a.k.a. Gamera tai Daiakuju Giron / Attack of the Monsters
company: Daiei Co. Ltd
year: 1969
runtime: 82′
country: Japan
director: Noriaki Yuasa
cast: Nobuhiro Kajima, Christopher Murphy,
Miyuki Akiyama, Yuko Hamada
order this film from Amazon.com
With the holiday season upon us, the economy in the tank, and our already lame president ducking it out in the capital, I felt it was time to do my part to bring back a little of that old holiday spirit. So here I am, sharing my own special kind of peace and good will through a seasonal celebration of rubber suited monsterdom – let the first annual Wtf-Film Kaiju Christmas Spectacular begin!
Presented for your approval is the lovable and oft-lamented GAMERA VS. GUIRON, the fifth entry in the original Gamera series and the most universally reviled this side of 1980′s SUPER MONSTER. There are a number of issues responsible for the amount of ill-will held against GAMERA VS. GUIRON – it’s unashamedly childish nature or ridiculously unbelievable effects work, for instance – but the biggest burden almost certainly lies with one man:
Sandy Frank.
The first processing of the film for the US market was by American International Pictures, who panned-and-scanned it, clipped a few minutes of footage [mostly those involving graphic violence], dubbed it into English and retitled it ATTACK OF THE MONSTERS before unleashing it on television – this is the way the majority of first-generation US Gamera fans caught GURION and, indeed, all of the early Gamera films. While certainly not the preferred way in which to see the film, the AIP version would prove to be miles ahead of what was to come.
Enter the 80′s and Name That Tune producer Sandy Frank. For reasons still unknown to this reviewer, Frank commissioned a new dubbing of the film into English when he purchased the distribution rights for it [picking up four of the other seven as well] as opposed to simply using a Daiei-provided International English track [which is what he did with both GAMERA VS. BARUGON and GAMERA VS. GAOS]. To say that the Frank produced dub track is sub-par is to severely undercut the shear ludicrousness of it. In what part of the English speaking world could lines like ‘So the people on solar are the same system planet?’ possibly make sense?
Add to the horrendous dialogue the remarkably inappropriate folksy accents of several of the voice actors and a pan-and-scan operator apparently distracted during the entirety of the process and you are left with the travesty that is Sandy Frank’s GAMERA VS. GUIRON, which had the rare distinction of having been ridiculed not once but twice on the now-famous Mystery Science Theater 3000. It was this version of the film that I first caught up with some years ago via an atrociously manufactured VHS under the Just-4-Kids label – I was unimpressed, to say the least [my opinion was not helped by the fact that the tape would only readily play on a couple of the VCRs I had access to].
It was only recently that I managed to see the original Gamera films in their original versions – in cinemascope, subtitled, and everything – and it’s safe to say that it was my opinion of GAMERA VS. GUIRON that changed the most.
The story is par for the course as far as the Gamera series is concerned – Akio and Tom, two boys hopped up on reports that scientists have detected radio waves from within our solar system, discover a flying saucer in the countryside near their home town. Upon entering it they are whisked away to Tera, a planet identical to Earth but orbiting on the other side of the sun, where they discover a defunct futuristic civilization. More pertinent to our purposes is that the planet has a watchdog [the interstellar equivalent of Gamera] by the name of Guiron, the oddly constructed beast pictured at the top of this page. Akio and Tom watch in amazement as Guiron kills and dismembers a roving silver Space Gyaos, but are soon spotted by the monster and take shelter in one of the alien buildings.
Inside they meet up with the only two survivors of the Teran civilization, sisters Flobella and Barbella, who inform them that their planet is dying – glaciers are encroaching upon their city and will soon make it totally uninhabitable. The two spacewomen make plans to travel to Earth, promising to take the two boys along of course, and offer up milk and donuts to keep Akio and Tom occupied while they get the flying saucer ready for the trip. But it’s all a sham – the spacewomen have laced the snacks with sleeping powder so that they can eat the boy’s brains and absorb all of their knowledge, in hopes of using it for a conquest of Earth, of course. Back on Earth, Akio’s little sister is having no luck convincing adults that the two children who are missing took off in a flying saucer – only the friendly police constable Kondo believes her.
Flobella and Barbella’s plan is going well until an unforeseen complication arises – Gamera, knowing the boys were in trouble, has flown to Tera to put an end to its civilization once and for all. But Guiron proves a formidable opponent and knocks Gamera down for the count. Luckily for the boys, they awaken while the fight is in progress, allowing them to escape – with their help, Gamera defeats Guiron in a suitable way [graphic dismemberment, anyone?] and takes care of the two spacewomen before they can escape in the flying saucer. The boys board the ship and Gamera returns them safely to Earth – the end!
More so than the other kiddie-oriented films of the series, GUIRON has lessons backing up its absurd story for both adults and children. Adults are of course taught that they should listen to what children have to say, no matter how absurd, while children are taught not to trust strangers [or step onto inviting alien spacecraft], lest their brains be eaten. The local policeman Kondo, though laughable in many ways, proves to be a respectable and trustworthy figure of authority by the film’s end, having listened to and even defended Akio’s sister’s claims when other adults, her mother included, refused to do so.
What will really matter to most children watching this film are the monsters, who are well represented [if utterly unbelievable]. The final battle between Gamera and Guiron takes up the majority of the final third of the film – with such ridiculous highlights as a high-bar act on Gamera’s part – and the remainder is peppered with either stock footage from the previous four films or new scenes of Guiron doing his thing against those pesky Space Gyaos. None of it ever reaches any level of realism, but it’s not really intended to – this is pure children’s entertainment through and through [peppered with surprisingly graphic violence, as was much of the science fiction produced for children at the time - anyone else remember little Johnny Sokko using a pistol in the first episode of GIANT ROBO or Ultraseven slicing and dicing his enemies to bits?].
Production design is at the series’ most imaginative in GAMERA VS. GUIRON, with plenty of brightly colored futuristic set pieces for viewers to feast their eyes upon – there’s never enough money to back it up [a problem throughout the first series of Gamera films] but the creativity behind what’s on screen certainly makes up for it. It all definitely comes off better in the original cinemascope, with plenty of vistas of the intricate miniature sets and some honestly good interior matte work to be appreciated. I’m partial to the bombastic score by Shunsuke Kikuchi [of GOKE BODY SNATCHER FROM HELL fame] as well, pieces from which would be used to score GAMERA VS. JIGER the next year.
Noriaki Yuasa has said that his favorite film of the Gamera series was always GAMERA VS. VIRAS, but I think GAMERA VS. GUIRON shows him at the top of his game at producing sci-fi fantasy for kids. Highly recommended in either the original Japanese or AIP editions – the Sandy Frank release is to be avoided at all costs.
