Daikyojû Gappa

Long thought to be missing but.......here it is. (Apologies to the Ramones.)

This was a late comer to the U.S. video ranks because its script was hard to change to make it more 'American.' Japanese satire would be lost on anyone without a significant knowledge of the country. Most would see this as just another dude in a rubber suit burning Tokyo again.

The monster itself was a bit different. Like Godzilla and Rodan hybridized. The usual happens. Military comes...fails...but this guy knows the secret.

I have a Japanese video copy. It's the original version. But the DVD release was necessary. And the racist tag line never existed.

If the plot seems a bit derivative, it was meant to. This was Nikkatsu studios first and only monster flick. It was produced strictly to cash-in at the height of the genre. The writers knew it had all been done before, so they took those cliches, and satirized them. Like the greedy entrepreneur, responsible for drawing the monster's parents to look for their baby. I like the extra touches, like the mother carrying an octopus in her mouth, (while stomping buildings) to feed her young. The effect scenes were shot at Eiji Tsuburaya's newly formed independent studio, which was producing the first UltraMan series at the time. Surprisingly, this film holds up very well, passing the test of time. Besides, these monsters show up only in one film. How many kaiju can you say that about ? This is also one of the few Japanese movies commercially available on video, widescreen and subtitled. Two appendages up !!!

Move over Dr Strangelove; "Monster from a Prehistoric Planet" is the new satire in town. Okay, maybe my sarcasm is unjustified, Japanese satire is either too high brow for me or gets completely lost in translation. And its perfectly easy to loose anything in the atrocious dubbing kaiju films get plastered with.

If I'm kind I have to call it a parody of King Kong; as the film deals with an expedition force, who are trying to find exotic animals for a new theme park, stumbling across a mysterious island where the indigenous tribe (who look strangely similar to Japanese with coal on their faces) worship a god called Gappa. The expedition take a baby Gappa back to Japan, with the parents in hot pursuit. Cue the miniatures.

With the hideously handled love side story and the hilariously sentimental finale, I can only assume that this film was intended as tongue in cheek fare, and the satire label certainly confirms this. This aside however, the film is terrific by the standards of the time, with incredible amounts of destruction and very little time to breathe in between. Whether I'm missing the supposed hard-hitting social satire I don't really care; "Monster from a Prehistoric Planet" is a wonderfully extravagant example of monster films done properly, with a plot that doesn't dither amount and action that moves back to Japan pretty swiftly and doesn't let up from then on. The clichés are all over the place but this is hardly an issue, intentional or otherwise. Certainly, a kaiju film trying its hand at satire would be expected to be about as subtle as a ton of bricks, and with this in mind the film could have turned out a hell of a lot worse.

(To the elite, "Monster from a Prehistoric Planet" has a special appeal. The Gappas are the very same monsters that menaced Kryten and Rimmer on wax world in series 4 of Red Dwarf; and as Kryten observed, you've probably seen more convincing dinosaurs in a packet of "wheatie flakes")

I was visiting this movie approximately in 1972, when communist allow us to see two or three Japanese "sci-fi" movies. In that time it has been for me something new, I've been a small boy, but I feel it is not good. But it has been from my lovely sci-fi section and now I bought a DVD and look at it with pleasure. There is so much mistakes... For example the rocket propulsion of that giant lizards, the fire from their mouths when they destroyed all military technology - tanks and aircraft, their bullet, bomb and rocket proof skin. The monsters can fly, walk and float under see, just one problem they have - they don't like high-frequency sound, so army can thrust their from the lake under Fuji. On the island, where from are the monsters are living the natives which are waiting tens generations for Japanese liberators, but almost all know the Japanese language! The end is beautiful and very sentimental - first and last time you can see a giant monster to cry:-)

Nikkatsu Studio was one of the six largest movie studio in Japan at the time this movie was made, but due to the proliferation of TV sets, Japanese movie industry was in a steady economic decline. Kaijyu or giant monster movies were about the only franchise that were still making good money, and Nikkatsu made an attempt to jump in to this genre with this movie.

A Japanese expedition to the south pacific island unwittingly stumble onto a newly hatched baby triphibian reptile which the natives call "Gappa", and brings it back to Japan. A greedy publishing magnate, and an amusement park promoter notices a good thing when he sees one and decides to display the baby at his park. This didn't sit well with the parents of the baby reptile, and they show up in Japan to claim their kid. Rest is stereotypical giant monster mayhem.

This movie as far as I know is the only movie that features a complete family of giant monsters or "Kaijyu" ever to be shown together. It's also a first Triphibian monster that can walk, breathe underwater, and fly. The story is bit derivative where I can see little pieces off of Gorgo, Mothra, Godzilla, King Kong etc. and not very original, but the special effects in this movie is surprisingly good for a studio's first attempt. Gappa is not just an mindless monster, but actually seems to have intelligence behind their actions. This lowers the tension of the monster's character as an engine of destruction, and the movie carries on with bit of a bore, but the overall production is good, and ranks as an average giant monster movie. You get to see a very young Yoko Yamamoto playing the star in this movie. She's still acting after nearly 50 years since this movie was made, and amazingly, still beautiful in her roles.