Monster Zero x SciFi Japan - Archive Only

Let's get this party started...

The Japanese Version-My prefered version of choice

The Basics: Giant monster turtle terrorizes Japan and the rest of the world...

The Plot: An accident involving nuclear weapons at the North Pole unleashes a giant, prehistoric, flying, sabertoothed, fire breathing monster known as Gamera. An intrepid trio consisting of a reporter, a scientist and his assistant soon travels the world chasing after the monster while working with the various different militaries in trying to find how to stop the evil monster's rampage. Meanwhile, a young, anti social boy named Toshio, who mistakenly believes that his former pet turtle has transformed into Gamera, chases after the turtle as well believing the turle monster to be his friend.

The Kaiju:

Gamera: Public Enemy Number One. The sole kaiju of this flick. The is a giant turtle monster with a tude'. One of my least favorite incarnations of this monster, as the suit just lacks refinement and looks blocky to me.

The Acting: People say lines of dialogue, most of the time poorly. The American GI's drafted as actors in this film are horrible. The Japanese that utter English lines of dialogue are equally bad.

The SPFX: Passable. The animated flying Gamera looks pretty crude but there are some decent minatures including one of the Tokyo Tower. The practical fire effects for Gamera are also a nice touch.

The Other Stuff:

-A very nice build up of tension in the begining of the film. The film has a nice pace and starts out running, cutting out all needless exposition.
-No build up at all is used for Gamera's fire breath. In contrast, the sub plot revolving the "UFO" and it's eventual reveal of Gamera's flying abilities I think is handled even better than in Rodan
-I know Toshio is made fun of a lot, but I like him. He's anti-social to the point of resembling the obsessed little kid in "Let Me In" but he's also a real boy, selfish, foolish ect.
-That being said, why the hell do people in the Gamera movies let kids into military briefings lol
-Z Plan....hahahaha
-Gamera straight murders people in this film...he's a real jerk...yet..
-I think he actually has a character arc in these films...he's a jerk, a murdering a$$ who eventually becomes a friend of all children
-Go Go dancing has border line ruined almost 2 decades of genre film...why, why o why did people ever think that was cool
-Z Plan...once again....hahahahaha. But you Godzilla purists out there can't act like you are so much better, in the original film they construct a wall of electrical towers over night

My only exposure to Gamera as a kid was a VHS of Gamera: Guardian of the Universe that I rented from Hollywood Video several times. It wasn't until I was a teenager that I saw the sequels, and I didn't see the Showa Gamera films until I was 15 or 16.. I got containing the first seven films plus Gappa. They were all pan-and-scan, poor-quality transfers of the English-dubbed versions. Gamera was the American edit and Gamera vs. Guiron had the Gyaos-chopping sequence axed. I liked Gamera vs. Gyaos but I couldn't get into any of the others, which I didn't watch again after that point.

Now that I've gotten all of the Shout! Factory Gamera releases, I've recently been going through and watching all of them in sequence, seeing most of these films for only the second time ever, for the first time in over six years, all uncut, widescreen, original language and with high-quality A/V presentation. I've been rediscovering the Showa Gamera films one by one.

Gamera was a movie that I found dull and unengaging back when I first saw it. One of the things that I found most captivating about it now was the cinematography. The black-and-white picture is gorgeous and there are a lot of nicely filled-out and well thought-out shots.

I liked this movie a lot, which surprised me. The story is as run-of-the-mill as they come, some of the dialogue is really bad, but it moves along at a nice pace and does a competent job of presenting the kind of story it's trying to tell. There's plenty of suitmation and miniature action to enjoy, a great score, and there's Toshio. Whether it was intentional or not, the kid comes across as being screwed up in the damn head. What better protagonist in a movie about a giant, destructive terrapin than an antisocial child who has an unhealthy obsession with turtles? It's funny as hell.

I think what makes Gamera work as a movie and what makes Gamera so enduring as a character is that sense of uncanny uniqueness. A giant turtle that spits and eats fire, spins and flies through some kind of biological jet propulsion, has a violent streak but compassion for children. A movie where a reclusive child frantically chases said turtle as he demolishes cities, all the while insisting that he's not our enemy. And what a deliciously ridiculous ending. Sometimes, you just have to eject the beast from the planet.


:th-up:


This also has my favorite Gamera suit of the Showa series.

Didn't August personally oversee their subs?

The subtitles on the first two are fine. It's the subs for the rest of the series that are incredibly lacking.

After going through Mill Creek's release of the Gamera trilogy I decided it was high time to dive deep into the Showa Gamera series, which I've previously only viewed on VHS or VHS-quality panned-n-scanned dubs of various (usually quite poor and Sandy Frankish) quality. So here is goes!

Gamera, The Giant Monster

First of all, Shout's presentation of this disc is excellent. The packaging and so forth is just fun to hold in your hands. I especially loved seeing the anatomical drawing of Gamera viewable on the inside cover. The quality is just shy of Blu-Ray sharpness, but excellent for DVD, and there are some nice extras.

The film itself has a kind of B-movie charm that feels a bit more American when compared to other kaiju pictures, that kind of A.I.P./Bert I. Gordon charm (your mileage may vary). The acting and plot, as king_ghidorah has stated, are rudimentary at best. The most interesting stuff in that department is unintentional: Kenny (Toshi, whatever) and his love of Gamera and our erstaz photographer hero's devotion to the female research assistant come off as more uncomfortable than anything, and that provides some unintentional comedy.

A large part of this film's appeal to me is just that it features a heaping helping of some standard kaiju city destruction with some pretty good miniatures. It's one of the few kaiju films in black and white and the novelty of that gives it some added enjoyability (let's face it: b&w on its own has an inherit coolness). The awkwardness of Gamera's shape makes the suit actor's movements rather odd and kinda hypnotic. I know that I paused it and tried to replicate the distinctive walk.


I feel that the film takes a nosedive in the last act. After the fun of an old-fashioned city smashin' the execution of the Z Plan is boring, even if the surreal reveal of just what the Z Plan is is one of the film's highlights. Which gets me to something I'm sure I'll return to in my further reviews of these films: every Showa Gamera film should be shorter.