Zoology professor Oshima, his assistant, and a photographer are carrying out research connected to legendary giant turtles in the arctic when aerial combat causes a plane to crash, setting off its nuclear payload and waking Gamera. The giant turtle kills everyone on a ship and then heads off to find energy to consume. In Japan, a disturbed child with a turtle fixation is out by the seashore dwelling on his turtle when Gamera shows up. The dimwitted kid decides Gamera is actually his pet enlarged and decides to get in the way whenever possible. Oshima must come up with a plan to stop Gamera.
While created to compete with Godzilla, the first Gamera film is more like Godzilla’s predecessor, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. Again, the monster isn’t mutated due to radiation, but has been asleep for eons in ice. Human folly is only involved in waking him, with explosives. Our heroic human trio work closely with the military and everyone just trusts and believes everyone else until they come up with a scientific/military solution. Any theme dealing with the dangers of nuclear weapons are kept vague and in the background. This is a monster/adventure yarn, and nothing more.
The only real difference in structure is the addition of the child, who has no affect on anything. He’s obnoxious and wastes a lot of time. The only thing worse than the child is how he is treated. No one punishes him or confines him as he places himself and others in danger. They let him hang about in the middle of military operations and just hug him. I thought the Japanese were supposed to be strict.
Gamera The Giant Monster isn’t a bad film when compared to other daikaiju flicks, nor terribly good. Its major problem is there is no reason to see it beyond needing to see one Gamera movie, and there’s a better choice. The film is too much like twenty other giant monster films, all of them better. The FX are weak, but not far below the average for the time (or perhaps a decade earlier as Gamera the Giant Monster is more like something released in 1955, including being in B&W). The acting, generally, is slightly better than in similar films. The failure in that area is in the non-Japanese language bits (which was also true of Toho’s films). Apparently there were no passable American actors in Japan, and the director had no idea what the White guys were saying.
Like Gojira’s first film, Gamera The Giant Monster wasn’t just dubbed for the US market. New scenes were shot on the cheep to put more Americans in the film, and as with Godzilla King of the Monsters, the added characters do little and have almost no interaction with the Japanese characters. The result was titled Gamera The Invincible. On the positive side, there is a slight reduction in scenes with the annoying child, and the replacement American military base scenes at the beginning have substantially less embarrassing acting. The major additions are a pointless TV interview segment where Americans debate if Gamera exists, and Broderick Crawford as a general sitting around with other White guys and talking. Some of these info dumps replace ones in the original while others do nothing. Crawford was always a limited actor and he only showed up for the paycheck. He doesn’t appear to know his lines. The American version also adds a Gamera theme song. The Japanese version is better, but neither are great and it doesn’t make a lot of difference which you see if you put in the effort to see either.