much more than a juvenile goof on Toho’s films. While it took the Godzilla series several years to drift toward rubber-suited pro-wrestling matches, Gamera dabbled in kiddie-friendly camp early on. Toshio, who believes Gamera is the incarnation of a pet turtle he was forced to give up, dominates the last half of the picture, loudly protesting that Gamera doesn’t mean to be bad, even as stock footage army artillery bombards the creature to stop him from pulver- izing more buildings. In addition to sympathizing with the turtle-ob-
sessed Toshi, young viewers surely would have been impressed with Gamera’s production de- sign. As a resurrected giant prehistoric tortoise, Gamera is actually pretty fearsome. What he lacks in girth he makes up for in expressiveness, with large eyes and even bigger fangs. He even boasts a new power intended to trump Godzilla’s impressive strength and atomic breath – with- drawing into his shell, Gamera can spin himself into the air and shoot across the sky like a UFO. Incorporating model work and optical printing,
Give ’Em Shell!
GAMERA (1965) Starring Eiji Funakoshi, Yoshiro Uchida and Harumi Kiritachi
Written and directed by Nisan Takahashi Shout! Factory
It’s said that Masaichi Nagata, head of
Japan’s Daiei Studios, first got the idea for a giant marauding turtle monster movie while dreaming one night – no doubt after a Godzilla marathon and too much leftover pizza (or the Japanese substitute). An obvious knock-off of Toho Studio’s premiere kaiju franchise, which was already five installments deep when Nagata ordered a script based on his vision, Gamera’s fearsome emergence in 1965 nevertheless proved that Tokyo Harbour was big enough for at least two city-smashing titans. Still, Godzilla has remained the favourite over
the years. Japan’s original King of the Monsters even got his due respect on DVD first, in 2006, when Sony released Gojira, a fully restored for- eign-language version that properly exposed the depth of the original’s stark nuclear annihilation allegory. Now, however, the hero-in-a-whole- shell underdog is ready for his own resurgence with the first North American release of the sub- titled, original cut of Gamera.
REI SSU ES Though Gojira shows that Godzilla began his
career with a more serious edge, Gamera down- plays the horrific aspects of its premise. Like his reptilian rival, Gamera arises in the wake of a nuclear blast, but his smash-happy sightsee- ing tour, which includes a lighthouse (The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms anyone?), is only due to his energy-eating turtle- saurus’ hunger. Gamera not only focuses most of his fury on inanimate objects, he’s also re- vealed to be a kind- hearted “friend to all children” that saves the life of hapless Toshio (Yoshiro Uchida). If Godzilla represented the unleashed destructive power of the A-bomb, then Gamera seems to counter-argue that atomic weapons can also be a protective force, safeguarding a country’s fu- ture from outside peril. This may be giving Gamera too much credit, though, as the original eight-film franchise isn’t
the special effects are not great, but they’re quite comparable to Toho’s best work, with intricate cityscapes, power plants and military facilities just waiting to be crushed under the foot of a tur- tle-suited stuntman. The highlight of the film is Gamera’s arrival in downtown Tokyo to rip off roofs, knock down the Tokyo Tower and scare off dancing teenagers that are initially too busy rocking out to worry about deadly giant monster at- tacks. While the original Japan-
ese version isn’t a revela- tion for those familiar with the more common budget DVD release (dubbed by American producer Sandy Frank in the 1980s), Shout! Factory has given this turtle a much-needed new coat of wax. Its Gamera DVD fea- tures a sharply remastered anamorphic transfer in the original aspect ratio, and in- cludes a variety of extras, including a twenty-minute Japanese documentary on the character’s genesis.
Godzilla may have had a head start as Japan’s kaiju movie of choice, but Gamera’s slow and steady progress with this new DVD should at least keep him in the race.
PAUL CORUPE
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