a.k.a. Gezora Ganime Kameba Kessan! Nankai no Daikaiju / Space Amoeba
company: Toho Co. Ltd
year: 1970
runtime: 84′
country: Japan
director: ISHIRO HONDA
cast: Akira Kubo, Atsuko Takahashi,
Yoshio Tsuchiya, Kenji Sahara
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The end of the 60′s was also the end of the Golden Era of Japanese tokusatsu. 1967 had come and gone with it’s kaiju boom in which every single major studio in Japan had released a monster movie. Toho had tried to end the Godzilla series in 1968 with DESTROY ALL MONSTERS for naught. Their collaboration with the Americans for LATITUDE ZERO [1969] had gone to seed, and even worse the film did poorly at the box office, resulting in the next Godzilla movie to be constructed of stock footage and aimed squarely at children. And now, refusing to slow down and take his doctor’s orders, the God of Special Effects, Eiji Tsuburaya, had literally worked himself to death. This is the stage set for Toho’s next monster foray.
Over footage of a brilliant sunset and a remarkably fake-looking rocket, an announcer tells us about how man is beginning to explore outer space. The rocket—one Helio 7—succeeds in making its way into space on a course for Jupiter to study the gas giant. However, once in deep space, Helio 7 is invaded by a gaseous cloud of glowing blue dots which proceeds to take over its mechanics. Helio 7 summarily turns around and heads back for earth.
Meanwhile back on earth on a flight back to Japan, bored photographer Taro Kudo [Kubo] happens to spy something splash land into the sea before him. It is Helio 7, which was supposed to be in outer space. He reports it to an editor [Sachio Sakai] when he returns to Japan, but they don’t really give a damn. Befuddled, Kudo heads off, but is stopped by Ayako [Takahashi], a land development agent. She wants Kudo to do some photography for an island they’re trying to develop a resort on Selga Island.
Ayako takes Kudo back to her office to explain the situation with the help of her boss [the ever confused-appearing Yu Fujiki]. Once there, they also meet Dr. Kyoichi Miya [Tsuchiya], an acquaintance of Kudo’s, who has a theory that prehistoric monsters could be in that area. Naturally, that seals the deal and off our heroes go.
While on a cruise ship to the island, a stranger in a white suit named Makoto Obata [Sahara] crashes a conversation between Kudo and Ayako. He’s really an industrial spy trying to get his hands on Ayako’s development deal. Before the two can get away from him, Dr. Miya appears to let them know Selga Island is in sight. All four of them hop in a smaller boat and depart. Meanwhile, all isn’t peaceful on the island. A couple of fishermen have been attacked by a gigantic tentacle from the sea. The survivor, Rico, is chided by the island chieftain [Tetsu Nakamura] that he has “angered Gezora”. This puts the island’s natives on red alert . . . er, however much red alert islanders can be on.
Once on the island, our heroes are met by Rico, who is strangely quiet and barks commands like “shut up!” when asked questions about the island. Eventually, he’s had enough of them and just ditches them. Kudo and company hoof it the rest of the way to the village where they are treated little better.
One day while out investigating the island, the village is attacked by a gigantic ambulatory cuttlefish. The creature, Gezora [Haruo Nakajima], has come back to finish the job with Rico, but the man is saved when bats drive the tentacled monster away. Kudo and company return to find Rico now in a state of catatonia, much to the chagrin of his fiance, island girl Saki [Yukiko Kobayashi]. Sucker-like bruises on Rico’s body and strange footprints on the beach lead Dr. Miya to believe something’s amiss, though the islanders remain non-nonplussed.
The next day, Kudo and Dr. Miya decide to dive into the sea to try and find the monster. It isn’t long before they find the beast napping on the sea bottom and are fighting for their lives. Knife blades and camera flashes do nothing against Gezora. However, just in the nick of time, a school of dolphins swim by causing Gezora to let Kudo and Miya go. They return to the surface to ponder what they just experienced.
However, apparently in a fit of rage, Gezora too makes it to shore and sets about attacking the village [even going so far as to manhandle the chieftain as he prays to it]. Watching from afar, Kudo and pals take note that Gezora recoils from flames, so they formulate a plan to destroy it. Fortunately, the natives have stockpiles of gasoline, leftover from World War II fighting, as well as guns to get the monster’s attention. The puny gunshots are enough to lure Gezora away from the village and into a trap Kudo devises, a gasoline bomb. The humans get Gezora out onto a field and then set some poured gasoline aflame, cooking the cuttlefish in his tracks. The shrieking mollusk turns tail and staggers for the beach, where it collapses into the sea and sinks to the bottom, where it [presumably] dies. The glowing dust we saw earlier exits Gezora’s body. Dr. Miya worries about just what it is they’re dealing with and gets on everybody’s nerves by not answering their questions.
Having saved the day, the villagers decide Kudo and pals aren’t so bad after all and even present them with a leftover machine gun. One tries to give a demonstration, but merely winds up wildly strafing sea rocks, revealing a frightened Obata in a rowboat trying to make a break for it. Suddenly, the sea beneath Obata’s boat begins to glow and bubble. Soon, he is capsized and Ganime [Haruyoshi Nakamura], a gigantic rock crab appears.
The villagers and Kudo waste no time and immediately open fire on it with machine guns and rifle blasts, but soon run out of ammunition. Ganime scuttles onto land and starts knocking people around with his claws. Kudo’s Red Daisy repeating rifle successfully puts out one of Ganime’s eyes, but the crab continues stalking Kudo and Ayako, cornering them on the edge of a cliff. In a feat of acrobatics, Kudo jumps over the side causing the rather dim-witted Ganime to follow suit. Kudo grabs a tree branch sticking out of the side of the cliff while Ganime lands in a valley below where some gasoline drums have mysteriously popped up. Kudo makes it back to the top of the cliff and shoots the gasoline, causing Ganime to explode. Once again, we see glowing blue dust exit Ganime’s body.
Obata has managed to swim ashore and as he makes his way back to the village, encounters the glowing dust. Having apparently not seen THE BLOB [1958], Obata’s first reaction is to poke it with a stick, which it summarily uses to climb and possess Obata’s body. A disembodied voice announces that he’s “no longer an ordinary human being” and that it plans to take over the earth and everyone on it and causes Obata’s eyebrow to twitch uncontrollably.
Meanwhile. Kudo and Miya come across the blasted remains of Ganime. The villagers cheer, although seemingly not because they just found dinner for a week. Dr. Miya tells Kudo he believes that space creatures who came to earth on Helio 7 are afoot. That seems to make sense, so everyone goes along with it. Perhaps someday, a scientist will accidentally find the cure to cancer making suppositions like this.
That night, Saki and Rico have their wedding ceremony, even though Rico is still not talking nor looking like a drooling vegetable. Kudo takes a photograph of the happy couple, and the camera’s flash causes Rico to come out of his catatonic state. Once calmed down, the islander explains to Kudo and his new wife that it was bats that drove Gezora away when he was attacked. Tying together the porpoise incident, Dr. Miya surmises that the sound waves that bats and porpoises use to guide themselves can be used to fight the monsters.
Rico points out some large caverns where bats live. Kudo and pals head out to investigate, but discover the bats are dead, some of them burned. While out looking for more bats, Kudo and Ayako are suddenly attacked by a gigantic turtle-like creature, Kameba [Nakajima again]. The hissing reptile chases the reporter and his ladyfriend into a small cave nearby. Kameba tries to rip the rock walls apart, but bats returning to their home succeed in driving it away.
The next day while the bats are asleep, the villagers block up the exit to the cave so they can keep the bats in check as weapons. Obata suddenly reappears and immediately plops down for a nap in the cave, scaring some of the villagers who have holed up there to avoid monsters. The next morning, Obata sets about burning the bats. Kudo tries to stop him, but gets tossed into the air or his trouble. Obata, possessed of aliens, reveals their true plans: how they are “astro-quasars” who wander the universe in search of a new home, which naturally means the destruction of all human life. Obata sets fire to the cave, causing the bats to wake up. Ayako makes a plea to him to fight back against his possessors. Moved by the woman’s tears, Obata fights the aliens’ hold and is able to let the bats go. He staggers off, warning the others not to come near him. Dr. Miya pontificates about how even possessed, aliens cannot take over a man’s soul. I guess?
Anyway, for some reason, Kameba has wandered onto the scene, joined by another Ganime who pops out of nowhere. The bats’ shrieking causes the aliens to lose their control over the monsters, who then resort to what it is monsters do best: beat the hell out of each other. Well, as much as a giant crab and turtle can beat on each other.
Their rather listless duel takes the monsters to the crater of a volcano. Biting onto one of Ganime’s claws, Kameba makes the mistake of actually leapfrogging INTO the mouth of the volcano. Hanging by an arm, Kameba succeeds in digging the base of the crater out from underneath Ganime and both monsters topple in.
The volcano blows its top, and Obata, seemingly coming to his senses, actually leaps into the molten lava to destroy the last of the astro-quasars. Kudo wonders if anyone will ever believe the story of how mankind, bats, and porpoises joined forces to stop an alien invasion. Oh, and a cruise ship sails into the area, apparently distracted by the eruption so our heroes can return home. The end.
YOG, MONSTER FROM SPACE has a definite feeling of been-there, done-that. It appears to be a hodgepodge of older Toho films, stealing, strangely enough, from VARAN THE UNBELIEVABLE [1958]. The opening sequence of the movie is almost shot for shot the same as the earlier film [except in color] and another sequence in which Kameba has Kudo and Ayako cornered in a cave recalls the earlier film’s similar sequence. With the death of Tsuburaya, Toho creatively didn’t seem to know where it wanted to go or what to do when it got there. YOG is the last of a long line of films made by Toho in the same style. Afterwards, nothing Toho did seemed like the older movies.
YOG is also the first movie where Toho’s brass started pushing around its staff. The death of Eiji Tsuburaya is directly related to how YOG turned out. The earlier movies were so fanciful and full of wonder because Tsuburaya had a great amount of power at Toho and was not afraid to throw his weight around for the cause of his art. Toho’s brass hated Tsuburaya because of this and were, to be frank, glad when he died. Unfortunately, Tsuburaya’s replacement Sadamasa Arikawa [and later Teruyoshi Nakano] would never have the luxuries of their legendary predecessor. With Tsuburaya gone, Toho Corporate destroyed his special effects office and turned it into a gift shop. They even refused to put on a “Dedicated to the Memory of Eiji Tsuburaya” card on the film that Ishiro Honda and Arikawa pleaded for.
Cost-cutting can be felt everywhere and the whole production has a bit of a rushed feeling about it. At one point during the production, Gezora’s glowing eyes stopped working and rather than stop and get them working again as Tsuburaya would have done, Arikawa was forced to continue shooting with the inoperative eyes. As a result, Arikawa’s work as special effects director (a title which Toho refused him for the film) cannot be fairly judged here as the whole affair comes off as a Tsuburaya picture with the fancy yanked out from under it. Because of the mistreatment from Toho, Arikawa would leave the studio after this film and become a freelance special effects man. He would later work on THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN [1977] for Shaw Brothers. As for the “special effects director” title, it would finally be bestowed upon Teruyoshi Nakano in late 1973 for THE SUBMERSION OF JAPAN, when he showed what a good company man he was and would tow the line for the studio.
The renowned Ishiro Honda was back in the director’s chair, fittingly, for this last old-school Toho monster epic. However, his ennui with the material can be felt here. There are little touches of his older work in this movie (mostly revolving around the especially Honda-esque natives of Selga Island), but other than that, there’s nothing to differentiate Honda’s work here than, say, Jun Fukuda’s work with the similar GODZILLA VS. THE SEA MONSTER [1966] and SON OF GODZILLA [1967]. In fact, if it weren’t for the cast of Honda regulars, you may not even be sure Honda had directed the film at all.
Like Arikawa because of the mistreatment by Toho during this film, Honda put himself into a self-imposed retirement, only working on television series such as ZONE FIGHTER [1973], RETURN OF ULTRAMAN [1971], and MIRROR MAN [but mostly throwing his lot in with Tsuburaya Productions, where many of Toho's craftsmen were invited and fled to after YOG]. Honda would only return to Toho for TERROR OF MECHAGODZILLA [1975] because Tomoyuki Tanaka begged him to. Though Honda had signed onto Tanaka’s THE RETURN OF GODZILLA project for 1980, he would turn down directing reigns for GODZILLA [1984] when it would come to fruition, preferring to work with his best friend Akira Kurosawa on his projects at the time. Sadly enough, Honda was reportedly getting ready to come out of semi-retirement to direct GODZILLA VS. MECHAGODZILLA in 1993 when he suddenly died (the film was originally intended as the last of the series to make room for Tri-Star’s U.S. Godzilla movie).
The cast is filled to the brim with Toho regulars, but they are mostly just going through the motions of older characters, particularly Akira Kubo, whose Kudo character just seems to be a retread of Goro Maki from SON OF GODZILLA. Yukiko Kobayashi, heroine of DESTROY ALL MONSTERS, tries her best to have the raw island sultriness of Kumi Mizuno, but would regrettably only succeed that in publicity stills for the film. Originally, Yoshio Tsuchiya was unsurprisingly cast as Obata and Kenji Sahara as Dr. Miya, but before shooting – and strangely enough, just as Akira Takarada and Akihiko Hirata had done before them on GODZILLA [1954] – decided to switch roles, Tsuchiya telling Sahara “You have to play this sort of role at least once in your life.” It’s strange that the last of the old-school Toho monster films would share that bond with the very first.
Perhaps much of the problems with the cast and Honda’s direction can be laid at the blame of Ei Ogawa’s inert script, which is especially sad considering how good Ogawa’s script for the same year’s THE VAMPIRE DOLL would be. It’s possible that Ogawa’s writing was influenced by Toho Corporate in its same-old-same routine, with rather less than bubbly characters and monsters that randomly march before us. Once the scenario is set up, the film becomes little more than humans fighting one monster after another. The exact night when Gezora is destroyed, Ganime appears. And right after Ganime’s destroyed, Kameba appears – then the next morning there is a new Ganime, whose appearance goes unexplained.
The monsters themselves, for the most part, are an interesting lot, it’s just that there is little to do with them. The mysteriously popular Gezora is the least of the trio. Staggering about on tentacles, the cuttlefish has very little to do. It just wanders about on land and knocks over huts. Doesn’t even stomp them, just wades over them. The suit is especially poor, looking like it’s about to fall over at any moment and never seeming to be made of anything other than rubber. In fact, when Gezora’s in its death throws, headed for the sea, the monster’s costume appears to have collapsed on itself. He’s certainly no Viras, that’s for sure. I would go so far as to say the only time Gezora looks remotely good was when fighting Godzilla in the GODZILLA: MONSTER OF MONSTERS! NES game. Ganime and Kameba fare much better though. Ganime is a much more interesting crustacean than the earlier Ebirah, getting so far as to walk on land. His radio-controlled eyes dart to and fro, his shell is suitably crab-like, and he has a truly disgusting mouth (specifically made to be scary according to effects director Arikawa). Kameba – seemingly a jab by Toho at Daiei’s Gamera – is the best of the three creatures. Despite his Gamera-esque fangs and silly accordion box neck, he at least looks interesting, if distinctly un-turtle like. In the international dub for the film, the aliens would even refer to Kameba with the bizarre phrase, “stegosaur-bat”. Your call as to what it means. Kameba proved popular enough to return in 1972, fighting sentai hero Godman in GO, GODMAN! He would also pop up once more merely as a corpse victim of Godzilla in 2003′s GODZILLA VS. MOTHRA VS. MECHAGODZILLA: TOKYO S.O.S. (which, according to that film’s director, YOG exists in its continuity)
As Toho was unwilling to foot any more money than absolutely necessary, Gezora is kept out of the big showdown at the end of the film, despite being featured in stills in battle with his Yog brethren. The fight itself is nothing special. Ganime and Kameba hiss at each other, stumble around each other, and basically just stand across from one another angrily. Ganime does, however, get to spit up on Kameba’s face. Whoo-boy.
Honda mainstay Akira Ifukube would too be on hand for this last hurrah. His score is serviceable, but doesn’t seem to do much for the events on screen. His main title seems to pomp and circumstance at nothing in particular, and oddly enough appears to work better when used in the trailer for GODZILLA VS. HEDORAH [1971] than it does in its own movie! Ifukube even swipes from himself, as the prayer of the Selga Islanders is nothing more than the Faro Island chant with new lyrics transplanted. We’ve certainly heard better from the maestro, but there’s surely little worse.
Because of the box office failure of YOG, Toho would find itself turning to a new guard during the upcoming 1970s with people such as Yoshimitsu Banno, Michio Yamamoto, Jun Fukuda, and Teruyoshi Nakano. Though the movies would have a quality and fun that wouldn’t be matched in any other decade, something was still missing from the films, a feeling that would never be regained again. Stale as it might be, YOG, MONSTER FROM SPACE still manages to be a decent amount of fun, if a sorry swan song for classic Toho tokusatsu and its artisans.
