Destroy All Monsters 50th Anniversary Edition

In honor of the new Godzilla coming out soon that will have a battle royale of many giant monsters, I decided to buy Destroy All Monsters again (I had owned it on VHS), this time on dvd. The packaging makes you think that it is going to be a classy production this time around, since the last ADV dvd had some cool cover art but not much else. Well, prepared to be disappointed, for there is nothing on this disc but the movie and an additional disc with the soundtrack.

The movie is presented without any chapter stops so you have to use the fast forward button if you want to skip ahead by any significant amount since the track button will get you nowhere. This is a shame because this movie deserves better. It had been unavailable for most of my life on video and when it did finally get onto it the transfer wasn't the best. How hard is it to create a title menu? Jeez, I could make one in idvd easily enough. Mind you, I'm not asking for anything fancy like moving menus. It could be a still image as long as it has the chapter stops or some sound options or even some trailers of other ADV movies. Instead we get nothing, which really sucks, not that there are releases with much better stuff out there. Godzilla gets the shaft way too often over here on dvd. I wish some fan with a distribution center could put these out instead of corporations who just throw it out there and let it sink.

Onto the film. Outside of a fair transfer, the movie is presented in its entirety though I think there may be some matting issues that make the titles go off the screen. The monsters of the world have been contained onto Monsterland, an island in the Ogasawara island chain. Suddenly the islands are under attack by mysterious invaders and the captive monsters start appearing all over the world, destroying monuments in true suitmation glory - Rodan in Moscow, Gorosaurus in Paris, Godzilla in New York, etc. It turns out that aliens have taken over the monsters and it is up to an elite space crew to break the hold over the creatures and stop the alien menace or they will have to destroy all monsters.

While the plot is fairly standard for a monster movie, the control plot being used in Godzilla vs. Monster Zero, it is the first time that so many monsters have been on the screen at one time, eleven in all. This was a kaiju fan's wet dream and as a kid watching it, there was quite a thrill at getting about ten monster movies worth of creatures on on screen. It's a fun romp through the world of Japanese sci-fi and I can't wait till Final Wars comes out to give us an updated look at Destroy All Monsters that fans have been clamoring for.

I wouldn't pay more than five dollars for this film or go for a Japanese version of it if you have the cash unless you just want the movie and the bonus soundtrack which is nice, then it's worth about ten bucks. Great film bad presentation. Check it out.