In this ongoing SHOCK column, journo Trevor Parker sifts through discount stores for the cheapest and coolest DVDs and Blus he can find and lives to tell the tale.
Ask the average moviegoer about giant monsters stomping down city streets, and you can count the seconds until the name Godzilla is mentioned. You might get to King Kong, or maybe even the Stay-Puft Marshmallow man, but Godzilla has that stature, that immortality, the international recognition that makes him more brand than characterlike a towering, scaly James Bond.
Much lower down in the big beastie batting order sits Gamera: Hes a giant space turtle prone to fisticuffs with equally overgrown adversaries, and who just loves the little children of the world. For the unfamiliar, Gamera couldnt quite be considered Godzillas direct rival, like acting as the Pepsi cola alternative to Godzillas Coke. Hes maybe more of an R.C. Colasimilar in flavour, but cheaper and less reputable despite boasting a small die-hard cult of boosters that will swear to you that its the better option. While Godzilla originated out of a wounded nations atomic angst, Gamera simply copped Zillas kaiju formula and reconfigured it in a more lighthearted and kid-oriented manner. Decently popular at home in Japan, Gameras early films were also exported to the U.S. as cheap Saturday-morning filler, earning a stateside fanbase along with mockery from Elvira and MST3K along the way.
If the above has anyone curious to experience the rampaging reptile and friend to all children for themselves, Discount bin champions Mill Creek have his comeback movie GAMERA: GUARDIAN OF THE UNIVERSE (1995) and its sequel GAMERA: ATTACK OF THE LEGION (1996), both directed by Shusuke Kaneko, offered on a single blu-ray disc at a dirt-cheap price.
GUARDIAN opens with doe-eyed ornithologist Dr. Nagamine (Shinobu Nakayama) brought to disaster-stricken Himegami Island, where a new species of aggressive giant pterodactyl has been running (or rather, flying) amok. The bad birds turn out to be the prehistoric Gyaos: theyre the ancient enemy of Atlantis, the sunken continent whose inhabitants engineered Gamera as a defense mechanism against the aerial aggressors. Concurrently, a massive shelled shape moves through the ocean waters off the coast of Japan. Its Gamera, of course, and he soon goes head-to-head with the shrieking Gyaos birds, along with plowing over detailed cityscape miniatures with determined efficiency. A teenage girl named Asagi (Ayako Fujitani) is given a stone that allows her to communicate with Gamera and guide him in his battle against the Gyaos, but the Japanese military quickly misinterpret Gameras motives and attack him in a blaze of missiles and explosions. This leads to some hilarious scenes of Gamera escaping the militarys fusillade skyward, via retracting his legs up into himself and then some sort of rocket propulsion spewing from the holes and lifting Gammie to safety.
Inferior sequel LEGION has a swarm of alien insects dropping onto snowbound northern Japan, infesting a subway tunnel and constructing a hive out of silicone. This time, its a curious science centre employee (Miki Mizuno) who investigates. Much wheel-spinning ensues as the authorities debate a plan of action, up until Gamera appears to rid the earth of the unwanted visitors in a typically fiery showdown.
These Gamera reboot movies were produced at a time just prior to Roland Emmerichs 1998 GODZILLA travesty stomping flat the hearts of kaiju aficionados like so many cardboard Shinjuku skyscrapers. Gameras reboot is chap stick to anyone still chafed by Emmerichs CGI goofiness, with a fairly serious tone, some inventive backstory (though tied to a lame and insincere environmental lament trying to and add a little weight to what is essentially a live-action cartoon), and all the gloriously simple miniature and rubber-suit effects that kaiju fans should expect. Be advised, howeverthe creature puppets and suits are stupendously basic constructs. No complex servo facial mechanisms here; Gamera has about the same degree of facial articulation as Kermit the frog. Flapping mouth aside, Gammie and the Gyaos also sport eyes apparently made from halves of ping pong balls, giving them a comical, googly look.
The human cast is a secondary concern, but deliver their expository dialogue well enough during breathers in the action (5.1 tracks in dubbed English and original Japanese audio are provided.) Recurring character Asagis eyebrows are a distracting and disconcerting sight, pointed down in a V-shape that makes her look permanently displeased during her close-ups.
The films themselves are sharply edited and entertaining enough for non-kaiju fans, though LEGION has a notable deficit of Gamera action (the big lug doesnt even make an appearance until a half-hour in). Actual kaiju fans will need little prompting to buy this disc and will doubtless revel in both of these movies. Really, there are two categories of viewers in the case of movies like the GAMERAs: The first kind will watch and see a stuntman in a rubber turtle suit kicking over a scale model of a city, filmed with slight overcranking of the camera to present the illusion of bodies of tremendous size clashing and thrashing. The second viewer perhaps has some sort of extra protein sliding over the bumps and divots of their brains that allows them to see monsterous titans tied up in balletic mega-combat while citizens flee in terror beneath them. Your columnist is sadly a cynical member of the former group, but its difficult to not appreciate the innocent and colorful entertainment factor in movies like GAMERA. This Mill Creek disc makes for a fine (and reasonably priced) introduction.
