January's always a fine time to plow
through a pile of movies. Perhaps it's example of having the wrong
priorities but what better way is there to spend a frightfully cold
Saturday night than watching a small cinematic marathon? A portion of
this month's viewing has been the second half of the original Gamera
series. Finishing them marks a nifty little achievement as I'm now
just one entry away from having seen the entire franchise. How do
these back four compare to other monster turtle adventures? Read on
and find out.
Gamera vs. Guiron
Let's just start this off by making it
clear what a huge improvement this installment is over its
predecessor. I'd been under the impression for some time that every
Gamera flick beginning with part IV was a smorgasbord of
stock-footage and flashbacks. While this particular adventure does
include some reused footage it's nothing like the sad-sack story that
was Viras. Likewise the entire movie has a certain delightful madness
that makes it a better entry within the franchise. Hear me out.
The plot yet again revolves around a
biracial boy team who are abducted by aliens. Well...perhaps abducted
isn't really the right word as the pair strolls aboard a flying
saucer with little care for their own safety. Once in flight they are
whisked away to a hidden world within our own solar system. Rather
neat idea right here. This planet is roughly the same distance from
the sun as Earth but is in just the right orbit as to always be on
the other side of the sun from us. This may well be the most
logically written concept in any of these flying turtle movies so
let's give a round of applause for that.
Back on Earth one of the boys sister
tries to inform her elders of the situation only to be met with
scorn, insults, you name it. These parents are the worse. Not only do
they incorrectly assume the boys ran away when their daughter tells
them otherwise but they continue to shrug off the whole affair even
as their boys stay missing and reporters show up to inquire about the
UFO.
Meanwhile on planet crazy the lads
encounter two alien broads with sparkly tights and a tendency for
brain consumption. Oh and did I mention they have a giant monster pet
with a knife nose? One so evil that in an early scene it chops
another Gamer villain into pieces for fun.
To think I've gone this long without
even mentioning our hero. Our guy gamgam benches himself for a
surprising amount of this tale, but it's ok since his battles with
Guiron are the stuff of Kaiju peyote dreams. Have you ever seen the
clip where Gamera spins on a bar like a gymnast? That's right here.
Still; nothing tops his finishing move when he throws a rocket into
the opponents head and breaths fire until it bursts. That's some
classic fatality shit right there.
Gamera vs. Jiger
Things calm down a good bit with part
VI being a lot closer to standard kaiju flicks. A lot of the formula
is still intact including the white and Asian boy team who look very
much like underage buddy cops. Parents are still fairly wretched
people except for the main dad who's sort of an overgrown child.
It may not sound like I got much out
of this one but in truth it's the biggest reason for why I bought
this disc. It's definitely on the weak side of the series rankings
but it was worth it for one special moment.Ya see, part of the plot
concerns Gamera getting knocked up with parasite babies from his
newest foe. Like any of these films there's a gathering of scientists
on hand to discuss what's going on. At one point a doctor explaining
the parasite issue shows real life footage of an elephant with worms
in its trunk. The bit that makes this scene infamous is that they
actually show parasites getting sliced out of the trunk. The reaction
shot says it all. What a hoot.
Gamera vs. Zigra
Everything starts to get a little sad
here in a perfect example of a series quickly losing steam. There are
some small attempts at altering formula such as a boy girl pairing
with the girl I believe being mixed race, a surprisingly forward
thinking element for a film of this time. We're given another aquatic
monster which makes for some pretty lazy battles, with only two or
three properly wacky sequences.
It's tough to come up with anything to
say about this one. Nearly everything in it is a repeat of elements
from past stories only with less of an attempt at quality. The
children are more annoying than ever. The story is limp. About the
only bits of note are the cure for human dolphin syndrome and Gamera
playing the villain like a xylophone.
Gamera: Super Monster
If ever there was a film begging for
one of those jumbo dissection videos, this is it. I mean what a
fantastic clusterfuck. Just a little background information. Daiei,
the production company responsible for both this and the Daimajin
series had been on a steady decline into bankruptcy until another
group bought them out. It'd been close to a decade since Zigra hit
theaters and somebody thought a new Gamera adventure packed full of
old footage was a good idea. The movie was a colossal disaster on the
production front as well as both a critical and box office failure.
Still; if you're gonna fail, better make it spectacular.
What attempts to pass for a plot
concerns an evil space empire's plans to destroy planet Earth. First
up on their checklist is the defeat of three alien superwomen hiding
among us normal folk. An evil space lady is sent down make sure
everything goes smoothly. As expected there's also an annoying child
with made electric organ skills and an obsession for giant turtles.
The baddies also send forth all the
previous monsters to destroy us meager humans. Thankfully Gamera's
got them covered thank to clips from parts II-VII. About a third of
this film is made of clips from other sources. Not just Gamera ones
mind you. Some anime gets mixed in as well, allowing for appearances
by Space Battleship Yamato and Galaxy Express 999.
Really there's too much insanity to
cover in a quick article. From the bizarre looking video edit special
effects to the superwomen henshin dance. Children are allowed to
sleep with strangers, electric organ music runs rampant. Oh and lest
I forget the ending where Gamera saves us all by going full kamikaze
against a star destroyer! Yep, they ended the series with a suicide
run.
Video & Audio Quality
Normally these kind of films don't
have the best AV to begin with and the prints available for
restoration aren't always well preserved. If you keep expectations
accordingly in check you should be mostly pleased with the sound
quality. Video can vary a great deal due to the usage of stock
footage. Super Monster in particular bounces all around between
different video styles, especially with the wacko effects shots.
The most severe issue on this
collection are subtitle timing and translation issues. Most of the
time, everything's smooth sailing but there are scenes where
subtitles appear long after lines have been spoken. Rushed
conversations double down on that problem with some subs staying on
too long and others vanishing in a flash, Expect a decent share of
grammar and spelling problems to tickle your funny bone as well.
Our favorite turtle wouldn't see
action again until his remarkably high quality 90's trilogy, and a
stand-alone from 2006. He's also joining the current resurgence of
kaiju flicks alongside Godzilla and Kong. Lord knows how long it'll
take to finally reach our shores, until then, we've got always
got the spacewomen dance.
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