NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!

BroadcastChic Excellent, a Must See

Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Jerrie It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

JLRVancouver Archeologists searching for artifacts to display at the 1970 Osaka World's Fair release a giant, tusked lizard-pig monster that follows them to Japan with devastating results. Only Gamera (as usual with the help of two young boys) can stop the creature and save the Fair. The film is a low-rent opus: the Gamera costume does little to hide the fact that it's just a skinny guy in a turtle suit, Monster X ('Jiger/Jaiga' in the Japanese original) is an interesting looking kaiju but is not very convincing when moving - it rarely 'walks' and frequently relies on 'jets' to swim or fly around (allowing use of an empty suit or non-articulated model), and most of the kaiju dust-ups are on an island or amongst simple and poorly detailed buildings. The film targets kids, so the two boys (annoyingly) have all of the answers and take the lead in rescuing Gamera from Jiger's parasitic offspring while simultaneously discovering the parent monster's fatal weakness. The film is famous for the scene in which parasitism is explained using graphic footage of writhing worms being removed from an elephant's swollen trunk (grim if real, well done if fake), an image sufficiently nasty to be commented on decades ago in the biker magazine "Easy Rider". The acting and script are laughable and, other than the "Fantastic Voyage" (1966) inspired rescue of the brooding turtle, the humans are primarily side-lined cheerleaders ("Gamera has such strength" enthuses the lisping little sister). The film is a pretty typical Showa-era Gamera outing, amusing in a silly way, but likely only of appeal to nostalgic boomers, campophiles, or kaiju-fans. I watched a low quality English-dubbed DVD version, which did nothing to improve the experience.

AaronCapenBanner Sixth Gamera film sees the big guy coming to Japan's defense again after an ancient statue is moved to make way for the "Expo '70" celebrations, which unleashes another gigantic monster that attacks Japan. It can fire quills that disable and kill, and also uses its tail to infect Gamera with its parasitic offspring, forces its human friends(including children as usual) to launch a mini-sub into its body in a last-ditch attempt to revive him, and defeat this monster Jiger. A bit better than the past two entries, this is still mostly poor, with a "Fantastic Voyage" inspired subplot inserted into the otherwise uninspired story.

masercot This is a children's movie. Is it a great children's movie? No.But, it is an enjoyable children's movie. Sure Gamera looks like he was constructed at the last second out of an old shopping bag; and, Monster X looks like something that you pulled out of a Salvation Army drop-box. But, this movie has children as the main characters, doing the bulk of the heroics and making the bulk of the sound decisions...There are a tremendous number of plot-holes in this movie; but, if you've got children, and a little patience, you can enjoy ninety minutes of pig-headed adults, brave children and flying turtles...Also, there is a certain resemblance to the science fiction novel Blameless in Abaddon...anyone else notice?...

SentinelPrime This was the first feature I had seen in the kaiju genre. I was familiar with the television show Ultraman, but I had not known that movies about monsters had also been made.This one is fun! One aspect of the genre that Daiei was better at than Toho is in the depiction of quadrapeds. Jiger looks like a four legged creature, not a person crawling on his knees, as several of the Toho characters were known to do.Some of the dialogue is hideously bad. I recently saw this one again after twenty years, and had a good time adding a few comments of my own. At one point the two boys are inside Gamera's lung, walking around, when one says, "What are we looking for?" The other replies "Anything unusual."I piped up, "We are in the lung of a 200-foot turtle, but we are still looking for anything unusual."Still, this one has several interesting scenes. Unusual footage of a surgery on an elephant, x-rays of Gamera, a neat minisub, and cool communicators. It is a fun ride!