All Monsters Attack

All Monsters Attack (1969) is a Toho tokusatsu fantasy directed by Ishiro Honda — watch it online on iFILM. Honda, who made the original Godzilla fifteen years earlier, takes a sharp turn here: this is a children's film built around a lonely boy named Ichiro from the industrial suburbs of Kawasaki. His parents work long shifts, a school bully named Gabara makes his days miserable, and Ichiro retreats into elaborate daydreams about Monster Island.

In those dreams, he befriends Minilla — Godzilla's small, awkward, frequently bullied son. The two of them have to deal with a particularly nasty creature who shares a name with Ichiro's real-world tormentor. Godzilla himself appears mostly as a mentor figure, dispensing lessons about standing your ground. The monster action is deliberately scaled down; the point is the parallel between Ichiro's imagination and his waking life.

Fans of the heavyweight kaiju entries sometimes find this one too slight. Taken as a fable for kids about courage and being picked on, it does exactly what it sets out to do. Stream All Monsters Attack (1969) online on iFILM.