... aka: Gamera vs. Guillon
... aka: Gamera vs. Guiron
... aka: Gamera vs. the Devil-Beast Guiron
... aka: Gamera vs. the Giant Evil Beast Guiron
Directed by:
Noriaki Yuasa
By this point in the Gamera series,
things were decidedly being geared more toward children, which is cool, I
guess. Kids need monster movies just like the rest of us and these films
are good, harmless (well, mostly...) ways to introduce the young ones to the genre.
This past holiday weekend I had the pleasure of babysitting my 3 1/2 year
old niece, who kept me so busy from 7am until 9pm that I barely had a chance to
squeeze in any horror movies. I did however have plenty of time to shop for
Minnie Mouse socks, brush up on my watercolor painting, play Dora the Explorer
games on the Nick Jr. website and listen to the Yo Gabba Gabba Megamix about 100
times. Side note: I'm praying I can get "Go! Go! Go, Foofa!" out of my head by
the end of the week. My niece is usually a pretty good sleeper, but one evening
she wandered into the living room while I was watching this. Since it was
nearing the end and had been rather G-rated up until that point, I let her watch
a couple of scenes before it was back to bed. Her verdict? Gamera is "... a
silly and weird turtle." As for Guiron, well: "I don't like him. He's scary and
looks mean." If only I could nail a film down in so many words.
After
astronomer Dr. Shiga (Eiji Funakoshi) holds a press conference
about strange magnetic waves they've been receiving, a spaceship lands in
a vacant field somewhere in Japan. Young Akio (Nobuhiro Kajima), his
kid sister Tomoko (Miyuki Akiyama) and his friend Tom (Chrystopher
Murphy) happen to be stargazing with a telescope and see it. None of
the adults - including Akio and Tomoko's mother Kuniko (Yuko Hamada)
nor neighborhood cop Officer Kondo (Kon Omura) believe them, so the
next morning the three kids ride their bikes go to the spot where it
landed and sure enough there it is. Akio and Tom go inside and realize no
one's on board, so they immediately start pushing buttons. Next thing they
know the ship's lifting off and they're flying through space. When they
come across some meteors, Gamera the giant jet-propelled flying turtle and
"friend of children" saves the day by smashing the rocks, but the spaceship
speeds up and they lose him.
Meanwhile, Akio and Tom have crash landed on a strange planet called
Terra, which is on the opposite side of the sun and has an atmosphere
somewhat similar to ours. They first spot the big, winged,
aluminum-foil-wrapped bird that looks similar to Gaos, who'd caused some
problems in a previous film in this series. Gaos encounters Guiron, who
comes crawling out of the ground. Looking like a cross between a shark and
a Bowie knife and equipped with throwing stars on his schnoz, Guiron
reflects Goas' laser ray back onto him, which cuts off his leg. The two
boys then encounter a pair of female aliens in tights, but are Barbella (Hiroki
Kai) and Florbella (Reiko Kasahara) as kind as they first
appear? Conducting experiments in controlling the environment have
backfired for the race of Terrans and now because their planet is frozen
and overrun by monsters, they'd like to locate. The two aliens are the
last of their race, have lots of neat gadgets and have control over Guiron;
who does their bidding. They'd also plan on eating Akio and Tom's brains
to acquire their knowledge. A trip to Earth for them will be just another
all-you-can eat cannibal buffet.
Back on Earth, little Tomoko tries to tell mom what happened, but her constant whining falls on deaf ears. Tom's skeptical mother Elza (Edith Hanson)
shows up looking for her son and also doesn't believe Tomoko; telling
authorities "Psychologists insist that if you believe everything a child
says it's educationally and psychologically wrong!" So let me get this
straight... In a world where gigantic alien creatures demolishing cities
is the norm, and a big, child-loving turtle with a build in jet propulsion
system flies around fighting them, is it really all that hard to
believe that a couple of kids flew off in a spaceship? Nevertheless, this
is cute and lively if you can get past Akio's obnoxious habit of calling
everyone an idiot. Gamera not only gets to fight Guiron several times and
eventually save the day, but he also gets to demonstrate his formidable
gymnastic abilities on the uneven bar. Some scenes seem a little harsh for
really small children, like when the aliens give the boys doughnuts laced
with "sleeping powder," then strap Akio down, shave his noggin and then
begin to cut into his head with an electric saw!
Yuasa also directed the original Gamera, the Giant Monster (1965)
and all of the sequels in the original series aside from the first:
Gamera vs. Barugon (1966; aka
War of the Monsters); which is more serious and adult-oriented. The others
are
Gamera vs. Gaos (1967; aka Return of the Giant Monsters) and
Gamera vs. Viras (1968; aka Destroy All Planets), scenes from
both of which are used as flashback footage here, Gamera vs.
Monster X (1970) and Gamera vs. Zigra (1971). AIP-TV initially
released the films in America, while Sandy Frank
handled later U.S. theatrical distribution for most of the series (often
having the films re-dubbed a second time). They're all pretty easy to find on DVD, VHS or online to view.
★★1/2
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