Daimajin gyakushû

Wrath of Daimajin (1966) is a Japanese samurai monster movie I recently watched on a random streaming service. The storyline follows a group of kids whose family is being used as slaves to work the sulfur mines. They set out on an adventure to find sacred religious grounds where it's rumored a monster resides that if freed can save their families.

This movie is directed by Kazuo Mori (Zatoichi at Large) and stars Junichiro Yamashita (Gamera: The Giant Monster), Tôru Abe (Tokyo Story), Tanie Kitabayashi (Rikyu) and Yûzô Hayakawa (Gamera vs Barugon).

The majority of this film is about the children on an adventure and trying to survive harsh conditions in the wilderness. It's 1 hour and 5 minutes into the movie before you see Daimajin. There are some cool bird attack scenes that are well done and the arrival of Daimajin was cool. His intro music was very much like Godzilla's. The town models were very cool as was the use of snow. Daimajin arriving and attacking the city was pretty fun as were some of the elements they created within the town (like the zip lines).

Overall this is a very average addition to the genre that was a huge step down from the first Daimajin film. I would score this a 5/10 and recommend skipping it.