Uchu kaijû Gamera

Okay, before I saw this film my mind was filled with awful comments about how bad this film is. When I finally obtained my copy (a true kaiju collector would buy all monster films, whether they are good or bad), I expected a cheap, 90-minute stock-footage crap-fest. Instead, I found a rather enjoyable film, it was just great to see all of Gamera's foes in one movie. Sure the "superhero effects" are all crappy, but the stock footage was blended in with the movie quite well. Yes, there were some embarassing parts though, for example, when the stock footage is night and the new footage takes place day time, the film simply mixes both parts of the day and night into one scene!!!!!!! I kinda liked the superhero story, and honestly, with a very low budget, this film was fairly well made!! come on people! What more could we want besides giant monsters kicking eachother's tails and some hot superhero chicks mixed in with terrible kid acting? I have no idea!

In a last attempt to cash in on the titanic turtle's waning popularity, Daiei Motion Picture Company produced this incoherent clip-show in which Keiichi, a young Gamera fan (played by Koichi Maeda), and three benevolent spacewomen thwart an attack on Earth that involves the appearance of Gamera's kaiju foes from the previous five films. Similar to "All Monsters Attack" (1969; aka "Godzilla's Revenge"), the kaiju action may all be in the kid's imagination, as no one other than he, the space women, and the invaders seem be aware of the events. Unlike the polarising Godzilla film, which some people have interpreted as an insightful commentary on 'latch-key kids' and Japanese society in the late 1960s, the Gamera film is just a compilation of fight scenes connected by a silly story. There are only a couple of minutes of new kaiju material, the rest is lifted from the earlier films. In addition, there are some incongruous insertions of anime from "Space Battleship Yamato" and "Galaxy Express 999", some animated spaceships in the prologue, and a 'Zanon' starship that is a shameless copy of an Imperial Star Destroyer. The spacewomen are led by the hulking (relatively speaking) Kilara (played by wrestler Mach Fumiake) and can shrink, so they live in a box the size of a cat carrier in the back of a van that can turn into a spaceship (or at least a flying fuzzy blob of orange light). They have to wave their arms and pirouette to change into their space-hero suits, but then can fly. They also seem to have the ability to spontaneously teleport themselves (and their cars) when necessary and Kilara has an organ in the back of her pet store that when played seems to open a window/door to other parts of the Universe. There is also an evil spacewoman with a 'radar watch' who can teleport herself at will, and who is constantly being rebuked by the disembodied voice of Zanon. All of this is sufficiently incoherent and juvenile to support the hypothesis that it is all in Keiichi's imagination. The Gamera films were always budget outings (which is apparent from the clips), but the scenes with the spacewomen are even cheaper looking. As a final insult, the jauntily infectious "Gamera March" has been replaced by a new theme song (gratingly played by Keiichi on the organ). I watched a reasonably well English-dubbed version in which everyone had an incongruous trace of English accent but I doubt that the original would be much better. This film marked the end of the downward slide of the Showa-era Gamera series. The towering tusked turtle would not return until 1995's superior "Gamera: Guardian of the Universe", a much darker and less puerile interpretation of the character. Of note: in one of the rare fragments of new material, Gamera kicks over a poster of rival kaiju-star Godzilla, who is in turn revenged in "Godzilla Final Wars" (2004) when a kid throws a toy turtle into a fire.

Well I finally saw it. I finally watched GAMERA SUPER MONSTER released in 1980. I remember being a kid in 1980 and thinking great! A brand new Gamera film, there's hope for the Gamera franchise. Not so. This film is so bad that I don't know which one is better GAMERA VS. ZIGRA or this one. I think it's a tie, they're both equally bad. It took 9 years for this movie to come out and it was not worth the wait.

The vast majority of the movie is stock footage from all of Gamera's past movies, no new monsters to battle in this film. Even the Gamera image in this movie looks cheap and ready to throw away after the movie is done.

The story has a group of "space women" living on Earth trying to prevent Earth from being taken over (what else). A young irritating boy is once again the focus of this movie besides the alien women and the boy dubbing in particular is especially bad. The movie is cheap and INCREDIBLY BORING.

Nothing but a bunch of rehashing old movie scenes with a very weak story.

NO STARS.

This is basically Godzilla: Final Wars combine with Godzilla's Revenge and I hated it. I mean if you think that you can just cash grab your audiences with lame stock footage, hell no! I thought of giving this movie a two-star rating because of the superheroes they had. But considering they were just useless and not doing much in the film expect for the playground fight. Yah, one-star rating sound right to me. Plus, they even made their own Star Wars ripoff vehicle. The story is stupid but the tradition of stupidity in Gamera movies is normal. If you haven't watch any previous Gamera movies, then this might be okay for you. But if you have, then this is total waste of money.

The first film was low-grade and low-budget, but still fairly enjoyable as it was. The second film of 1966 had its own faults, but clearly benefited from more resources and hard work, and it was genuinely good. From there onward, however, the Gamera franchise struggled heavily to be so much as middling: in a condescending effort to directly appeal to children most all earnestness, judiciousness, and careful consideration was stripped from the writing as child actors were centered, and the fundamental execution became all but sloppy and heedless. The seventh film of 1971, 'Gamera vs. Zigra,' was the worst nadir of all. Fast forward to 1980 after studio Daiei had gone bankrupt and was trying to salvage itself, and here comes filmmaker Yuasa Noriaki and screenwriter Takahashi Niisan with another entry in the series. One may well wonder if another installment ever had a real chance in the first place at finding success if it followed the same pattern, but just as much to the point, with the particular approach that was taken here, it definitely did not.

The first minutes aren't filmed footage, but still images with narration over top; the art looks fantastic, sure, but it's an inauspicious start. So is the design of the enemy spaceship, and one of the first glances we get of it, which are both obviously pulled from a certain Hollywood space opera of 1977. The first new post-production visuals we're treated to in this installment are jaw-dropping in their artificiality, being plainly outdated, and many instances to follow are no better. Before ten minutes have passed we're introduced to our young protagonist Keiichi who will invariably have an extra super special connection with Gamera, and like his predecessors in 'Zigra,' Maeda Koichi was clearly instructed to be as cutesy and boyish as possible - often giving off airs of mid-day television for kindergarten kids who only have half days at school. For good measure, add questionable treatment of animals. Though appearing out of the blue for this entry, and curiously exercised, the one interesting idea that this flick had was the "Spacewomen" superheroes who... are powerless to stop the villain.

I feel bad for everyone who got roped into participating in this, but especially Fumiake Mach, Kojima Yaeko, and Komatsu Yoko, who are forced into such small corners as the Spacewomen. From one scene to the next we're commonly subjected to writing and direction that are confounding for how weakly thought out they were. It is, in fact, possible for kids' movies - those centering kids, and those intended to appeal directly to them - to be good. But that doesn't happen by sacrificing meaningful craftsmanship, or by talking down to your target audience, and as with its antecedents, that's what happened in 'Gamera: Super monster' more than not. There are decent notions here for a story, perhaps, but they are not treated well, least of all nearly all footage of Gamera or his kaiju opponents is recycled from the previous features. One sequence seen here is shown to viewers for what is now the third time in the franchise. I can appreciate that Daiei was desperate to pull in some easy revenue with minimum expenditure, but the construction for this piece just feels like an outright insult to viewers. That is, more than the kitschy, ham-handed forebears of 1967-71 already were.

Ninety-two minutes feel inordinately long. Incredibly, however, even as a glorified clip show, this title manages to notably better than expected. Some of the acting is unexpectedly solid; Fumiake, Kojima, and Komatsu are charming despite the limitations placed on them, and the skills of Kudo Keiko and even Maeda do shine through every now and again. Some of the scene writing is surprisingly smart. There are tidbits of cleverness throughout, and it's also worth mentioning that by focusing on what are generally, somewhat, the best aspects of the franchise, the kaiju fights sometimes come across with more vibrancy than they do in the films they're drawn from. The concept of a veritable kaiju gauntlet is not new, and we would see it again in due course ('Godzilla: Final wars' is one of my favorites of that series), but it's splendid all the same, and I wish only that the doing here were more than mere recycled footage. And, hey, overall the new footage boasts strong production values. And still there are too many other examples in the writing and direction that all too apparently did not receive the same attention or care across the board, including the repeated cutaways to Giruge before and after each battle, a preponderance of the dialogue, the most lighthearted scenes with Keiichi, and the abrupt but temporary turn in the plot entering the last third.

The sad fact of the matter is that no matter how generous we wish to be while watching 'Gamera: Super monster,' it's not very good. It's not fully rotten. In light of what it does well, I want to like it more than I do; a short fight scene in the third act is an unlikely but welcome highlight. Given its most ignominious troubles, on the other hand, including decidedly forthright storytelling and plot development, maybe I'm being much too kind as it is. There is truly more strength in this picture than I would have ever assumed, all told - which just makes its sorriest qualities all the more vexing. No matter how you look at it this can't possibly be said to even rise above "below average" when all is said and done, and while there are worse ways to spend your time, there's just not enough lasting value to make this especially worthwhile. I suppose if one is immensely curious, or a completionist, this is just passable enough to provide mild entertainment for a quiet night. That's about the best that can be said for 'Gamera: Super monster,' however, and this is a movie best left in the archives of cinema history.