Gamera The Giant Monster (1965) 
Gamera vs. Barugon (1966) 
Gamera vs. Gyaos (1967) 
Gamera vs. Viras (1968)
Gamera vs. Guiron (1969)
Gamera vs. Jiger (1970)
Gamera vs. Zigra (1971)
Gamera Super Monster (1980)
Gamera was Daiei studio’s attempt to compete with Toho’s Godzilla and he was reasonably successful in a financial sense, with eight “Showa” films (1965-1980) before mismanagement bankrupted the studio. He was rebooted in three far superior “Heisei” films (reviewed here) and was rebooted yet again in 2006 for a single film. Gemera is a prehistoric giant turtle, freed from the ice due to an atomic explosion. He eats (and sometimes breaths) fire and can fly, appearing as a saucer.
Gamera started with a disadvantage: His only purpose was to sell tickets. There was no artistic focus to go with the commercial one. There was no theme the filmmakers wanted to get across. That just leaves empty films filled with big monster fights, and to pull that off, you need to be very good at constructing that action. But no one was. The Gamera films were cheaper than the Godzilla ones, with no FX experts to overcome that deficit. Nor was there a genius like composer Akira Ifukube involved to give the series an extra kick; even the worst Godzilla movie had the advantage of his memorable musical themes.
The Gamera films were always kid-oriented, but after the first few movies, they dove hard into this aspect. The turtle changed quickly from a fearsome monster to a friend of children. Kids (known as “Kennys,” though not always with the overly tight pants that define them in other Japanese films) became the main human characters and the films developed a pattern. Some monster would appear to threaten the Earth and Gamera, hero and friend to children, would pop up to fight it, but would be sidelined early. Then two prepubescent boys, often with a sister who would be left behind to deal with the adults, would go on a series of adventures, often including an exotic vehicle (mini-subs and spacecraft were used repeatedly). These children would be allowed into the highest corridors of power and would have all the right answers while the adults flailed. Finally Gamera would return to defeat some poorly constructed monster. To aid sales in the US, one child was Caucasian—apparently American.
Even for children, the Gamera films have little to offer. I don’t know how they succeeded in Japan, but kids around me back in the ‘60s found them embarrassing. They spoke down to children. And what child wants to watch a kid on screen instead of a monster? If there’s one thing I remember from childhood it is that monsters were cool; kids yelling “Gamera” over and over were not. This was filmmaking for children by people who didn’t think much of children.
It would take a reboot of the series in the ‘90s for Gamera to finally come into his own and be real competition for the giant lizard.
Gamera The Giant Monster (1965)
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.
Gamera vs. Barugon/War of the Monsters (1966)
Gamera’s rocket is struck by a meteor, returning him to earth where he vanishes from the movie for nearly an hour. Meanwhile, three men (who I think might be low level gangsters—it isn’t clear) head to New Guinea to recover an opal that our more-or-less hero’s brother hid during WWII. The opal is not a stone, but an egg, which hatches Barugon who grows into a giant monster and attacks Japan.
In a series that drifted more and more childish with each new film, the second Gamera movie fouled up that curve by being substantially less goofy than its predecessor, in large part because it is the only Gamera Showa film without a child as a major character. Rumors claim that the island dancing girls were initially planned to be topless, and several scenes, while innocent (depending on what you think about blood licking), are suggestive of oral sex. The end product is juvenile, just much less juvenile than the rest of the franchise. You can only be so mature with a monster that shoots rainbows and is a guy crawling around on all fours.
The film is odd in another way—it is hardly a Gamera movie and I suspect the original script didn’t contain him. Gamera has only a few minutes of screen time, in re-used footage at the beginning, a brief battle two-thirds in, and then a final brawl, and he has nothing to do with the rest of the story. If you made one of the military plans more successful, you could have written him out.
The two leads, Keisuke the fortune-hunter and Kara (always subtitled as Karen) the island girl, are handled unusually well. They don’t do much, but Keisuke isn’t embarrassing—which is very rare for a human in a Gamera movie) and Kara is captivating. She’s portrayed by Kyoko Enami, one of the great beauties of Japanese cinema.
The giant monster fights are silly, but no more silly than in other daikaiju flicks of the time, and a good deal less than Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster and Son of Godzilla which came out within a year.
While you can now find an English subtitled version of Gamera vs Barugon, it was originally released in the US in a cut and dubbed form as War of the Monsters. Twelve minutes were cut, all of which involved the leads discussing plans with the military. Their loss makes the film more nonsensical (where did that giant diamond come from and why are they suddenly in a helicopter?) but doesn’t do substantial damage. And the dubbing is surprisingly good.
My rating is a bit high, but any daikaiju fan should see one of the early Gamera films, and the rating indicates that this is the one.
Gamera vs. Gyaos (1967)
A volcanic eruption serves the dual purpose of calling Gamera and waking Gyaos, an ancient flying lizard-bat that shoots sonic beams. Nearby, a greedy firm is trying to build an expressway through a village of equally greedy people. The prepubescent grandson of the village elder is obsessed by Gamera and makes friends with him. It is up to the child, the expressway supervisor, and some scientists to stop Gyaos.
Following the lead of Godzilla films of the time, Gamera vs Gyaos aims for a younger audience. Giant monster movies tend to be aimed toward the young, but we are talking single digits here. Four to six-year-olds are the audience. Show this to a ten-year-old and he’ll be embarrassed. The monsters are now filmed to expose every weakness in the special effects and they are weak. The Gyaos costume is bargain-basement and Gamera doesn’t look any better. The attempts to place a human in the same frame as a monster—which comes up often as both monsters lift the child—come off as failed Styrofoam homecoming floats. But then this is a film where a kid rides on the giant turtle’s back and road inspectors and children can wonder into government briefings, so no one was terribly worried about not being embarrassing.
Gamera is a straight-up hero now—this change is never explained. He never harms people or property, and shows up just to stop Gyaos. He’s become a big puppy, listening to the call of his master, the Kenny. And that kid never shuts up. There are ten solid minutes of the child yelling “Gamera!”
With so much time spent with the Kenny, and in meetings, there’s no time for the characters (and no money for the cheap-ass fights). After the kid, the lead is probably supposed to be the road superintendent, but he gets to do nothing. They don’t even bother with the semi-romance with the Kenny’s sister (so why is she in the film?), but then romance doesn’t fit in a film for a sex-year-old.
It all ends in a peppy Gamera song, in case you needed a statement that this film is just a string of bad discussions.
Gamera vs. Viras (1968)
Gamera is just wandering around in outer space, which is something he does now, when he runs into hostile aliens in a collection of beach balls. He destroys the balls after they have radioed home for reinforcements. On Earth, two Kennys, one Japanese and one American, are at some kind of international boy scout camp. They play some pranks, cause some problems, and manage to go on a submarine journey with Gamera. The new alien ship arrives and capture the two kids to use as hostages because Gamera would never do anything to harm children. It is up to the two young boys to save the day and have an exciting adventure.
While Gamera vs. Gyaos was a generic dikaiju movie adjusted to be for young children, Gamera vs. Viras is a children’s movie with monsters. There are hardly any adults and they exist to be the butt of the children’s pranks. This is all bright shiny colors as we follow our two child-leads as they explore a space ship, control a giant monster, and save the world. This is where the line “Gamera is a friend to all children” came from. We even have the entire world declare that we must surrender because we can’t allow the two boys to be hurt, which lets them bravely state that they would sacrifice themselves. Of course this is Japanese children’s programming, so they say “shit” and five guys are decapitated.
Cheap is the word of the day. There’s extensive use of past footage. At the twenty-one minute point, the film pauses for a ten minute recap of the previous films. Oddly, the recap is nearly twice as long in the American version, titled Destroy All Planets—bringing this overly short film up to 90 minutes. Gamera’s attack on a dam and on a city are re-used scenes from earlier films. Even the new footage is used repeatedly, with Gamera’s attack on the second ship filled out with a clip from his attack on the first. And much of the film is the kids’ exploration of the spaceship, which is one set re-colored as they supposedly enter the next look-alike room.
Is this worse than the previous entry? That depends. For anyone over ten who isn’t watching to make fun of it, then yes. But for your young child, or for your drunken party when you want to throw cheese puffs at the screen, Gamera vs. Viras will work better.
Gamera vs. Guiron (1969)
Two school boys discover a spaceship which takes off when they get in, leaving a sister behind to fail to convince the adults what’s happened. The ship is almost hit by a meteor, but Gamera, who was perusing space for lost children, saves the day. But the mighty turtle can’t keep up with the spaceship, which lands on Terra, a planet on the other side of the Sun from Earth. Terra is under constant attacks from space gyaoses, which the only two survivors of this alien world fend off with Guiron, a quadrupedal shark with a knife for a head. They plan to eat the children and travel to Earth, but finally Gamera arrives.
Gamera vs. Guiron is much like the previous film, Gamera vs. Viras. Again we have two kids (one Japanese, one American) in space. It’s much more a kids adventure film than a daikaiju flick. There’s no city crunching here. The two kids wonder around the new and exciting planet and comment to each other about the things they see and what they will do next. This is a movie where kids with a dart gun are as effective as super-technological aliens. Adults, not counting aliens, are hardly in the film and are useless (and manage to be more annoying than the children).
And again, it is really cheap. There’s plenty of reused footage to save money (they don’t even bother tinting the scene from the B&W Gamera The Giant Monster). The planet is made up of a few small sets with a few simple miniatures, and obvious map paintings. In one scene rocks come crashing down and you can see the Styrofoam bounce off the children. Guiron is a ghastly looking monster that didn’t push the budget.
On the bright-side, the two alien chicks are quite cute and wear spangly outfits with capes. That’s as sexy as a Gamera movie gets.
Be ready for multiple renditions of the Gamera song. The film ends with the moral: We shouldn’t dream of other planets, but make this one free of “wars and traffic accidents.”
Gamera vs. Jiger (1970)
After an extensive lesson on the World’s fair, we switch to Wester Island (yes, I said “Wester”) where Gamera attempts to interfere with the movement of a giant statue to the fair. Soon after, the monster Jiger rises from the local volcano and quickly incapacitates our superhero turtle. It will take two children, one Japanese, one American, to save the day by taking a mini-sub into Gamera’s body.
Japan was hosting the 1970 Worlds Fair and the nation was displaying a great deal of pride—or maybe they just wanted to sell tickets. World’s fairs used to be a big deal, a place to showcase technological advancements. So they made a Gamera movie about the fair, which is quite odd as the film repeatedly denigrates science in favor of superstition: If everyone just believed in curses likes they should, things would be fine. Though people are dying and the city is being destroyed, the first concern of the Government is non-ironically stopping any disruption of the fair. The World’s fair was really important.
Jiger is a unconvincing monster, which was true of all the quadruped daikaiju. He shoots a destructo ray from his back and darts from his horns. Daiei never had much skill in coming up with monsters, with Gyoas being the least ridiculous, and even he was built poorly. Jiger is average for a rotten bunch.
The monster fights, like in Godzilla before it, had become sillier. Gamera grabs a pipe to block the darts. They toss rocks back and forth, and Gamera uses phone poles to plug his ears.
I’ve no doubt that the trip inside Gamera was pitched to be like Fantastic Voyage, but it is just a few kids running around in a blanket-covered set. And don’t think about the size of things as Gamera would have to be a hundred times bigger for this to even pretend to be to scale.
Gamera vs Zigra (1971)
Two children—this time a boy and a girl, who are younger than in previous films—are kidnapped along with their astoundingly stupid fathers by aliens who plan to takeover the world with their earthquake machine and then live in the oceans. The kids outsmart the alien woman and return to Earth. Will Gamera defeat the aliens? Will the kids be crucial in reviving Gamera? Will this be the dumbest movie in the franchise? All will be revealed, unfortunately.
While the previous four films had been juvenile and primitive, this one is those things topped with being frustrating. It goes on and on with the spacegirl chasing our too-young-for-film children. They go down corridors, in and out of doors, down more corridors, up some stairs, across the plaza, etc. But then no one was even pretending to try in this production. This was the last of the regular Showa films. The company was in shambles and no one had any ideas. The alien spaceship is a gumball machine and the evil monster is a stiff-looking model shark. Much of the third act is a dozen people huddled together around a screen in a very small room. What very little monster action we get is not worth seeing. At least Gamera trying to sneak up on the sleeping shark should have been funny, but it isn’t. Partly that’s because Gamera vs Zigra wants to be taken seriously and pretend that the children are in real danger. Plus it dumps a theme on top: Pollution is bad. Pollution was becoming a popular subject for Japanese monster movies and this was Gamera’s ham-fisted shot at the theme. It works as well as everything else in the film.
Outside of the cute spacegirl who puts on a bikini, and Gamera playing his theme song with a rock on the shark’s back like a xylophone, Gamera vs Zigra doesn’t even work at a drunken party. Choose a different one and let this be forgotten.
Gamera: Super Monster (1980)
The alien Zenon have come to invade Earth in a star destroyer they stole from Star Wars. Luckily the Earth is defended by three female super heroes. Unluckily, they have no weapons or useful strengths and if they transform into their outfits, they will be shot from space. The Zenon’s plan is to set loose a bunch of monsters that happen to be the one in previous Gamera movies. Of course Gamera shows up to defeat the monsters just as he did before. Also hanging around to use up time is a kid who plays the Gamera march on the organ and seems to have a pointless connection to Gamera and an evil Zenon lady who isn’t quite up to the task of dealing with a child.
Daiei was dead, its assets bought by another company, which decided it wanted a Gamera movie, though they didn’t want to pay much. They weren’t even a film company, but figured they could make something back on their investment. The old contracts were still in force, so the filmmakers had no choice. And it turns out a giant monster movie is pretty cheap if you don’t film giant monsters. So they edited together clips from the previous films and shot a minimum amount of new footage, mainly dealing with humans in everyday environments, and they had their film.
The actions of the humans (and space women) have nothing to do with the monsters’s actions. People in the streets don’t act like the country is under attack (I’m guessing many weren’t aware they were in a film). There’s no attempt to make the pieces fit together. The evil lady wants to kill the superhero women because they are somehow on Gamera’s team, except they aren’t in any way. They just watch him on their home video screen. The voice from the space ship keeps threatening the evil girl when Gamera wins due to her failure, except she’s not in charge of the battles with Gamera—she came down to get the three superheroes. Gamera: Super Monster is just some nonsensical new clips stuck between old footage.
Is this worse than the abysmal Gemera vs Zigra? As a movie, yes, much worse, as it barely qualifies as a film. However, if all you want is a way to catch up on the bad Gamera movies, perhaps for your geek trivia contest, without having to watch those films, then this serves a purpose.
And that’s Gamera’s early years: eight films, six of them to be avoided unless you are four years old or very drunk. Fifteen years later he would be revived in a series of films worth your time.