Set at the end of the 1960s a young boy named Ichiro (Tomonori Yazaki) is a shy lonely boy who is often by himself due to his parents needing to work two jobs and is often a target for bullies such as Gabara (Junichi Ito) and his gang. Ichiro returns home after school to check in with his toymaker neighbor Minami (Hideyo Amamoto) who looks after him and then proceeds to dream about visiting Monster Island where Godzilla lives and going on adventures with Godzilla's son Minilla. When Ichiro comes across a driver's license in an abandoned building, he inadvertently crosses paths with two bank robbers who stole 50 million Yen.
Although Toho Studios had considered putting the Godzilla series to rest after Destroy All Monsters, the successful export of Destroy All Monsters to countries abroad most likely helped persuade Toho to continue the series. After a deal to co-produce an animated series with Filmation fell through (similar to Toho's deal with Rankin-Bass regarding King Kong Escapes' ties with the cartoon The King Kong Show), Toho continued with the mindset of producing an additional Godzilla film aimed at children that would be produced quickly and cheaply through use of stock footage. The film proved to be a decent performer at the time making about as much as Destroy All Monsters had made (and likely more profitable due to a reduced budget) but critical and audience reception has remained tepid to put it generously with many often declaring it the worst Godzilla movie. Objectively speaking, All Monsters Attack/Godzilla's Revenge falls short of the standards one expects from a Godzilla movie and yet at the same time I can't fully dismiss it either.
To get things out of the way: Yes, all the problems you've heard about this movie are true now and they were true then. The movie's brazen recycling of stock footage from the last three Godzilla films is massively excessive and the fact that much of the "plot" takes place in dream/fantasy sequences robs the movie of any real sense of stakes or weight for much of the time since we know it's a dream. Then of course we have Minilla who now speaks (with a gratingly silly voice in the American dub) and has the personality of being a cowardly simpleton alternating between hackneyed "Gee gosh" dialogue and his braying and squealing he had in the prior two films. There is some new monster footage featuring Godzilla and Minilla fighting against a new creature called Gabara and while Gabara's design isn't great it's good enough even if the fights feature a lot of flailing slapstick from Minilla.
So yeah, the actual monster element of this monster film isn't that great but at the same time I can't fully dismiss it. Despite the film having a clearly tighter budget, that frugalness does actually kind of work to the film's benefit in depicting contemporary Japan in the real world sequences. This is where I feel that director Ishiro Honda deserves some slack because Toho wanted a cheap children's movie using stock footage and they were going to get it, at least Honda tries to add some semblance of weight and substance to what could've been a purely cynical cash grab. As the film was made during a time of economic hardship in Japan where rising living costs necessitated both parents taking jobs leading to a rise in latchkey kids, you do get a sense of the times in which the film was made with how Ichiro and several other children are basically left to fend for themselves. While the plot where Ichiro comes across and foils two bank robbers has more than an air of the fantastical to it, you can see Honda trying to make an empowerment story for children in overcoming their own personal "monsters" and having that strength within themselves. Does that make the movie underrated? I won't go that far because the lackluster production values coupled with a sometimes confused script (such as the ending sequence where he beats his bullies only to befriend them through a mischievous prank) have issues that are hard to ignore, but given the time and situation surrounding this material this isn't as bad as it should be especially when compared to similar films like Gamera: Super Monster or Space Warriors 2000.
All Monsters Attack is clearly originated from cynical executives looking to sucker people into something with low costs and low effort, but at the same time that cynicism isn't coming through in the writing or direction. If you're looking for a Godzilla movie to watch this isn't one you should see as there are far better examples, but it also doesn't deserve as much scorn as I first thought.
