Review for Destroy all Planets

Director: Noriaki Yuasa

Released: 1968

Genre: Japanese Monster Movie

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Destroy all Planets is a typical entry into the "giant Japanese monster" movie genre. Everybody knows about the massive creatures battle each other, and the city of Tokyo often suffers as a result. Hundreds of such movies exist, most of which are either sequels or spinoffs of the original Godzilla franchise. Despite the near universal awareness and mockery of such features, I doubt many people have seen such a work in its entirety.

Before watching Destroy all Planets, I had not seen one of these movies all the way through, aside from Ishiro Honda's original Godzilla film, Gojira. Destroy all Planets is certainly no competition to Honda's seminal work in terms of quality, but it is by no means the worst movie I have ever seen. It tells of an attempted alien invasion of Earth, thwarted by the beloved creature Gamera, a massive sea turtle capable of flying in space. The extra terrestrial force delves into the memories of Gamera (which allowed for director Noriaki Yuasa to splice in a half hour's worth of action scenes from previous Gamera films) and decide to prey on the monster's kindness- they kidnap two boys, threatening to kill them if Gamera attacks the spaceship. It all leads up to an intense (and somehow exciting) final conflict.

Now, despite my somewhat lighthearted recap on the plot of this movie, I must reiterate: Destroy all Planets is nonetheless a terrible movie overall. Granted, it was rerecorded for its American release, which I will account for in my rating, as I assume the original sound and dialogue is superior, but it is no wonder that one of its prequels was featured on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. The pacing is terrible, the cinematography only occasionally interesting, and the soundtrack unmemorable.

Destroy all Planets is a better viewing experience if you watch it with other people, but even then it probably will not hold your attention very well; by the time the final battle scene came around, one of my friends was reading the comic section in the newspaper instead of watching the film. That all changed, however, when a giant alien squid creature decided to attack the gargantuan Gamera- seaborne and airborne attacks are launched, model landscapes are destroyed, and the whole spectacle is guaranteed to produce a few laughs... but surely Akira Kurosawa and similar directors would have scoffed at the general lack of quality evident in nearly every other department of production.

1.50/4.00