Archive for the ‘DVD’ Category


Paula-Paula

January 20th, 2011 | article by | 1 Comment »
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a.k.a. Paula-Paula: una experiencia audiovisual de Jess Franco inspirada en Jekyll y Hyde de R.L. Stevenson
Year: 2010   Company: CineBinario Films   Runtime: 66′
Director: Jess Franco   Writer: Jess Franco   Cinematography: Jess Franco   Music: Friedrich Gulda (posthumous)
Cast: Carmen Montes, Paula Davis, Lina Romay and some guy in a sweater who goes unnamed
Disc company: Intervision Picture Corp   Video: NTSC 16:9 1.85:1    Audio: Dolby Digitlal 2.0 Spanish
Subtitles: English    Disc: DVD5 (Region 0)   Release Date: 02/08/2011   Product link: Amazon.com
Reviewed from a screener provided by Intervision Picture Corp and CAV Distribution

Jess Franco is back, for better or for worse, and his budget is smaller than ever.  This shot-on-video effort, not even a year old as of this writing, sees the director working on what may be the smallest scale of his career, with all of the… ehem… action taking place in a handful of confined apartment rooms.  What’s it all about?  I’ll let the back of the DVD case do the talking:

An exotic dancer named Paula has been murdered.  Her lover Paula is the prime suspect.  But in a nightmare world of passion and perversion, could abstract desire be the greatest crime of all?

Helpful, eh?  Though the opening credits make a point to list Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde as an inspiration for the story, there really isn’t much of one to inspire.  The film opens with a detective (cult film personality Lina Romay in a very brief appearance) interrogating a disturbed young Paula (Carmen Montes, Killer Barbys vs. Dracula) after the death of her exotic dancer lover, also named Paula (Paula Davis).  The scene accomplishes little beyond letting us know that Paula the first has tried killing Paula the second a few times, and its end spells the same for the film’s negligible narrative aspirations.

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Attack of the Crab Monsters

December 14th, 2010 | article by | 2 Comments »
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Year: 1957   Company: Allied Artists   Runtime: 63′
Director: Roger Corman   Writer: Charles B. Griffith   Cinematography: Floyd Crosby
Music: Ronald Stein   Cast: Richard Garland, Pamela Duncan, Russell Johnson, Leslie Bradley,
Mel Welles, Richard H. Cutting, Beach Dickerson, Tony Miller, Ed Nelson, Maitland Stuart
Disc company: Shout! Factory   Video: 16:9 interlaced 1.78:1    Audio: Dolby Digital 2.0 English
Subtitles: None   Disc: Dual Layer DVD9 x2   Release Date: 01/18/2011   Product link: Amazon.com
Reviewed from a screener provided by Shout! Factory LLC.

There’s something to be said for keeping the menace of your science fiction thriller under wraps, but producer / director Roger Corman obviously wanted audiences to know what to expect from the moment they saw the title of this Allied Artists cheapie on the theatre marquee.  Monsters were big, big business in the latter ’50s, and 1957 saw the world menaced by giant grasshoppers, giant vultures and even a disgruntled walking tree stump.  In retrospect Corman’s crab monsters were no sillier than the rest and his film, which could easily have been just a footnote in the history of creature features, has appeal as a minor camp classic thanks to some inspired casting and a penchant for narrative ridiculousness.

The story concerns a rag-tag group of scientists and Navy personnel who descend upon an isolated Pacific atoll after the inexplicable disappearance of an earlier research team.  Almost immediately after their arrival their transport plane explodes, stranding the group while inclement weather prevents them from communicating with the outside world.  Meanwhile strange things are happening on the atoll, which was heavily irradiated as a result of a nearby H-bomb test.  Booming explosions and odd clacking sounds are heard in the night, while each new dawn reveals that some part of the land has vanished…

More disturbing still, the members of the research group are disappearing one after the other, their disembodied voices spookily rising from somewhere unknown.  The culprits are soon revealed – huge mutated telepathic (!) land crabs are attacking the researchers with obscure intent, and its up to our heroes to stop them before there’s not a scrap of atoll left to stand on!

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A Quartet of Corman Classics from Shout! Factory

December 8th, 2010 | article by | 1 Comment »
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Big Bad Mama / Big Bad Mama II
Year: 1974 / 1987   Company: New World / Concorde   Runtime: 84′ / 83′
Director: Steve Carver / Jim Wynorski   Cinematography: Bruce Logan / Robert C. New
Writers: William Norton, Frances Doel / R.J. Robertson, Jim Winorski
Cast: Angie Dickinson, William Shatner, Tom Skerritt, Susan Sennett, Robbie Lee, Noble Willingham
Angie Dickinson, Robert Culp, Danielle Brisebois, Julie McCulloch, Bruce Glover, Ebbe Roe Smith
Crazy Mama / The Lady in Red
Year: 1975 / 1979   Company: New World Pictures   Runtime: 80′ / 93′
Director: Jonathan Demme / Lewis Teague   Cinematography: Bruce Logan / Daniel LaCambre
Writers: Frances Doel, Robert Thom / John Sayles
Cast: Cloris Leachman, Stuart Whitman, Ann Sothern, Linda Purl, Jim Backus, Tisha Sterling
Pamela Sue Martin, Robert Conrad, Louise Fletcher, Christopher Lloyd, Robert Forster
Disc company: Shout! Factory   Video: Progressive, 1.78:1 (16:9)    Audio: DD 2.0 English
Subtitles: None   Discs: Dual Layer DVD9   Release Date: 12/07/2010
Amazon Product links: Big Bad Mama / Big Bad Mama II | Crazy Mama / The Lady in Red

As you may be able to tell from the above, there’s a lot to talk about with Shout! Factory’s latest issue of Roger Corman’s Cult Classics releases, a pair of women-on-the-run double features that boast some serious talent behind the scenes.  With names like Jonathan Demme, Lewis Teague, John Sayles and James Horner attached, these packages have legitimate interest beyond their considerable cult appeal.

Steve Carver’s Big Bad Mama follows a devoted mother trying to do the best she can by two troublesome daughters in the Depression-era Southwest.  Sick of the oppressive poverty of rural Texas, Wilma McClatchie (Angie Dickinson in the title role) packs her daughters in an old clunker and heads out for the promised land – California.  On the way the family becomes sidetracked by a life of crime, hooks up with a pair of crooks (William Shatner, Tom Skerritt) and eventually bites off more than it can chew with a high profile kidnapping scheme.

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The Terror Within / Dead Space

November 16th, 2010 | article by | No Comments »
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The Terror Within: Year: 1989   Company: Concorde Pictures   Runtime: 88′
Director: Thierry Notz   Writer: Thomas M. Cleaver   Cinematography: Ronn Schmidt
Music: Rick Conrad  Cast: George Kennedy, Andrew Stevens, Starr Andreff, Terri Treas
Dead Space: Year: 1991   Company: Califilm   Runtime: 72′
Director: Fred Gallo   Writer: Catherine Cyran   Cinematography: Mark Parry
Music: Daniel May    Cast: Marc Singer, Bryan Cranston, Judith Chapman, Laura Tate
Disc company: Shout! Factory   Video: Progressive, 1.85:1 (16:9) / 4:3    Audio: DD 2.0 English
Subtitles: None   Disc: Dual Layer DVD9   Release Date: 11/02/2010   Product link: Amazon.com

Isolated bands of post-apocalyptic survivors and scientists are threatened by mutant terrors courtesy of this double feature from Shout! Factory’s continuing Roger Corman’s Cult Classics line.  Corman was never one to let a success pass him by, but even he was pushing it in plundering Alien for inspiration a decade after the fact.  Neither of these films would have registered as more than a blip on the box office radar of their time, but I suspect that wasn’t the point.  With the drive-in generation drawing to a close and independents being pushed to the very edge, Corman was banking on a new cultural storm to earn him his cherished buck – the age of the video store.

The Terror Within plays as a more-or-less straight forward rip-off of Ridley Scott’s iconic horror opus, bookended by apocalyptic motifs Corman himself had been working with since the ’50s.  Sometime in the future an anonymous plague, brought on by no-good biological warfare research, has left the world a de-populated wasteland crawling with near-invincible mutants dubbed ‘gargoyles’.  George Kennedy and his band of government-employed survivors must fight to survive when the monsters, who reproduce by raping human women, invade their underground research compound in the Mojave Desert.

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Not of this Earth

November 8th, 2010 | article by | 1 Comment »
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Year: 1988   Company: Miracle Pictures, Pacific Trust, Concorde Pictures   Runtime: 81′
Director: Jim Wynorski   Writers: R. J. Robertson,  Jim Wynorski, Charles B. Griffith, Mark Hanna
Cinematography: Zoran Hochstatter   Music: Chuck Cirino   Cast: Traci Lords, Arthur Roberts.
Lenny Juliano, Ace Mask, Roger Lodge, Rebecca Perle, Michael Delano, Becky LeBeau
Disc company: Shout! Factory   Video: 16:9 progressive 1.78:1    Audio: Dolby Digital 2.0 English
Subtitles: None   Disc: Dual Layer DVD9   Release Date: 11/02/2010   Product link: Amazon.com
Reviewed from a screener provided by Shout! Factory LLC.

A nurse hired to give a mysterious older man daily blood transfusions suspects that her employer may not be so human as he seems in this remake of Roger Corman’s 1957 cult classic.  Writer and director Jim Wynorski (The Hills Have Thighs, Curse of the Komodo) took on the production to prove to Corman, with whom he had bet a car, that he could remake one of the B-movie mogul’s original spend-thrift efforts with the same constraints of time and budget.  Wynorski succeeded, and got his car.  As for the film?  Well, it’s about what you’d expect.

The 1988 Not of this Earth follows closely in the original’s footsteps, straying little from the events as penned by Charles B. Griffith (Little Shop of Horrors) and Mark Hanna (Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman) three decades earlier.  Here an agent of the dying planet Davana arrives in California, where he begins collecting human blood to send back to his extraterrestrial brethren.  The Davanan plot is eventually uncovered thanks to the due diligence of nurse Traci Lords (fresh from her under-age porn controversy) and foiled before the Earth can be transformed into an interstellar blood bank.

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Cannibal Girls

October 25th, 2010 | article by | No Comments »
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Year: 1972   Company: Scary Pictures Corporation, American International Pictures   Runtime: 84′
Director: Ivan Reitman   Writers: Ivan Reitman, Daniel Goldberg, Robert Sandler
Cinematography: Robert Saad   Music: Doug Riley   Cast: Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Robert Ulrich
The Cannibal Girls: Randall Carpenter, Bonnie Nielson, Mira Pawluk
Disc company: Shout! Factory   Video: 16:9 progressive 1.78:1    Audio: Dolby Digital 2.0 English
Subtitles: None   Disc: Dual Layer DVD9   Release Date: 10/26/2010   Product link: Amazon.com
Reviewed from a screener provided by Shout! Factory LLC.

What an awful film, and what a wonderful time!  Ivan Reitman and Daniel Goldberg’s Cannibal Girls is a slice of knowing schlock that parodies the Herschell Gordon Lewis brand of movie making while delivering on all the essentials.  From the opening scene, which sees a young man indiscriminately murdered and his young lover exposed, you know what you’re in for – a terrible and tasteless exercise in bread and butter exploitation, and just the sort of thing I adore.

Though its situations are often comical, the plot plays out with genuine earnest.  Clifford (Eugene Levy) and Gloria (Andrea Martin) are a couple looking to spend their vacation days in the quiet, out of the way community of Farnhamville.  There they discover an old bed and breakfast that was supposedly the home of three cannibal women who ate men as a means of reaching immortality.  It doesn’t take long for things to take a gruesome turn, and it is revealed that the cannibal girls are alive and well and, worse, the good people of Farnhamville may be in on their sacra-delicious search for eternal life!

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Psychomania

October 20th, 2010 | article by | No Comments »
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Year: 1973    Company: Benmar Productions,  Scotia-Barber   Runtime: 90′
Director: Don Sharp   Writers: Julian Zimet, Arnaud d’Usseau    Cinematography: Ted Moore
music: John Cameron    Cast: Nicky Henson, Mary Larkin, George Sanders, Jacki Webb, Ann Michelle
Disc company: Severin Films   Video: 16:9 progressive 1.78:1 / 1.66:1    Audio: DD 2.0 English
Subtitles: None   Disc: Dual Layer DVD9   Release Date: 10/26/2010   Product link: Amazon.com
Reviewed from a screener provided by Severin Films, LLC

This occult action mish-mash arrived on US screens as The Death Wheelers, courtesy of a British film industry reeling from the absence of outside investment.  As with so many of the z-budget independents coming out of Britain at the time (Peter Newbrook’s production of Crucible of Terror and Cornel Wilde’s No Blade of Grass come to mind), the names involved are often well known.

Director Don Sharp (Curse of the Fly, The Brides of Fu Manchu) was a well-established genre regular on his way to a successful career in television and writers Julian Zimet (Crack in the World) and Arnaud d’Usseau (Horror Express) were no strangers either.  The cast is likewise filled with familiar names – television and theater actor Nicky Henson (Syriana) plays the leader of a suicidal band of social miscreants while George Sanders (Village of the Damned, The Picture of Dorian Gray) spends his final role playing with magic toads and reading from the not-so-good book.  Even stunt coordinator Gerry Crampton and stunt man Rocky Taylor, both mainstays of the James Bond franchise, are recognizable.

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Crucible of Terror

October 7th, 2010 | article by | No Comments »
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Year: 1971    Company: Scotia-Barber, Glendale   Runtime: 91′
Director: Ted Hooker   Writers: Ted Hooker, Tom Parkinson   Cinematography: Peter Newbrook
music: Paris Rutherford   Cast: Mike Raven, Mary Maude, James Bolam, Roland Lacey, Me Me Lai
Disc company: Severin Films   Video: 16:9 progressive 1.78:1    Audio: Dolby Digital 2.0 English
Subtitles: None   Disc: Single Layer DVD5   Release Date: 10/12/2010   Product link: Amazon.com
Reviewed from a screener provided by Severin Films, LLC

Plot: An indebted purveyor of art heads into the English countryside to strike a deal with a reclusive artist with his girlfriend in tow. Once there they meet an assortment of odd characters and are witness to a bizarre family dynamic, and realize too late that the beauty-obsessed artist has taken a fierce liking to the latest female to cross his path.

I should really expect nothing less from Severin Films by now, but what an odd little picture! Generally labelled as horror, 1971’s Crucible of Terror defies categorization, fluctuating between murderous A Bucket of Blood-type thrills, oddball family drama and acts of supernatural revenge with manic frequency. I can’t imagine much of anyone ever defending it as a good film, but one can hardly fault the filmmakers for trying something a little different.

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The Slumber Party Massacre

September 17th, 2010 | article by | No Comments »
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film rating:
disc rating:
company: New World Pictures
year: 1982
runtime: 77′
director: Amy Holden Jones
cast: Michele Michaels, Robin Stille,
Michael Villella, Debra Deliso,
Andree Honore, Jennifer Meyers,
Joseph Alan Johnson, Brinke Stevens
writer: Rita Mae Brown
cinematography: Stephen Posey
music: Ralph Jones
Reviewed from a screener provided
by Shout! Factory, LLC.
Pre-order this film from Amazon.com

The Slumber Party Massacre Collection double disc DVD set is due out from Shout! Factory on October 5th, in plenty of time for Halloween get togethers, and can currently be pre-ordered through Amazon.com and other online retailers.

The first installment in Roger Corman’s original slasher franchise is a wonderful mostly serious and self-aware addition to a sub-genre saturated with mindless knockoffs of past successes and cheap, irredeemable crap. That’s not to say that The Slumber Party Massacre doesn’t show its roots – quite the contrary, in fact. The basics of the narrative are par for the course, with a group of young women mercilessly stalked by an escaped serial killer while free of parental supervision.

The difference here, as well as with the two sequels, is the director, another in a long line of arguments for producer Corman’s affinity for strong women in film (both before and behind the camera). Indeed, I’m hard pressed to think of any other series of horror films that was helmed exclusively by women. Though far from masterworks on feminism (each takes time out for that all important Corman necessity – gratuitous nudity), the Slumber Party Massacre films do approach the sub-genre from a perspective atypical for the slasher sub-genre.

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Slumber Party Massacre II

September 17th, 2010 | article by | No Comments »
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film rating:
disc rating:
company: Concorde Pictures
year: 1987
runtime: 75′
director: Deborah Brock
cast: Crystal Bernard, Atanas Ilitch,
Jennifer Rhodes, Kimberly McArthur,
Juliette Cummins, Patrick Lowe
writer: Deborah Brock
cinematography: Thomas L. Callaway
music: Richard Cox
Reviewed from a screener provided
by Shout! Factory, LLC.
Pre-order this film from Amazon.com

The Slumber Party Massacre Collection double disc DVD set is due out from Shout! Factory on October 5th, in plenty of time for Halloween get togethers, and can currently be pre-ordered through Amazon.com and other online retailers.

Coming five years after the original The Slumber Party Massacre, Deborah Brock’s Slumber Party Massacre II (originally to be called Don’t Let Go: Slumber Party Massacre II) has direct narrative connections to the first film but bares slim resemblance to it otherwise. Brock’s (Rock ‘n’ Roll High School Forever) film loses much of the suspense but more than makes up for its absence, ratcheting up the humor and gore and tossing in a bucketful of absurdity for good measure.

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Slumber Party Massacre III

September 17th, 2010 | article by | No Comments »
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film rating:
disc rating:
company: New Concorde
year: 1990
runtime: 87′
director: Sally Mattison
cast: Yan Birch, Brandi Burckett,
Hope Marie Carlton, Keely Christian,
Maria Claire, Alexander Falk
writer: Catherine Cyran
cinematography: Jurgen Baum
music: Jamie Sheriff
Reviewed from a screener provided
by Shout! Factory, LLC.
Pre-order this film from Amazon.com

The Slumber Party Massacre Collection double disc DVD set is due out from Shout! Factory on October 5th, in plenty of time for Halloween get togethers, and can currently be pre-ordered through Amazon.com and other online retailers.

After being pleasantly surprised, thrilled even, with The Slumber Party Massacre and Slumber Party Massacre II, it’s perhaps best to say as little about Slumber Party Massacre III as possible. The period of Corman productions that began with the formation of New Concorde isn’t one I look upon with much fondness, being the time when his method of producing low-budget knock-offs of others’ (not to mention his own) successes was falling flat more and more. I may be a biased supporter of Corman and his place as a visionary independent producer, but even my admiration has its limits.

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Make-Out With Violence

September 10th, 2010 | article by | No Comments »
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film rating:
disc rating:
company: Limerent Pictures
year: 2008
runtime: 105′
director: The Deagol Brothers
cast: Eric Lehning, Cody DeVos,
Leah High, Brett Miller,
Tia Shearer, Jordan Lehning,
Josh Duensing, Shellie Marie Shartzer
writers: The Deagol Brothers,
Cody DeVos and Eric Lehning
cinematography: David Bousquet,
Kevin Doyle and James King
music: Jordan Lehning
Reviewed from a screener provided
by Factory 25
Pre-order this film from Amazon.com
or directly through Factory 25

Make-Out With Violence is due out on DVD, Blu-ray and DVD / soundtrack LP combo pack from Factory 25 on October 26th, and can be pre-ordered from Amazon.com or directly through Factory 25.

Plot: 17 year old Wendy disappears without a trace one summer, and those in her hometown presume her to be dead. After a memorial service, sans corpus, twin brothers Carol and Patrick and their younger sibling Beetle happen upon Wendy, now in a state of living-death. The trio hide the girl in a vacant house and attempt to take care of her while keeping her existence hidden from those around them.

To give credit where credit is due, the trailer for Make-Out With Violence (available here) is an excellent piece that does its job far more adeptly than most I’ve come across as late. Its cross cutting between dimly related story elements hints at what the film is all about while giving away precious little in the way of details and the backscoring (all tracks from Jordan Lehning’s wonderful original soundtrack) lends the footage exactly the right tone at exactly the right time. When I was approached by the distributor about reviewing the film it was the trailer that ultimately sold me.  I had high hopes.

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Gamera vs. Guiron

August 29th, 2010 | article by | 1 Comment »
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film rating:
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a.k.a. Gamera tai Daiakuju Giron
(lit. Gamera against Giant Devil Beast Guiron)
Attack of the Monsters
company: Daiei Motion Picture Co.
year: 1969
runtime: 82′
director: Noriaki Yuasa
cast: Nobuhiro Kajima, Christopher Murphy,
Miyuki Akiyama, Kon Omura,
Reiko Kasahara, Kai Hiroko,
Yuko Hamada, Edith Hanson
writer: Nisan Takahashi
cinematography: Akira Kitazaki
music: Shunsuke Kikuchi
Reviewed from a screener provided
by Shout! Factory, LLC.
Pre-order this film from Amazon.com

The Gamera vs. Guiron / Gamera vs. Jiger double feature DVD is due out on September 21st from Shout! Factory, day and date with their double feature DVD of Gamera vs. Gyaos / Gamera vs. Viras. Both discs can currently be pre-ordered through Amazon.com and other online retailers.

Following firmly in Gamera vs. Viras’ juvenile footsteps 1969’s Gamera vs. Guiron is generally cited as a primary example of just how low Daiei’s favorite monster franchise could stoop in terms of overall quality, but while films like Gamera vs. Zigra and Gamera: Super Monster are genuinely dreadful (if endearing in their own quirky ways) I’ve always been a devoted supporter for the guardian of the universe’s final pre-’70s outing. Director Noriaki Yuasa accomplishes amazing feats given his considerable financial limitations, crafting a fantastical science fiction adventure on a budget just as compromised as that for the previous outing (just a third that of 1967’s hit Gamera vs. Gyaos).

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Gamera vs. Jiger

August 29th, 2010 | article by | No Comments »
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film rating:
disc rating:
a.k.a. Gamera tai Daimaju Jaiga
(lit. Gamera against Demon Beast Jiger)
Gamera vs. Monster X
company: Daiei Motion Picture Co.
year: 1970
runtime: 83′
director: Noriaki Yuasa
cast: Tsutomu Takakuwa, Kelly Varis,
Katherine Murphy, Kon Omura,
Ryo Hayami, Junko Yashiro,
Franz Gruber, Akira Hayami
writer: Nisan Takahashi
cinematography: Akira Kitazaki
music: Shunsuke Kikuchi
Reviewed from a screener provided
by Shout! Factory, LLC.
Pre-order this film from Amazon.com

Click here for Gamera vs. Guiron

1970’s Gamera vs. Jiger continues Gamera vs. Guiron’s trend towards fantastic children’s entertainment and throws in a hefty dollop of utter insanity for good measure. The film would be the last great hurrah for the Gamera series, and Noriaki Yuasa was granted a few extra bucks to beef up the special effects production. Though followed by what is arguably the absolute worst of the series, Gamera vs. Jiger remains a fine example of large-scale anti-Toho monster mayhem.

Set around Expo ‘70, a World’s Fair held in Osaka, the film concerns a mysterious artifact – the Devil’s Whistle – which is discovered on an isolated Pacific island and brought back to the Expo for scientific examination. The removal of the artifact unleashes the prehistoric monster Jiger, a jet-propelled ceratopsian that shoots lethal quills from its tusks and emits a destructive sonic heat ray. Gamera quickly intervenes, but is taken down for the count when Jiger, a mother, implants him with her parasitic young. It’s up to Hiroshi (Tsutomu Takakuwa) and Tommy (Kelly Varis) and their aptitude for handling miniature submarines to save the despondent titan from his seemingly imminent death.

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Gamera vs. Gyaos

August 28th, 2010 | article by | 4 Comments »
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film rating:
disc rating:
a.k.a. Daikaiju Kuchusen: Gamera tai Gyaosu
(lit. Giant Monster Dogfight: Gamera against Gyaos)
Return of the Giant Monster, Gamera vs. Gaos
company: Daiei Motion Picture Co.
year: 1967
runtime: 87′
director: Noriaki Yuasa
cast: Kojiro Hongo, Kichijiro Ueda,
Reiko Kasahara, Naoyuki Abe,
Taro Marui, Yukitaro Hotaru,
Yoshiro Kitahara, Akira Natsuki
writer: Nisan Takahashi
cinematography: Akira Uehara
music: Tadashi Yamauchi
Reviewed from a screener provided
by Shout! Factory, LLC.
Pre-order this film from Amazon.com

The Gamera vs. Gyaos / Gamera vs. Viras double feature DVD is due out on September 21st from Shout! Factory, day and date with their double feature DVD of Gamera vs. Guiron / Gamera vs. Jiger. Both discs can currently be pre-ordered through Amazon.com and other online retailers.

The end of the turbulent ‘60s was equally the best of times and the worst of times for Daiei Co.’s increasingly successful Gamera franchise, whose germinal entry had proven successful enough to warrant an A-budget color successor in 1966. 1967’s Gamera vs. Gyaos exemplifies the best of the best, an A-list product accomplished under B-budget limitations and a pitch perfect amalgamation of the adult-oriented plot of Gamera vs. Barugon and the adolescent hi-jinks that would dominate later entries. Penned by series regular Nisan Takahashi and directed by Gamera, The Giant Monster’s Noriaki Yuasa, the film offers an easily digestible moral in a manner that younger audience members were (and I’d wager still are) sure to relish – wrapped with loads of giant monster action.

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