Gamera vs. Guiron Talkback

[king_ghidorah]

The Basics: Two boys get kidnapped by space aliens...wait...hot space alien babes...two of em!...ok,so...where were we...there's a bulldog like alien with a knife head that shoots ninja stars, and some silver colored Space Gyaos that get's butchered by the knife headed alien. Gamera some how breaks every rule of physics known to man, aliens, God and me...and flies to be planet to rescue the children. Once Gamera arrives he fights the evil alien babes and their pet knife headed monster before challenging the monster in the first ever SPACE OYLMPICS!!!

http://www.hulu.com/watch/34464/saturda ... e-olympics

The Plot:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamera_vs._Guiron

The Kaiju:

Gamera:Same old, same old. Unlike the Godzilla...Gamera's pretty much the same throughout the Showa era.

Space Gyaos: They're seemingly the cockroaches of the kaiju world and that creeps me out. These things spread like a virus. Sure there are deadlier kaiju...but Gyaos...well I can see them taking over everything eventually. One or two, sure there are several monsters who could beat them...allow them to multiply and we are all gonna die!!!

Guiron: Behind Gyaos and waaaay ahead of Barugon on my list of favorite Gamera kaiju. This guy is all sorts of amazing. (If you can find one, buy yourself a Rocket Pro figure of this guy if you are a fan, I'm looking at mine now...wow ) He seems to take pleasure in chopping the Space Gyaos!! Evil, smart and deadly. He outclasses Gamera through most of the film until the very end. This is the one Showa monster that comes the closest to being Gamera's equal.

The Acting: Gah. I hate reviewing the child actors in these films. They are what they are. These two are probably the best of the series though. Not insanely annoying. But the highlight of this movie are the two alien babes. Insanely evil and sexy...everything that's great about the Gamera movies . (There's deffinetly a trend in alien chicks in the Showa Gamera films which kind of makes sense if the stories about Noriaki Yuasa being something of a flirt and ladies man are to be believed )

The SPFX: Pretty good. This film was made cheap but the script gets us away from cities and Earth quickly so there's only a need for very minamilist sets once everyone goes out into space.

The Other Stuff:

-This was the first and only Gamera movie I saw as a child. I fell in love with this movie and to this day this is my favorite Gamera movie! Yes even more so than Gamera 3 (to be fair though there are a few Gamera movies that I like more than Gamera 3)

-The pastries that the boys eat always make me hungry...kind of like the pasta the kid eats in Godzilla's revenge

-This film is preposterous yes....but that's what makes it the best of the series!!! It just goes all out!! F'n nuts!!!

-I actually like the Cop and the hijinks and family life at the begining of the film

[king_ghidorah]

Let's go ahead and use this thread...the other one is a duplicate and needs to be locked up and dropped into the ocean somewhere

[Xenorama]

[MekaGojira3k]

[king_ghidorah]

[heroforhirerob]

[MouthForWar]

Of the latter half of the Showa films (where they just started to get flat out nutty), this is my favorite. This movie is one of those movies that just gets into surreal levels of weirdness, so much so that you have to wonder what the hell was going on with the writers of this movie. Who comes up with this kind of brain melting madness?! It is just so off the wall and insane, definitely the craziest of all the Gamera films... which is why its so awesome.

For a kids movie, its ridiculously gory and innapropriate by Western standards, its got an insane and crazy looking villain monster, aliens giving kids drugged donuts to eat their brains, a kid obsessed with traffic accidents, turtles doing gymnastics... if there's anyone out there that doesn't like this movie, I don't need to know you.

[Moonlight SY-3]

This is my favorite Gamera flick!

Nothing in the entire series surpasses Gamera welding a flying saucer back together with his flame breath. Good enough for space travel, no less!

[MekaGojira3k]

[king_ghidorah]

[The Real McCoy]

[Benjamin Haines]

Now we're talking. This movie improves on the previous entry in every way, taking the same basic premise (two kids joined by Gamera against evil extraterrestrials with a giant monster) but bringing a fresh approach to it. Instead of aliens arriving on Earth, we get to see their homeworld! The idea of a planet on the exact opposite side of the sun that we would never know about is brilliant and I like how the central problem facing that planet is giant monster attacks. There are Terran counterparts to the Gyaos on Earth and the whole planet is ravaged to the point where only two inhabitants are still alive. It's like seeing what Earth might have been like if Gamera hadn't been around to take care of our monster problems.

The kids being transported to Terra in the spaceship is a standout sequence for me. It all starts out as a wide-eyed adventure for the boys. Discovering a spaceship, flying through space, encountering Gamera and getting to race with him as his theme music plays. Then Gamera suddenly stops being jovial and puts himself in the ship's path, intentionally blocking it. He roars alarmingly, communicating to the audience as much as to the two boys: you don't want to proceed. But they can't control the ship as it circumvents Gamera, increasing speed, and suddenly this fascinating spacecraft has become a trap that they can't get out of. The whole sequence deftly flows from wonder to mounting dread to outright urgency, with the shots of Gamera trying desperately to speed up as he falls further behind underscoring the plight of the two boys.

It's funny how after Akio and Tom are transported away into space, Tomoko goes from struggling to get any adult to listen to her to later having reporters clamor to hear what she has to say. I like how the little girl actually has some involvement in the plot here. With the way the girls in the other films are either just there or griped about by the boys (like in Zigra), Noriaki Yuasa really seemed to regard his audiences for these movies as strictly boys. Granted, that was probably the case in 1969 Japan, but it's nice to see this film go against that norm to some degree.

There is no attempt to pass off stock footage as new here, and the flashback to Gamera's heroics from the previous movies is done so much better than in Viras. It only lasts a few minutes, is more tightly edited and makes for a neat little recap of monster action midway through the film.

The Showa Gamera films are known for being zany and surreal. Nowhere is that more prominent than in this entry. Guiron has a big knife for a head, shoots shurikens out of his temples, violently chops Space Gyaos to pieces, picks up a chunk of him to eat but drops it and waves the air at the stench. Gamera uses a long rock as a deflecting weapon and performs great feats of giant monster gymnastics. In classic B-movie fashion, the alien women want to eat the boys' brains and gain their knowledge! There's even a scene where they take one of the unconscious kids and actually shave his head on-camera, much to the shock of everybody when he gets home. Akio, on three occasions throughout the film, specifically refers to the ideal world as a place without wars or traffic accidents, and Gamera nods approvingly at his speech at the end. Gamera vs. Guiron is the Holy Grail of Showa Gamera nuttiness. It's a blast.


:th-up:


The sets and miniatures look really cool too. They add to the dreamlike feel of the movie.

[king_ghidorah]

[Benjamin Haines]

I think Gyaos is the best of the Showa Gamera films, but Guiron is definitely the most outlandish.

[king_ghidorah]

[kiryugoji04]

Finally saw this movie. Oh. Oh my. It has a few moments here and there, but on the whole, there's, like, nothing compelling to see. I spent most of the film... rather bored, with the company of Mr. Matt Frank (via phone) being the only thing that kept me going - kept me from sliding into a stupor. It's just awfully pedestrian, isn't it? I had already seen a lot of the funnier, bizarre moments before on Youtube and the like but seeing them put into context kind of robbed them of their fun. People love to cite this film as the epitome of Japanese monster weirdness but it's really rather bland compared to any odd episode of, say, Ultraman Ace or Taro.

Bleah.

[Mac]

The scenes on Earth with the little girl trying to find her brother really kill the pacing too. Glad someone else agrees.

[king_ghidorah]

It's the ultimate in boy's fantasy films!!! I can't see how anyone doesn't like this film, let alone finds it boring!!

[MekaGojira3k]

[king_ghidorah]

[MekaGojira3k]

[king_ghidorah]

[MouthForWar]

[MekaGojira3k]

[kiryugoji04]