Go Retire Psychiatrist

Svengoolie Intro: “Calling all stations! Clear the air lanes! Clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!”

The Svengoolie show 1968 movie set in futuristic 1999 “Destroy All Monsters” was one of the kaiju shows which have an Astro Boy feel to them. It was supposed to be the last of the kaiju films, but it did well enough at the box office, the producers decided not to get off the pot while the bowel was still moving.

I fell asleep during part of the movie, but I doubt it will detract from my usual fake review because I’ll just make stuff up as usual anyway.

The major human or humanoid players are Akira Kubo (as SY-3 Captain Katsuo Yamabe); Jun Tazaki (as Dr. Yoshido); Kyoto Ai (as Kilaak Queen); Yukiko Kobayashi (as Kyoto Manabe), and Yushio Tsuchiya (as Dr. Otani).

There are many monsters, the only one of which I clearly recall is Godzilla, although his adopted son, Minilla (or Minya in the dubbed movie versions) did a fantastic job of blowing a smoke ring which knocked out a monster during one of the battles.

The word “Kilaak” as in the alien queen, sounded to me so much like Key Lime at first, it made me wonder how many jokes I could make about key lime pie for this film.

I’ve probably seen more episodes of the cartoon Astro Boy (also a Japanese production) than I have of the kaiju films, but it’s probably not a hindrance since they’re a lot alike.

Anyway, there’s this situation with a pack of monsters, the leader of which is Godzilla, near as I can tell involves the evil key lime pie aliens kidnapping them off the island called Monsterland where the good guys of the United Nations Science Committee (UNSC) keep them for scientific study. Apparently, the goal is to take the monsters who can eat anything they like on Monsterland and get them all hooked on key lime pie.

Dr. Otani, one of the scientists, is now addicted to key lime pie, which is literally cooked up by the aliens. He’s in league with them and all the monsters start attacking major world cities. The Key Limers control them from their base under the Moon’s surface, which neatly refutes all the conspiracy theorists denying that anybody ever landed on the Moon in 1969.

The UNSC good guys, led by Captain Yamaba, temporarily get the better of the Key Limers by giving them a taste of their own medicine by shooting them with laser guns loaded with Key Lime Pie not made in Key West, Florida but in (of all places) New Jersey!

That gave the Key Limers a bad taste in their mouths, so they sic their main monster King Ghidora on the whole UNSC gang of monsters in a cage match which led to Godzilla knocking out King Ghidora. This allows the rest of the monsters to stand around eating real Key Lime Pie, which distracts them from the Key Limers’ counter punch which is a flaming UFO called the Fire Dragon, fueled by real Key West Lime Pie and driven by hired gun gray aliens who can tolerate the g-forces better than the Key Limers.

Yamabe eats a can of spinach, which gives him stupendously strong forearms, allowing him to finally whip the tar out of the so-called Fire Dragon, which is nothing more than a Key Limer hopped up on steroids, played by Fox Mulder.

This is a movie which has lots of twists of turns, some of which I didn’t see because I fell asleep about halfway into the film, but I woke back up during a really loud commercial and probably didn’t miss that much, except for the part where Astro Boy kicks the crap out of Dr. Otani. It’s a so-so movie and I give it a Shrilling Chicken Rating of 2/5.