The second installment of the original Gamera franchise is on its way from Shout! Factory, with a scheduled release date of July 6, 2010. Box art and disc specs have yet to be announced, though you can bet this is going to be the best domestic release of the title for some time to come. You can currently pre-order the title through Amazon.com at considerable savings (30% off retail!).
Gamera vs. Barugon is easily the most traditionally dramatic of the Showa series and is ostensibly a tale of greed and consequence (and giant monsters, of course!). It follows several men who travel to the South Seas in search of a giant opal, only to inadvertently unleash the monster Barugon upon the world. Luckily Gamera is on the prowl, having been extricated from that pesky Z-plan rocket by a wayward meteor.
Gamera vs. Barugon was released, dubbed and re-edited, to American television by A.I.P. under the generic title War of the Monsters and later (uncut and with an alternate dub track) on VHS and Laserdisc through King Features and Image Entertainment. The Shout! Factory release will mark the first time the film has been made officially available in the USA its original Japanese.
Do you know the German title on the poster translates to “Godzilla: The Dragon of the Jungle”?
Yup. I still find myself amused by the fact that the German distributors of kaiju eiga seem so inclined to lend Godzilla’s namesake out to just about anything in the genre except the Godzilla series itself . . . and it’s best not to get started on the whole ‘Frankenstein’ thing. It reminds of how the Italian distributors slapped ‘King Kong’ on everything (or ‘Kinkong’ in the case of Gamera vs. Jiger).
The SHOUT Factory cover art for GAMERA Vs. BARUGON is now posted on Amazon.com and it looks absolutely terrific. At the present time, the specs say Japanese language w/English subtitles w/ NO mention of the English track. I’m trying to find out though if this disc will indeed have an alternate English track. If anyone gets this info, please post it here.
Thanks.
Hi Joe – I’m waiting on Shout! Facotry’s inevitable press release and some high res cover pics before I update, but as soon as I hear the final disc specs they’ll be posted. Frankly I’d be fine with just the original Japanese w / English subs, but it would be wonderful to have the International dub track as well.
Hi Kevin,
Yes…I’m with you 100%. I think we’ll be o.k. w/having the English voices on GAMERA Vs. GAOS; GAMERA Vs. VIRAS; GAMERA Vs. GUIRON; GAMERA VS. JIGER; and GAMERA THE SUPER MONSTER because AIP released them more or less uncut so all SHOUT! will really have to do is synch up the English voices to the new transfer. It’s been done before on DVDs like Discotek’s PUSS-N-BOOTS which features a widescreen transfer from Toei with an audio track of the AIP-TV English dub (as well as a Japanese language track). SHOUT! may have more of a problem w/GAMERA Vs. BARUGON because AIP-TV cut about 13 minutes of footage and re-arranged a couple of scenes (MINOR scenes but re-arranged nonetheless). If SHOUT! is able to use the AIP-TV dub for an alternate audio track, they’ll have to use English subtitles for the scenes that were never dubbed into English by AIP-TV (much like what was done on the ULTRAMAN discs from BCI a couple of years ago). Also, the Amazon specs may be incomplete. SHOUT! may be in fact releasing an audio English track for GAMERA Vs. BARUGON…like you said Kevin…we’ll just have to wait for the SHOUT! press releases and hope for the best.
–Joe