Gappa the Triphibian Monster

Just wanted to comment on some of the other statements made by people on this board. First,yes the special effects do not look like todays..but I for one like the pre-CGI effects. The special effects people had to be much more inventive and creative in the pre CGI days. This movie doesn't have the great effects of some of the old monster movies such as the Ray Harryhausen(which are better than any CGI in my opinion)features and the Godzilla films,but it still makes pretty good use of miniature sets. Great movie for young kids or us older people who still remember what it was like watching these films as a child. I love watching these movies for nostalgic purposes as well. Sure it can be cheesy to some..but if you watch these films in the context that they were meant to be viewed..they can be very entertaining and enjoyable.

I was visiting this movie approximately in 1972, when communist allow us to see two or three Japanese "sci-fi" movies. In that time it has been for me something new, I've been a small boy, but I feel it is not good. But it has been from my lovely sci-fi section and now I bought a DVD and look at it with pleasure. There is so much mistakes... For example the rocket propulsion of that giant lizards, the fire from their mouths when they destroyed all military technology - tanks and aircraft, their bullet, bomb and rocket proof skin. The monsters can fly, walk and float under see, just one problem they have - they don't like high-frequency sound, so army can thrust their from the lake under Fuji. On the island, where from are the monsters are living the natives which are waiting tens generations for Japanese liberators, but almost all know the Japanese language! The end is beautiful and very sentimental - first and last time you can see a giant monster to cry:-)

Move over Dr Strangelove; "Monster from a Prehistoric Planet" is the new satire in town. Okay, maybe my sarcasm is unjustified, Japanese satire is either too high brow for me or gets completely lost in translation. And its perfectly easy to loose anything in the atrocious dubbing kaiju films get plastered with.

If I'm kind I have to call it a parody of King Kong; as the film deals with an expedition force, who are trying to find exotic animals for a new theme park, stumbling across a mysterious island where the indigenous tribe (who look strangely similar to Japanese with coal on their faces) worship a god called Gappa. The expedition take a baby Gappa back to Japan, with the parents in hot pursuit. Cue the miniatures.

With the hideously handled love side story and the hilariously sentimental finale, I can only assume that this film was intended as tongue in cheek fare, and the satire label certainly confirms this. This aside however, the film is terrific by the standards of the time, with incredible amounts of destruction and very little time to breathe in between. Whether I'm missing the supposed hard-hitting social satire I don't really care; "Monster from a Prehistoric Planet" is a wonderfully extravagant example of monster films done properly, with a plot that doesn't dither amount and action that moves back to Japan pretty swiftly and doesn't let up from then on. The clichés are all over the place but this is hardly an issue, intentional or otherwise. Certainly, a kaiju film trying its hand at satire would be expected to be about as subtle as a ton of bricks, and with this in mind the film could have turned out a hell of a lot worse.

(To the elite, "Monster from a Prehistoric Planet" has a special appeal. The Gappas are the very same monsters that menaced Kryten and Rimmer on wax world in series 4 of Red Dwarf; and as Kryten observed, you've probably seen more convincing dinosaurs in a packet of "wheatie flakes")

if you can get by the dubbing, and the sometimes missing of the translation of what was really meant to be said by the actors , then yeah this isn't really a bad movie at all, course i'm bias I love virtually all monster movies,, whether American , or Japanese. thought it was so ignorant of the man in charge for most of the movie not to return the "baby" gappa , meanwhile the mommy and daddy move closer towards Tokyo,, you will have to watch and see for yourself what happens next.. sure this isn't king kong or Godzilla but hey this really isn't a bad movie to watch. you just have to bear with it and try to follow along as best as you can that's all.

A group of intrepid explorers is sent on an expedition to find exotic animals (and people) for a new theme park to be built by a magazine tycoon who also happens to publishes Playmate Magazine. Soon, the group lands on an island in the South Pacific, where they discover an isolated tribe of natives who worship a mysterious God named Gappa. When the land is ruptured by an earthquake, the explorers come upon a cavern containing a reptilian egg. They take it back to a Japanese research center, where the creature hatches and is studied by a group of not too bright scientists. Unfortunately, the parental Gappas show up to claim their newborn lizard, trashing most of Tokyo in the process.

I had a great time watching this piece of nonsense. Just about everything in this film is a complete riot. After a somewhat slow first half, the action is almost non-stop and there's plenty of stupendous dialog to keep you entertained. The production values consist mostly of hilariously cheap-looking scale models, the story and the acting are ridiculous and most of the characters are empty-headed idiots, especially for a group of scientists. The monster, Gappa, is a kind of bird-lizard, basically a ridiculous looking over-sized chicken. When it flies, it sounds like an airplane, but that's probably the result of a slip-up in the sound effects, because the creature gets attacked by fighter planes a couple of times.

Made by the Nikkatsu Studios to make a late cash-in on the success of Godzilla- and many other monster movies and - what I understand - it was also meant as a kind of satire on the monster movie craze. Well, that aspect of the film was a bit lost on me, or probably got lost in time or translation, but then, I'm hardly an expert on Japanese old-school kaiju-flicks.

Camera Obscura --- 6/10