An American producer imports a giant monster movie from Japan and splices in new scenes. Godzilla, King of the Monsters? No, Gammera! The result is something kids will enjoy and adults will find very silly. Park your brain – you won’t be needing it for this movie about a 200ft tall flame spewing turtle. And just what is the mysterious Plan Z?
A surprise review! My ISP has upped the speeds for DSL (not as high as I’d hoped, but a big improvement) so I decided to check out Hulu for a streaming video test run. Low and behold, there was Gammera the Invincible listed on the site and I couldn’t resist torturing reviewing another giant monster movie.
In 1965, Daiei Studios released an attempt to make cash in on the giant monster craze started by 1954’s Gojira. It was a decidedly low budget film that surprisingly did well and spawned a series of sequels. While never as big as the Godzilla series, many a kid watched the films about Gammera, the children’s friend.
The version on Hulu is the first Americanized one, not the even more heavily edited Sandy Frank one most of us saw on TV back in the 1970’s. This one is only mildly incoherent by comparison. On to the review!
Review
Gammera the Invincible begins with an overly serious narration introducing the setup. Dr. Hidaka (Eiji Funakoshi) is in the Artic to conduct some serious research. On what, I do not know. But he is a serious scholar and don’t you forget it! There he and his lovely assistant Kyoke (Harumi Kiritachi) meet an Eskimo chief. Pleasantries are barely exchanged before a squadron of Soviet bombers fly by at low altitude.
BAM! A clumsily shoehorned scene filmed on a shoelace budget appears. General O’Neill (Dick O’Neill) is on the case and dispatches jet fighters from Alaska to intercept, but only after lots of unnecessary character scenes beforehand. Accompanying the scenes is the unrelenting din of a teletype. Duty in the Artic is hard enough, but that sound would drive someone insane fairly quickly.
Oddly, the model bombers are called “UFO’s” instead of bogey’s. Since they looked more like British V bombers it is strange to see them identified as Soviet. Why am I expecting accuracy? The fighters scramble and look like a weird mix of XF-92’s and spare parts from a model stash. Wait, they just changed into F-104’s for a moment and back again. Why am I expecting consistency?
Good thing this is aimed at kids.
Best line delivered so far is “Red. Alert.” by General O’Neill. Yes, it is said the way I punctuated it. You can’t beat acting of this caliber.
The U.S. Air Force fighters of dubious make their way to the bombers and try to get them to identify themselves. In Mother Russia we identify ourselves by how hard we hit each other, eat rearward firing missiles capitalist stooges! So Firefox didn’t have the first rearward defense missiles after all. Learned something new.
One good missile attack begets another and soon there is a bomber in flames. This is actually a pretty cool scene as the burning bomber goes into an out of control turn and hits the ice. Uh oh. That mushroom cloud isn’t a good sign.
Sure enough a nuke was on board and it went off. You would think the radioactive fallout would be bad enough, but the ice cracks from the explosion to unleash a man in a rubber suit! Umm, I mean a ferocious prehistoric amphibian!
Excuse me, my phone is ringing. Be right back.
Sorry about that. There was a rather irate turtle on the other end who informed me I was slandering turtles everywhere with the wrong classification. The creature in question is in fact a reptile. My apologies to turtles everywhere for the mistake.
Weird. The turtle sounded a lot like Garry Shandling. How did he get my phone number? And more importantly how did he know I was writing this? I better sweep my PC for keylogging spyware.
In the midst of all this madness, the Eskimo chief gives Dr. Hidaka a stone with strange carvings of turtles on it. There is a legend of a monster named Gammera that is connected to the strange cloud forming. I suspect a story to sell trinkets to tourists, but the good doctor accepts it at face value.
The intrepid explorers find their radio is jammed so they can’t call their ride home. Tragically, it doesn’t matter as their toy boat is sunk. It was a nice toy boat too. At least the crew survived to face ridicule.
Oh yes, for some reason people are having trouble believing in the existence of a 150 to 200 foot tall turtle. Of all the newspaper headlines shown this is my favorite. Not only is it in English on a French newspaper, it is amusingly serious. But it gets even better when the “experts” weigh in.
An hilarious inserted scene of two experts arguing on TV over the possible existence of the monster is the highlight of the movie. The actors are clearly having too much fun with their ridiculous material and the result is a grade A comedy skit. Excellent timing and a slow build up from needling into name calling had me laughing. If only the rest of the movie had this attitude.
At this point in the flick, the American produced material dominates. It isn’t exciting stuff and kids will get bored. I have to wonder if the original Japanese material was that bad it needed to be cut out to this extent. Or was the original just too short?
Eventually, things get back on track with mysterious UFO sightings and a turtle obsessed boy named Toshio (Yoshira Uchida) entering the picture. Present here is the beginning of the kids loving Gammera theme of the film series. But what a sullen and somewhat creepy kid he is!
Toshio loves turtles. Toshio loves his pet turtle. Toshio love to draw turtles in class. Toshio loves turtles so much he is about to be suspended from school. Toshio loves turtles but his family does not. Toshio loves his little turtle but must set him free.
Not to worry, Toshio. You are about to get a bigger turtle to love!
Much bigger.
I think this is the point where Gammera the Invincible caused my brain to cease functioning. Giant turtle trashing the lighthouse where Toshio lives – that’s okay with me. Giant turtle catching the little boy when he falls from it and not eating him? I draw the line at that. With that heroic rescue the turtle gains a stalker. Did I mention Toshio was obsessed with turtles? This can’t end well.
Later, at Tokyo Airport…
Nothing much happens. I just wanted to write “Tokyo Airport.”
You know how Godzilla likes to trash power plants and refineries? So does Gammera. But instead of a nuclear plant, we see him trash a geothermal plant. Apparently he isn’t a fan of green energy. Toy tanks roll in supported by stock footage of the JSDF with much destruction ensuing.
And a giant turtle huffing fire. Not puffing, huffing. Don’t believe me? Check out the photo below. Look at his eye. That reptile is feeling no pain.
Just when the movie couldn’t get weirder, it did.
I may have stated that too soon, because the battle moves on to a ridge where a “freezing bomb” that just happened to be invented by the military is used on Gammera. All it does is slow him down so we can watch a riveting sequence holes being drilled in rocks. You think I’m joking, don’t you?
True, the holes are filled with dynamite sticks, but still!
The plan? Blow up the ridge and flip Gammera on his back. That’s the brilliant strategy of Dr. Hidaka and the military. Unbelievably, it works. You see, a turtle on its back is helpless so they’ll wait him out.
A slight problem arises when the steroidal turtle retracts his head and limbs to reveal four rocket plumes from his shell. It spins and he flies off. Yes, the UFO from before is a GIANT FLYING TURTLE. Project Blue Book should have ditched the whole Venus on the horizon/swamp gas explanations for sightings and used GIANT FLYING TURTLES instead.
Ahem.
Anyway, this is what happens when you let scientists run battles.
Hmm, Mystery Science Theater 3000 did the Sandy Frank version of this. I don’t recall seeing it, but it has just been released as part of a special box set. Go watch that, it has to be better than my review.
Suffice it to say there are more battles, scientists, Toshio stalking the giant turtle, and one of the weirdest endings to a giant monster movie ever. Plan Z is used without us ever seeing plans A through Y. Imagine how bad they had to have been to use Plan Z!
At the end of the movie, the American cast celebrates being liberated from the film.
I subscribe to the theory that Toshio is the real monster of the movie in a subversive statement against having children by the film’s creators. Not buying it? Well, neither am I but it makes about as much sense as anything else about the movie.
Little kids will enjoy the movie a lot whenever the Japanese parts are on screen. Not so much during the talking head American produced sequences. Adults will only appreciate this if their inner child has regular visitation rights with them. Otherwise, I recommend the MST3K version.
Gamera the Invincible can be watched here at Hulu.
Technical
The quality of the video is abysmal and appears to be taken from a worn out television tape. This isn’t Hulu’s fault at all, since there is nothing there to work with. It also suffers from being severely panned and scanned from a 2.35:1 to a 3:2 ratio.
The American produced main theme is a crime against music that must be heard to be believed. Wes Farrel and Artie Butler are to blame for it. Don’t let it become an earworm!
Leftover Screen Captures
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