The year is 1999, and all of Earth's monsters have been captured and detained at Ogasawara Island. All is well in the solar system until one day, a race of alien women brainwashes the monsters and releases them, causing havoc around the world. Godzilla attacks New York City, Rodan invades Moscow, Mothra lays waste to Beijing, Gorosaurus destroys Paris, and Manda attacks London!

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6186 in DVD
• Brand: Media Blasters
• Released on: 2011-11-08
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Original language: Japanese
• Subtitled in: English
• Running time: 85 minutes

Most helpful customer reviews

35 of 35 people found the following review helpful.
A Review of the ACTUAL product
By Stephen M. Lerch
Unlike many of the currently posted reviews, I'm going to be reviewing the actual release, rather than speculating or complaining about the cover EDIT-Amazon now lists the proper cover shot as to what was used on the release).

I received my Blu Ray of Destroy All Monsters today and promptly dropped it into the Blu Ray player.

I commend Media Blasters/Tokyo Shock for releasing this one.

From a story perspective, all the giant monsters are collected on a single island (Monster Island) for research purposes. Contact is lost with the control facility and what is discovered is that a race of aliens has taken control of the giant monsters. The giant monsters are sent to many different cities across the world and the human race must then wrestle control of the giant monsters back from the aliens. Fun stuff!

Video:

I'm torn here. I really, really wanted to love this release. What is there is 1080p HD in name, but the detail quality seems kind of low. I don't know what happened, but the colors seem washed out and faded while there are some instances of dust and dirt to be seen. Interestingly enough, you can still see the control cables and wires used for various special effects, so perhaps this was the best that could be done with it? I've read (and a commenter stated the possibility) that the source was a 35mm print.

In my mind, the Blu Ray doesn't look to be much better than an upscaled DVD. I don't have the Media Blasters DVD to compare directly, so I don't know if it really is an upscale or not, but every indication points to this being a true HD source.

Disappointing from an HD perspective certainly. If this is the same quality that was released in Japan (can't verify myself, sorry), then that tells me it is a source issue, but I don't know because I can't compare.

Forums I've been to indicate this is the same master used on the Japanese release, but take that for what it is worth without validation.

Audio:

5.1 Japanese, along with 2.0 Japanese and English 2.0 (2 audio streams for English). I watched in Japanese 5.1 and the music and effects seem to be well separated in the front speakers, while the rear channels barely got much use. Since this was original recorded in 2.0 stereo anyway, I flipped over and I have to say the stereo separation is just about as good in my mind as the 5.1 in Japanese.

I spot checked the English audio tracks and they seem to be on par in terms of audio quality as the Japanese. In terms of the quality of the English dub, I leave that to others to decide. Seems OK to me, but I expect hokey English on my giant monster movies anyway!

Based on a comment on my review, I went back to check the English dub. I can confirm, without question, that BOTH the AIP AND the "International" Toho dub are, in fact, on this disc. Both English tracks are, however, in 2.0 Stereo ONLY. There is no 5.1 English dub. Not that most people who wanted the AIP dub would care that much, considering the film was in 2.0 stereo originally anyway.

Packaging:

For those of you in love with the image Amazon has up, be prepared to be disappointed. Or not, if you hated it. From the time it was displayed here to time of release, the cover has been changed. If you check out the Destroy All Monsters wikipedia entry, this release uses the poster artwork displayed there. It looks good to me.

Otherwise the packaging is pretty bare bones. No inserts in the case or anything. Serviceable, but at $30 MSRP I'd have hoped for something a little better.

Extras:

Commentary is pretty good. Very nice to have it included.

All of the trailers are in standard definition, which is OK I suppose.

All of the Extras content is 480i and NOT 1080p.

You get original trailers (English, Japanese, French (poor audio quality), RADIO spots for the AIP dub (English only with still images from the film) ), a storyboard image gallery, an 8mm reel from AIP (quality is poor, but it's still really cool to see this!) and image gallery.

In my original Amazon review I ended up passing over a lot of the extras, so for that, I am terribly sorry.

The extras on this disc are pretty fantastic in my mind. Media Blasters/Tokyo Shock put a lot of love into pulling together all of this material.

Final Verdict:

Destroy All Monsters is one of the best Godzilla movies around. It deserves to be owned, certainly. The Blu Ray release is probably the prettiest release the movie has seen, though that's not saying much with some of the previous releases.

I've given it 4 stars because of the sloppy video (possibly not Media Blasters/Tokyo Shock's fault, I don't know). What is outstanding is the audio. Video drops the review by a star.

If you don't already own it and enjoy the film, this is definitely worth picking up. If you are OK with the video quality on prior release and don't care about the AIP dub, keep your money.

If you want the AIP English dub, this is THE release to get.

Media Blasters/Tokyo Shock did an outstanding job on this release. Pulling together the trailers, the radio spots and even the commentary shows me that they actually appreciate the release as much as many fans. The video quality is the only mar on an outstanding release and it is something I can look past, as I've since learned that the video is from Toho's own remastered (in 2008) video.

If you are a Godzilla fan, this is definitely worth the purchase price without question.

25 of 32 people found the following review helpful.
The cover looks fine....
By Michael J. Perun
So, according to an update on www.scifijapan.com Media Blasters is giving us the AIP dub, the International dub, the original Japanese language track along with some to-be-named-later extras and people are simply gonna complain about the DVD cover that is presently featured??? (I actually like it - original artwork for a change) Man.
Anyways, if all goes as planned this DVD release should be something else. Especially for those of us who long for an official version of the superior AIP dub track which we all remember while growing up watching on TV as monster kids.
Now if we can only get the AIP dub of "Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster".....

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Blu-ray Transfer Not Perfect, But Easily Tweaked to Nearly So
By Surfink
First off, this review is not about the movie itself, but only discusses the Blu-ray transfer; for info on the movie proper, please see IMDb or other reviews here on Amazon. There have already been a number of reviews and comments posted here and on various blogs complaining about the quality of the new Tokyo Shock/Media Blasters Blu-ray release of Destroy All Monsters. Having received my copy a few days ago and directly compared it to the previous ADV DVD release, I thought I'd put my two cents in.

The only real flaw with the transfer is that the black level isn't as deep as it should be, giving the picture overall a somewhat watery, washed-out appearance. That said, virtually every other aspect of the transfer (color palette/fidelity, sharpness/detail, grain structure, contrast, framing) is a big improvement over the ADV DVD, which exhibits a strong blue cast, soft, muddy detail (especially in the darker scenes), poor color fidelity, excessive contrast, print debris and blemishing, and even some annoying ghosting. (Some have even speculated that the Blu-ray is merely an upconvert of an SD DVD transfer, which I don't need any more evidence than that provided by my eyeballs to flatly refute. Detail is much too crisp to be an upconvert; textures of skin, hair, rocks, walls, etc., are much finer than DVD can resolve. And you can't create detail that isn't present in the source by upconverting.)

While I agree that the transfer is somewhat less than optimal, there is a very quick and easy fix for those who own a digital television: simply tweak the picture settings. I set up my 60" flatscreen's "Standard" picture mode using a few reference-quality Blu-rays and high-quality cable channels to display these sources optimally. However, I have another picture mode (in my case "User") that I specifically customized for discs that exhibit the slightly watery, washed-out appearance of the DAM Blu-ray, with lowered brightness and heightened contrast to deepen the blacks while controlling the highlights, and simultaneously enriching the color as well.

So, here's my fix: pick a picture mode other than the one you normally use and (1) drop the brightness and/or backlight and increase the contrast until you have a nice rich black in the darkest areas without blowing out the highlights, (2) jack the color saturation up a bit, and (3) move the tint a few points toward the red end. With these tweaks applied, which took me all of 30 seconds, the picture looks 500% better--very nice, if not spectacular--and eminently worthy of the Blu-ray format. Would it have been better if Media Blasters had made these adjustments on their end so I don't have to? Yes. Is it that big a deal that I should be getting my undies in a bunch over it? No. Once you have one of your picture modes set up this way, you can use it correct other DVDs with similar issues (I own probably a dozen other titles with a similar look.)

I don't know anything about the behind-the-scenes of what went down between Toho and Media Blasters, and, frankly, I don't care. I'm glad to have this on Blu with a much improved transfer that makes the ADV release look pretty much like garbage in comparison, not to mention the host of extras provided. The Blu-ray reveals more picture information on the left and right sides that is cut off on the ADV DVD, the print source is immaculate, the grain is for the most part extremely tight and virtually unnoticeable, the color palette and balance are much improved, with far more natural fleshtones, and sharpness and detail are dramatically enhanced. Yes, the included AIP audio dub contains a few minor glitches, particularly during the first few minutes, but nothing that seriously impacted my enjoyment of the movie or makes me regret purchasing this release. And, as I outlined above, the black-level issue is easily solvable in far less time than it takes to write a review or post a comment on a blog.