Summary:
In the arctic circle a few
jet fighters get into a bit of a mess. One of them goes down with a nuclear
warhead and crashes into the ice. This releases the giant jet powered turtle
GAMERA! Capable of flying around like a flaming Frisbee and able to devour and
shoot fire, this huge creature makes a beeline straight to Japan, where he
promptly terrorizes the populous.
A young boy, Kenny (Yoshiro
Uchida) has a close encounter with Gamera, but the huge reptile saves his life
instead of devouring him. Thus a bond is formed, with Kenny telling everyone
that Gamera is a good turtle, all the while Gamera is trashing Tokyo,
destroying natural resources and making a general mess of things. In the end the
worlds scientists come up with the ultimate plan, one last hope that may defeat
Gamera and save the world. But will
Kenny help or hinder the plan?
Movie Review:
I know what you’re thinking.
Is this a Godzilla rip-off? Pretty
much. Toho studios unleashed Godzilla on the screens in 1954, and really kicked
off the giant monster craze in Japan and around the world. But rival Japanese
studios all wanted a piece of that sweet pie and so they came up with their own
versions. Gamera came from the Daiei
studio and was fairly popular spawning many, many sequels. While both series
were targeted toward kids, Gamera especially
became a kiddie favorite, with his tag line becoming “Gamera – a friend to all
children”. The line is uttered for the first time here, but the rest of the
movie doesn’t really match the later flicks.
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| Gamera attacks a toy boat, toy boyt, toy bot! |
This goes through all the
regular attempts. They get the military to come in and attempt to blow him up
with tanks and missiles. Soon it becomes apparent that all the explosions and
fire only feeds Gamera. So then they switch and try to use cold against him,
kind of like The Blob. But Gamera is
able to escape that trap by turning into his flying flaming discus form. They
finally use fire to lure Gamera to a rocket to Mars and send him flying into
space.
Truth be told, for the type
of movie it is, Gamera is pretty
solid. It’s got the amazingly goofy model work, the bad dubbing, the
nonsensical dialogue and the massive destruction. But because the plot points
are so familiar and the characters aren’t terribly interesting the whole thing
seems to move at a slower pace than it should. It’s also in black and white,
while the later films were all in a rich color. As much as I enjoy black and
white films, the Gamera series
really benefited from color. Also keep in mind that as the movies continued,
they became more outlandish and over the top, and thus more entertaining. You’re
also missing the classic theme song that becomes an earworm to anyone that
hears it. It’s interesting to see where the series started, but in the scope of
things it’s not the best of the bunch – kind of like Dr. No.
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| Kenny: one of the most annoyingly dubbed characters in a Gamera film. |
The real oddity of Gamera is the way Kenny is used. He’s
the only character who seems to actually have a more than one dimension. When
we meet him he is obsessed with his pet turtle Tibby. He keeps bringing Tibby
to school and will only draw pictures of the little beast. The other kids mock
him and he’s a bit of a loner. Well his parents force him to get rid of Tibby,
and that is when Gamera shows up.
Kenny nearly falls to his
doom when Gamera destroys the lighthouse that Kenny is hiding in. But Gamera
catches and saves him. Why? Well Kenny is convinced that Gamera is a friend to
all children, and therefore “a good turtle”. He spends the rest of the movie
bursting into rooms and telling every adult he can find (including military personnel
and scientists). They all think he’s a bit touched, and frankly the English
voice actor doesn’t help matters. In the end Kenny gets himself and other
people in constant peril as he runs around trying to talk to Gamera and tell
others that Gamera is good (while the huge beast is destroying everything and presumably
killing people).
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| "Check it out, it's Japanese Colonel Sanders!" |
The English presentation
isn’t great. The dub is poor with many of the actors sounding bored, or having
trouble matching the lip flaps. The film was originally in a wide screen
presentation, and instead of panning around, they just hacked the frame up.
This leaves the viewer with scenes of people talking to nothing and other
scenes that seem to stretch out too long, because something is happening off on
the side that we can’t see. Aside from these issues, Gamera isn’t a bad film at all. I think later films like Gamera vs. Zigra and Gamera vs. Guiron are more interesting. But the real question is, did it
give enough for Joel and bots to use?
Episode Review:
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| "I don't think braces are going to help his dental issues." |
Well the team at Best Brains
enjoyed riffing the movie back in their initial cable access season (back in
1988), that they sought it out for another go in 1991. This means they got to
rework some of the riffs, adjust the pacing a bit and give us a really solid
riffing.
Dr. Forrester introduces the
film as “A love story about a giant turtle and downtown Tokyo”. And he’s
actually correct, the riffing paints this as a love story between Kenny and Gamera,
and it works to wonderful effect. The best jokes come as Joel and bots try to
figure out what the hell is going on with Kenny. During a close up of Kenny as
he stares blankly at a child who is mocking him, the boys start chanting in a
style very similar to Jerry Goldsmith’s score for The Omen. Later when Gamera randomly destroys the control tower at
an airport Joel observes, “Well there goes Kenny’s theory about Gamera being
good hearted.”
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| No, Neo-Tokyo is in "Akira" not "Gamera". |
For the most part the
riffing is steady and solid, but the pacing of Gamera is on the slower side. There’s also the fact that Kenny is a
pretty annoying character and the movie spends so much time with him. Sure the
boys do a lot with it, but I always end up wishing the movie was over so I
wouldn’t have to listen to the little dork saying how “Gamera’s a good turtle”.
The host segments in this
one are a good time. Things start off with Joel and the bots doing some classic
theater warm up exercises. Having been a theater geek in high school and
college I got a kick out of that. For the invention exchange Joel creates a
take home version of the all you can eat salad bar. The mads create a vacuum
cleaner for your birdcage. It goes badly for Tweetie. At the first break Tom
Servo sings a touching tribute to Tibby the turtle. This is one of my favorite
songs from the series, and Crow even adds a hilarious verse. At the next break
Tom and Crow have had it with Kenny and try to work some voodoo on him. They
then ask the audience to write into the show and answer the important question,
“Kenny. What gives?” The next break has Gamera (Mike Nelson dressed in green)
visits and talks a bit about his past and what was with Kenny. The video below is Servo's ode to Tibby the turtle.
This is a solid episode, but
compared to the some of the later Gamera
exploits this one just doesn’t seem outlandish enough and a bit too slow. I
give it 3 flying turtles out of 5.
This episode is available on
MST3K vs Gamera box set (Vol XXI).
