Gamera - Heisei Series!

The Gamera series had closed up shop fifteen years earlier, but was seen as ripe for revival in 1995. The first installment in what became a three-film series was titled Gamera: Guardian of the Universe and it did two things to help jumpstart the franchise. One it brought the advanced special effects available at the time to realize the might of a monster turtle and it brought a rich back story. Also surprising to me was the absolute seriousness of this enterprise. The goofball aspects of the Showa movies are largely abadoned here as we don't focus on kids but on young adults who find themselves woven into a fabric of story which begins when a mysterious floating atoll is found in the Pacific. This finding is soon followed by the grim discovery of three vicious Gyaos birds who prey on humans among other things. We learn of ancient prophesies and of ancient curses when the Gyaos become an every increasing threat to all of life on Earth and all that stands in the way is the might Gamera. This is a properly engaging monster romp with effects up to the task of selling the action. Great stuff.

If anything, the 1996 sequel Gamera 2: Attack of Legion is better. Keeping the cast intact from the first movie, this one proceeds along the same timeline and has Gamera battling a full-fledged sci-fi menace from outer space. The science fiction in this one is outstanding and would've made a dandy movie even without the giant turtle hero, but adding him in does no harm at all. The action is intense and the sense that the fate of the planet relies on the outcome of Gamera's struggle to fight back against a menace which feeds off electromagnetic radiation and destroys whole cities to reproduce is even at times frightening.

Finally we have Gamera 3: The Revenge of Iris from 1999. This one is a whopper of a movie, and follows up on one of the most compelling aspects of these Kaiju, even "good guy" ones like Gamera, what becomes of the people who survive the city-leveling battles. In this movie we meet Ayana a beautiful young woman who along with her younger brother were orphaned when Gamera destroyed their home and killed their parents in his 1995 battle with Gayos. Ayana hates Gamera and that hatred seethes within her. She finds an ancient guarded cave which hides a secret which allows her to find some measure of vengeance. That vengeance is the focus of this wonderful monster story that verges on true proper horror from time time. The whole notion of Gamera as a protector, especially of children is examined and we get a real sense of what it is like to suffer through a Kaiju event. More emotionally involving than the dandy Cloverfield, this one covered the territory first and with more respect to the genre.

These movies, all three directed by Shusuke Kaneko, form an utterly fascinating trilogy, three of the best monster movies I've ever seen. I've long heard that the Gamera movies were the best of the bunch, and after seeing this trilogy, I'd have to concur.

I give them the highest recommendation. This is a great collection.

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Gamera - Showa Series!

Some years ago I picked up a bargain-rack collection of old monster movies which included rough versions of English-dubbed Gamera movies, the first six or so of the old series. I'd always heard that the Gamera movies were a lot of fun, more light hearted than some of the other Kaiju flicks which I was more familiar with.

A few weeks ago, I found a collection of the first eleven Gamera movies, these in the original Japanese and the production values are great. So I sat down to enjoy Gamera as it should be seen, and I have to say they are a hoot.

Gamera from 1965 is in black and white, giving it a more old-fashioned feel than its date suggests, but that's to a good effect overall as the black and white evokes the best of the early Godzilla movies, especially when the fire-breathing Gamera, after being awakened by nuclear bombs in the Arctic, starts plowing through the streets of Tokyo. Several scenes seemed specifically designed to suggest scenes from Godzilla. the Gamera movie is a proper Kaiju, a menacing monster in a largely scientific setting with an ending which is decidedly clever if wildly improbable. His relationship with a little boy is evident but not much developed. They jet Gamera into outer space after trapping him in the nose-cone of a rocket.

Gamera doesn't stay in orbit long, as his rocket is hit by a meteor which sends him back to Earth, this time he's the good monster. The story in 1966's Gamera vs. Barugon is pretty intense showing the search by three men for a jewel hidden by one of the men's brother years ago during WWII. The jewel is actually an egg which hatches unleashing a terrible monster with frosty breath and a weird devastating rainbow ray. The monster action is okay, but it's the rather intense action on the human level that elevates this story. The fights between the men reminded me of the roughneck fisticuffs in the early Bond movies.

It's in 1967's Gamera vs. Gyaos that we first meet the giant turtle's arch enemy, a batlike bird-lizard who is able to emit a sonic ray from his twin throats which can slice through any substance, Gamera's skin included. The battle is a brutal one, which of course Gamera wins. The human story this time deals with the people displaced by the struggle where a road is going through some prime farm country. We get our first annoying kid in this one, and the bond between Gamera and children is properly developed.

1968's Gamera vs. Viras is my least favorite of these wonky movies. The boy heroes are downright prats who are infamous among their peers and parents for their pranks. They get themselves stranded on a spaceship and after much hullabaloo require Gamera to save their creepy little skins. There is practically no interesting human side story in this one. as we follow the two boys as they ramble around in boy scout uniforms yelling "Gamera" every couple of minutes. They end up saving the day, but mostly by happen chance. The enemy this time is a giant squid-like alien who is not all that compelling really.

1969's Gamera vs. Gurion follows a similar model. Two boys, somewhat less annoying than the previous pair end up on a spaceship but this time ride the thing to a whole other planet where they encounter a space monster who is the Swiss Army knife of Kaiju. Able to use his bladed head as a cutting tool and able to shoot out suriken blades from his temple Guiron is a fun monster, though hardly credible. He and Gamera battle to entertaining effect on the alien world while the two boys try to avoid getting eaten by the lovely aliens who covet their brains. That last creepy detail really adds a bit of oomph to this one.

The most touching aspect of this movie though is the dilemma of the little sister who is left behind when the boys are swooshed away by the spaceship. She tries to tell the adults, who mostly disbelieve her and her sadness at her loss and her helplessness is very touching in a movie which is largely a romp.

1970's Gamera vs. Jiger gives us some more annoying kids, but this time inside a plot which is properly dense enough to hold interest. For the 1970 World Fair, an idol is removed from "Wester  Island" but that removal unleashes a horrible monster who seeks to reproduce (inside Gamera of all places). Jiger is a monster with plenty of tricks who gives Gamera a real contest. The clever way Jiger is defeated is above average for a movie of this period and this one kept me entertained throughout.

Far less effective is 1971's Gamera vs. Zigra which seems mostly to be an allegory about the devastation man is wreaking on the environment. In a bizarre flip of circumstances, the seafood-reliant Japanese culture is faced with an enemy who eats land-creatures, especially humans. There's a lot of jumping around, but there's not nearly enough plot in this one which features a few clever battle scenes, but little else.

The final Showa Gamera movie doesn't arrive until 1980. Gamera: Super Monster is a real grab bag of gimmicks and re-used footage which doesn't add up to much of a movie, though it does have a few diverting moments. A spaceship named "Zanon" arrives (in the then popular Star Wars slow reveal style) and threatens to destroy the Earth which is defended by three babes in skin-tight super-costumes referred to only as "Space Women". So trying to cop scenes from Star Wars and Superman is the way this movie tries to stay relevant as it uses all of Gamera's previous enemies and footage there of as fodder to fill out the screen time.

It's a sad ending to a series which had some really fun moments. But despite its high spirits, Gamera movies were so uneven that it's amazing anyone thought them worthy of revival. But they did, and that's the focus of the next post.

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The Ninth Wonder Of The World!

Tales to Astonish is a venerable comic from Marvel which went on to feature Ant-Man who became Giant-Man and later gave a nest to the Hulk, and then to the Sub-Mariner. Later still the numbering of TtA was taken over by the Hulk and the series continued under that title for decades.

But it all began with giant monsters.

Tales to Astonish #1 has a cover announcing the coming of "The Ninth Wonder of the World", and shows giant gates opening as the massive bolt that holds them shut splinters. Natives and explorers shudder in front of what is coming through those gates and some run away.


It's a scene obviously intended to evoke the magnificent movie King Kong where Kong pursues Bruce Cabot and Fay Wray from the top of Skull Mountain and crashes through the gates which have held him at bay for years. It's also what brings about his ruin, but that's another story.


Years later Marvel reprinted the story in Weird Wonder Tales #4, but they altered the image of the "Ninth Wonder", making it more obviously aggressive and I guess more immediately menacing.

Why did they need to up the ante on terror. The first cover was apparently unusually subtle, as subtle I guess as a giant monster comic book cover can be. But what is all the running and terror about. What is the "Ninth Wonder" so skillfully hidden on both covers.

Yep. That's right, it's a turtle. A giant turtle, and based on this one page from the story not a terribly fearsome one. Just a turtle that is really really big.

Ah well. To my knowledge there has never been a sequel to this epic, this story that launched the venerable Tales to Astonish. But who really can be sad about that.


Oh I guess he might be.

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