*. All Monsters Attack (American title: Godzilla’s Revenge, which makes even less sense) is usually considered to be one of the worst films in the deep-bottomed Godzilla franchise. Richard Pusateri begins his DVD commentary by saying the only debate among fans is whether it’s the worst or only the second-worst.
*. That said, Pusateri does enter the important caveat that the people who come up with such rankings weren’t (and aren’t) the target audience. The hero Ichiro (Tomonori Yazaki), the first child actor to star in the franchise, better represents this demographic. This is an after-school movie with a message about standing up to bullies, aimed, in Pusateri’s estimation, at fourth-graders. So who am I to judge it?
*. Aside from being juvenile instead of just campy or weird, the other big knock against All Monsters Attack is its heavy usage of what is often referred to as stock footage but which is really monster material recycled from several previous Godzilla movies (which is not the same thing as stock footage). This even leads to Godzilla himself changing appearance because there were different suits used in the different movies being sampled.
*. I didn’t find this to be a big problem though. To be honest, I didn’t even notice the different Godzilla suits. What’s more, the premise of the film has it that Ichiro is only imagining the monsters anyway, so any lapses in continuity can be waved away as the operation of dream logic.
*. What didn’t I like about All Monsters Attack?
*. (1) Minilla, or the Son of Godzilla. This was his third appearance and he looks just as disgustingly cute as ever and has even learned to speak English (or Japanese). Technically he may not even be Godzilla’s son, as he was only sort of adopted in the first place and I’m not even that sure of his gender either. In the dubbed English version he has a dopey male voice, but in the Japanese he sounds female. I guess he must be male though as he’s clearly the Monster Island surrogate for Ichiro, learning the same lesson about standing up for himself that Ichiro has to learn in the real world.
*. (This may be a good place to add a quick aside on Godzilla’s gender as well, which is never directly specified in the series. Even in the 1998 Roland Emmerich film Godzilla laying eggs is said to be the result of asexual reproduction. In my notes on all these movies I’ve adopted the usual shorthand of referring to Godzilla as male.)

*. (2) Gabara. This is the new monster introduced, and a one-off for the franchise. Heaven knows what he’s supposed to be. Apparently the producers thought of him as a mutated toad, but I don’t know how that explains the punk hair or electrical discharge. I think he looks terrible, but he sounds even worse. Pusateri describes the noise he makes as being “like a small car that can’t start,” which is close but doesn’t quite do justice to how annoying it is. When he’s fighting Minilla, who sounds like an asthmatic squeaky toy or clown horn, the resulting cacophony is excruciating.
*. Speaking of the battle between Minilla and Gabara, isn’t this making Baby Godzilla fight a little outside his weight class? I mean, Godzilla himself has a tough time squaring off against Gabara, so how the hell is Minilla supposed to go toe-to-toe against him? Ichiro’s Gabara isn’t as high a mountain to climb.
*. (3) If you have the DVD with both the English and Japanese versions you have to listen to the “Monster March” song that plays over the opening credits. What better way to kick things off than to have someone screaming crazy shit? Here are the lyrics as rendered by the English subtitles: “Marching Mr. Monsters with the style, Destroy everything, Ghooo! Ghooo! Godzilla fires radioactivity, Mi Mi Minilla, Poo Poo Poo, Bang Crash, Bang Crash, They destroy everything, Sorry, sorry, but living is hard for us also.”
*. (4) The lesson about standing up to bullies ends on an odd note, with Ichiro attacking the innocent sign painter. Pusateri has a lot of fun with this, as he describes an Ichiro imbued with newfound power who “inexplicably begins a sociopathic crime wave.” But he does raise an important point, as Ichiro does seem to have become the new Gabara, looking “for a new nerdy kid to pick on.” It seems a troubling message, especially in a Japanese film where I thought there was more respect for authority figures and adults, at least at the time. Or perhaps this was Ishiro Honda’s message about what latchkey kids were turning into.
*. Pusateri concludes by considering All Monsters Attack as a tipping point in the franchise, toward films with “tired plots, lesser known actors, skimpier budgets, and increasing use of footage from earlier movies,” as the box office continued its decline from the peak of King Kong vs. Godzilla.
*. Seen that way, it’s easy to see it as one of the worst films in the franchise. My own take is that it’s not really a Godzilla movie at all, or if it is than it’s meta-Godzilla. The monsters are wholly imaginary, the product of Ichiro’s fandom. He has a toy Godzilla in his room, and one assumes he’s watching those older Godzilla movies and reading Godzilla comic books in his spare time.
*. As a children’s movie I think it’s pretty good. The different plots weave together well. The cast all work well. The bumbling gangsters add a Home Alone feel. I like the industrial setting of Kawasaki. It really is the monster stuff that drags it down. So, yes, a terrible Godzilla movie. But not bad otherwise.