“Why is Earth such a hard place to live?” That’s the question at the core of the greater Godzilla filmography, in which the King of the Monsters is episodically attacked by lesser kaiju that individually represent Earth-life’s many challenges: war, pollution, overfishing, techno modernization, etc. It’s also a question directly asked in the opening-credits theme song to the kaiju monster-mash picture All Monsters Attack (1969), which is essentially a clip show featuring highlights from those metaphorical battles. While previews of those clips flash and freeze as title cards, the song “Monster March” tosses out a few sing-along catchphrases like “Wham! Bang! Crash!” and “Go-go-Godzilla!” to invite the children in the audience to join in on the fun. All Monsters Attack is, undeniably, kiddie stuff. Just in case its target audience is a little too young to have caught onto the kaiju-as-metaphor themes of the greater Godzilla project, the song goes on to spell it out, accompanying images of an industrialized, overcrowded Tokyo with the lyrics, “Megaton smog and exhaust fumes […] are the real monsters!” So, it’s a little surprising, then, that the story that follows such a direct opening statement isn’t about modern urban pollution at all, despite the proto-Hedorah themes suggested by those images & lyrics. Instead, All Monsters Attack is about how Earth is a hard place to live for children in particular, whose only reprieve from the planet’s cruelties is to keep watching Godzilla movies.

Our hero is a young, lonely latchkey kid, left unsupervised for hours on end while his mother works hard to pay the rent. He’s bullied daily by other kids in his industrial neighborhood, a routine that escalates when he stumbles into the lives of two adult bank-robbers who happen to choose his private hiding spot for their own and bully him even harder. Without the familial love & attention and the personal resilience he needs to survive modern urbanity, the poor little tyke only has one coping mechanism that makes his life worth living: dreaming about Godzilla. Whenever life gets too tough to handle, he rushes to a homemade computer that hypnotizes him into dreaming he’s on Monster Island, where he makes fast friends with Godzilla’s useless, hideous son, Minilla. The two interspecies buddies mostly just watch recycled footage of previous Godzilla battles from the sidelines, cheering their favorite monster on as he beats up Ebirah, Anguirus, and The Kamacuras, among other skyscraper creatures. A brand-new monster then enters the picture in form of Gabara, the kaiju equivalent of the bullies that our hero has been avoiding fighting back against in real life. While Minilla learns the confidence to fight his own battles without Godzilla’s help against the obnoxious Gabara in the dreamworld, his new human bestie does the same in the real world, even though he’d rather be napping and dreaming of his favorite Godzilla clips. If it weren’t for all the rubber-suited wrestling matches and the aggressively swanky jazz soundtrack keeping the mood lively, it would be a sad little story about the world’s loneliest boy.

The title All Monsters Attack promises a repeat sequel to the battle-royale kaiju showcase of Destroy All Monsters, so it’s kind of a letdown that so much of its monster action is recycled from previous Godzilla outings. That disappointment is then compounded by the dorky, unintimidating design of the bully Gabara, who looks like a geriatric housecat with an elongated neck and a Donald Trump wig. Still, I found myself charmed by the psychic space it affords Monster Island as an escapist fantasy for young Godzilla fans. The idea of astral projecting yourself all the way there just to hang out with Minilla, of all monsters, is a hilarious indignity. Here, the laughably ugly little thing has somehow mastered human speech but still brays like a donkey when he gets nervous, which happens a lot as he’s mercilessly bullied by Gabara. Our hero seems fond of the pitiful mutant, though, which is sweet, even if it’s an indication of why he’s the kind of nerd who might get bullied around the schoolyard. It’s easy to imagine kids his age enjoying All Monsters Attack in the sequences where it turns into a clip show of Godzilla’s greatest hits (or, more accurately, his then-recent hits), so I can’t fault the movie too much for playing directly to that age group’s corny sensibilities. The worst I can say about it is that it has since been made obsolete by the invention of home video & YouTube, which would allow children to rewatch their favorite Godzilla battles without having to suffer through Minilla’s buffoonery or the afterschool special messaging to get there. Being a lonely, unsupervised nerd has never been more fun.

-Brandon Ledet