Destroy All Monsters (1968) Saturday Monster Movies

The middle entry into this truly dark period for the Godzilla franchise is not quite as bad as what comes right before… or indeed what will come right after. However, it is still pretty bad. This is not just “for the kiddies,” it is possibly written by those kiddies.

We have everything from an all-female race of aliens (so, of course, baddies), a monster island where all of the “terrifying” creatures live peacefully in a zoo, spies, astronaut heroes, and obvious miniatures.

These features will all be revisited later in the franchise, but usually much more effectively.

The lesson to take away here is that all these massive, destructive monsters—usually created from man’s mistakes, hubris, or both, really just want to live in a cage and not hurt us. It takes evil aliens using mind control to get them to rampage. Not the kind of moral these stories usually try to deliver.