Monster Zero x SciFi Japan - Archive Only

I really dig this movie. Gamera was not the hardface criminal as Godzilla was in his debut. He was a misunderstood kaiju that woke up from an eternal nap and found his world inhabited by humans. A bit groggy in the morning and cranky, he did wrecked the ice ship, but hey, the humans were screaming profanities at him. You might see Gamera destroying Japan in this movie but he's only looking for food, can't teach a kaiju table manners. He eats petroleum which humans produce alot of.

I think the connection with the boy was a hidden message that even though Gamera was big and scary, he is just a child himself that just doesn't know better. And why should he.

As a whole, this is low budget at its finest.

I find the first film to be average...at best. I feel like every time I watch it, it comes across as a little disjointed. Maybe there is some deleted footage or something. Overall though it can't even compare to Gojira. I think we should be lucky it got a series when other movies (Yongary, Gappa etc. did not).

Rewatching in it's original Japanese still didn't change my view on this movie that much. I feel the acting for the first film is not nearly as great as it could be. The good news is the best is yet to come.

zzzzz....wake me up when something interesting happens in this movie...


....zzzzzzz


alright, since nothing interesting IS going to happen, I'll just say that I'm rather amazed Gamera ever became a series, given this as their first film. 1965, nobody was doing black and white anymore, and while as a modern viewer today that's probably one of its major (perhaps even ONLY) charms, I imagine that in 1965 it would have felt like the equivalent of making a movie today where Will Smith fights in black leather jumpsuits in bullet-time while the stomping of a dinosaur causes little puddles of water to vibrate and people crack jokes about Bill Clinton. In so many words: dated and not in a cool retro way.

Also, it's not that good or interesting a film, and it just outright cheats in its solution and everything that I just can't be bothered to care about this one.