capture and arrest. When one of them drops his wallet down a hole in the floor, Ichiro (one floor below) picks it up and walks out of the building to go home for dinner. The robbers decide to follow him…

Back at home, after dinner, Ichiro dreams once again of MonsterIsland. On MonsterIsland, Ichiro and Minilla have a run in with Gabara (the monster) wherein Minilla gets his butt whomped. The two decide to go find Godzilla to watch him kick some butt. Evidently, every day in Godzilla’s life is rife with attacks from the lesser monsters of MonsterIsland. Either that, or Godzilla himself is a bully. Either way, Godzilla kicks the crap out of the other monsters, thus sending us the message that you must kick the crap out of people to gain their respect. After watching Godzilla deal some damage, Minilla gets beckoned to come to papa. He doesn’t want to go, but ultimately, we see Godzilla teach Minilla how to use his fire-breath (even though we thought we saw him do that already in Son of Godzilla, although interestingly, while this scene could have been lifted shot-for-shot from that movie, it was completely re-shot…). As Minilla is about to introduce Ichiro to Godzilla (what little boy WOULDN’T love to meet Godzilla?) a humanoid plant grabs him from behind…

PSYCHE! It’s actually the bank robber pedophiles who have grabbed Ichiro in his sleep and are taking him to the human trafficking business. His father, enraged will have to hunt them down, killing everyone in his path along the way…sorry, wrong movie. They take Ichiro back to the building they have been hiding in (rather than just take their wallet back), and hold him hostage for the time being. It’s interesting that they hold him hostage with nothing but a knife. How these two yahoos were ever able to rob a bank with nothing but their ‘cunning’ and a knife is a mystery I doubt anybody else but me has ever thought about. Instead of dealing with the situation of being kidnapped, Ichiro escapes to his happy place…

Once there, he sees Minilla in the midst of a fierce battle with Gabara (the monster). The little guy’s got his hands more than full, but Godzilla has said more than once that Minilla needs to learn to fight his own battles (get that kids? Don’t talk about your battles, FIGHT about them!). During a lull in the skirmish, Minilla confers with Ichiro. He thinks he has a plan to defeat Gabara (the monster)…

Will Minilla be able to conquer Gabara (the monster) by himself or will Godzilla need to step in and if Godzilla steps in will he be able to overpower the evil kaiju? If not, then all is surely lost because Ichiro still needs to figure this whole bank robber thing out and if he can’t help his favorite monster win in his own imagination, how in the hell is he going to defeat two real-life bank robbers?

Yeah it’s slip-shod; Ichiro is the first “Kenny” in a Godzilla film and unfortunately would not be the last (though the later ones would be MUCH more annoying, if that even seems possible), the effects sequences are almost all rehashes from the previous three films unless they include Gabara, and the bank robbers are two of the more incapable actors in the series, but the film is so damn fun (as long as you can get past the stock footage). If you’re able to get past the stock footage, then the movie is just replete with monster fights, and if you’re not able to get past it, then look at the movie as a ‘best of’ for Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster, and Son of Godzilla. Those two films aren’t exactly among the best of the best of the franchise, so why not get 3 movies worth of fights for the price of one?

Gabara is the only new monster in this movie and to call him the strangest Godzilla foe ever would not be too much of a stretch. First of all, he’s the only bipedal Godzilla kaiju I can think of that does not have a tail. Second, his warty body and blue-green skin tone give him a coloring and texture that is unparalleled. Finally, he not only possesses a unique roar, but is the only monster I can think of aside from King Kong (not a “Godzilla original”) in the Godzilla series that possesses hair. A red tuft of Johnny Rotten hair sits atop his head. The best word to describe Gabara is WEIRD. The Godzilla suit is the same used in Destroy All Monsters (which would also be the same used in Godzilla vs. Hedorah and Godzilla vs. Gigan) and it’s actually holding up quite well. The Minilla suit is also a re-used suit (with Little Man Machan inside the suit for the final time and Minilla's last appearance until Godzilla Final Wars), and all of the other monsters save Gabara are stock-footage apperances.

Here’s where I state opinions as facts, because ‘one time’ I read them ‘somewhere.’ Eiji Tsuburaya was unavailable to work on the film because he was bedridden with illness. Rather than replace him (out of respect since the man wasn’t DEAD and Honda was loyal), Honda took over the effects work. After shooting the new scenes with Gabara and Minilla, Honda knew that he was not the man for the job, but Tsuburaya was not available to help. Thus, stock footage was resorted to for most of the monster action. I also ‘one time’ read ‘somewhere’ that the movie was intended to be a footnote on the end of the series. Destroy All Monsters was intended to be the final film and Godzilla’s Revenge (had they had this type of thing in those days) would have been the DVD extra. I know for a fact that Tsuburaya was bedridden and therefore Honda took over the special effects directing, but I recalled the rest from memory and it may or may not be accurate.

Important to remember most of all about this movie is that it is a kid’s movie, therefore it teaches us some important lessons. First of all, if real life sucks, don’t deal with it, escape to a fantasy land that is much better. Second, violence, not talking, is the answer to everything. Got a bully in your life? Grow a pair and beat him up. Out for a walk in the jungle when you come across a giant spider? Beat it up. Taking a nap on a cliff when planes fly by? Destroy ‘em. Out for a swim when a giant prawn swims near? Beat it up. Kidnapped by evil-doers with at least one weapon that could easily be used to kill you? Beat them up; after all, you’re seven years old and you have an active imagination, that’s the best weapon of all! This is a children’s movie that parents of today would cower in FEAR of if it were unleashed on their children. As the Oprah-ization of the world becomes more and more complete, people are taught to cry about their issues and combat bullies with words and tattling. A movie that teaches to FIGHT would be considered exactly the WRONG message to send to young children. I don’t know about you, but if I were a bully, a swift kick in the junk would stop me in my tracks a lot faster than a, “Please stop, let’s be friends.” Kids today have no respect for authority, and go on shooting sprees when they get mad; kids who grew up watching this movie respect their elders (at the end of the movie Ichiro takes full responsibility for a couple of ‘out of line’ things he does), and would get in fights and then be friends afterward when they got mad. Godzilla knows how to raise kids a hell of a lot better than Dr. Phil.  He also teaches us that strength of arms is the best way to get respect. AWESOME!

Chest-beating and liberal whiner bashing aside, this movie isn’t good. It’s fairly entertaining and I personally love it to death. If at all possible, I’d recommend watching this Godzilla movie before ever watching Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster or Son of Godzilla, you may find it more enjoyable. In fact, I’d strongly recommend first sitting down to watch Godzilla vs. Megalon and then this film (trust me, there is no such thing as continuity in the Godzilla series from the years 1965 through 1975) and see how this stacks up. As much as I recommend seeing this movie, owning it in the Godzilla Collection Boxset and laying off of it as the whipping boy of the Godzilla Universe (please, save that for a movie that deserves it much more, like the 1992 Godzilla vs. Mothra, Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla, or Godzilla vs. Megaguirus), I can’t give it an excellent rating, I’d be lying to you that way. Oh yeah, although I refer to it as Godzilla's Revenge (due to growing up with that being the only title I knew), I have yet to see a point at which Godzilla gets much REVENGE...

Final Rating below. As always, you can see a full list of all my reviews and learn more about what a doughnut hole (as opposed to a sprinkle) is in THIS HUB.