by Benjamin Haines » Thu Feb 02, 2012 5:56 am
When I first saw Gamera vs. Barugon, I thought it was boring as hell and rather nonsensical.
As I rewatched it six years later with the new DVD, I found myself really getting into it for the first 40 minutes or so. It's a slow-moving story, but a really interesting one, until Barugon appears. After that, while we're treated to some great monster rampage and fight scenes, the pacing of the film slows down to a crawl. It's even slower after the monster shows up than it is before. There's just no sense of urgency to the proceedings and it makes the rather generic military vs. monster sequences pretty lifeless.
One of the moments that I remember really scoffing at when I first saw this was when Onodera stupidly put himself in harm's way just to steal a big diamond, which of course leads to his death. 'I'm the villain, I'm out to take whatever riches I see because that's what I do!' Watching it again now, I think they actually did a believable job of building up to him doing that. As the story progresses, it's clear that Onodera grows more desperate and irrational, knowing that he committed murder for treasure and suddenly feeling like he was losing it all. Seeing the diamond tipped him over the edge and he convinced himself that it was the natives' treasure all along, and he has to try and get it to validate his choices to himself.
One thing that really doesn't make sense, though, is when Barugon manages to swim from the boat to the shore without dying. It's clear that the water hurts him because he bleeds the whole way, but simple rain is enough to immobilize him. Being completely submerged in water should have killed him before he could swim 50 feet.
I wish that I liked this film more than I do. It has a lot going for it, with beautiful color cinematography, compelling human drama, and a really memorable new monster foe. But the pacing of the film ends up killing it and it's just not much fun to me.
:th-dn:
The final battle was cool though, and what a long, brutal death for Barugon.