After a long absence I am back with more public domain movie
reviews. When I first bought the 50 movie packs I was expecting something
wonderfully awful on every disc. For the most part I was right, there are some
pretty cheesy, laughably bad movies. However, what I wasn’t expecting, at least
for the most part was actually really fun movies.
Sure I knew Night of the Living Dead was going to be good. I
knew Nosforatu and Phantom of the Opera were going to be good, but who knew how
much fun Gamera the Invincible would be.
As I mentioned in my previous review, Gamera was Daiei
Motion Pictures answer to Godzilla. And much like Godzilla, as the movies moved
on they got much cheesier.
Yes, that much cheesier.
However, like Godzilla, Gamera started out as a genuinely
compelling story.
The Giant Turtle was created when a nuclear bomb is
accidently set off by American’s trying to attack Soviets who are invading
American airspace. (I think Americans in foreign action movies are about as
clumsily evil as all of mankind is in a Disney nature movie.)
Gamera immediately starts attacking a Japanese research ship
and the fun is on. He of course attacks Tokyo and the Japanese fight back, they
freeze the Giant Ninja Turtle and try to blow him up. They are able to knock
him onto his back which should be the end but then…
Oh shit he can fly!
While all this is going on Gamera is befriended by a young
boy named Yoshiro, who of course LOVES turtles. This is how Gamera developed
his “friend of children” moniker.
Now this is the synopsis of the Japanese version. When World
Entertainment Corp released the movie to America, they added American actors
who add to the movie with their own scenes.
The ironic part of this is, while in this movie the
Americans are tacked on, they do have a purpose, and make sense to the overall
plot, unlike Tom from Attack of the Monsters, who, even though he was in the
original Japanese movie, seemed REALLY out of place.
If you like monster movies, if you like crazy kids movies
and if you like just pure disaster and destruction movies, Gamera is definitely
a movie you should check out.
