Here we have Guiron tickling Gamera’s tummy. I do hope it’s not breeding season!
Attack Of The Monsters (1969; aka Gamera vs. Guiron) is an odd, teeth-gritting, yet mildly charming movie starring Gamera, known as “Friend to children,” a gigantic, flying (there’s rockets up that ass, I’m tellin’ ya!), space-patrolling turtle with tusks and an odd devotion to the children of Earth.
In this fifth entry in this series of movies, two boys, Akio and Tom, spy a spaceship approaching Earth, and recognize it is landing near their homes in Japan. The next morning, rush off and find it. Traipsing inside, they find it unoccupied, and pushing a button as children will, it takes off. When in space, they encounter Gamera, who appears to be about three times the size of the spaceship. Gamera saves them from an incoming meteoroid strike, but when he tries to stop the spaceship, it evades and outruns him.
Knifehead of Pacific Rim
Where is it going? To the twin planet of Earth, circling the Sun in direct opposition to our blue marble. Our twin planet is cagily named Terra, the Latin name for Earth, and often used in old science fiction stories. The boys land near an abandoned science station and witness two monsters fighting, with victory going to the monster they later learn is named Guiron, which bears more than a passing resemblance to the kaiju Knifehead of Pacific Rim (2013).
Then they encounter the inhabitants of the station, two lady scientists, and learn they are the last survivors of Terra, endangered by creeping cold and invading monsters. (Hey, what about that spaceship, then?) Their only protection is Guiron, whom they control. They promise to help the boys get home by repairing the spaceship, which has been damaged.
But there are ulterior plans going on. The ladies really want to put the boys on their lunch menu, as they believe consuming the boys’ brains will give them the kids’ knowledge of Earth – and permit them to blend into the population when they, ah, emigrate. But just as Tom and Akio about to become appetizers, Gamera appears, and the ladies must occupy themselves with loosing Guiron to tackle Gamera.
The battle is strange, with Gamera running around on his hind legs, and Guiron revealing he can throw shurikens that are attached to his knife-like snout at Gamera, which even return to him after taking chunks out of Gamera. But Gamera has a few tricks of his own, including immobilizing Guiron for a few moments, long enough for Gamera to blow fire right up his ass.
No, I’m not kidding. It was quite impolite, I thought, and really a bad example to these kids.
In any case, Gamera loses in a victory for plot twists, and sinks to the bottom of a nearby lake, apparently dead. During the commotion, the boys stumble onto the secret of their destiny (good with olive oil), and do their best to escape – and it’s not a bad try, actually, what with short-range teleport stations and young legs. But their antagonists are equally wily and eventually capture them. But as they begin the preparations for the great feast, they are distracted by something (I forget what), one of the boys awakens from an enforced nap and frees himself, and eventually manages to find the control room and free Guiron from his cave. The scientists try to escape in the spaceship, but Guiron, apparently in a bad mood, slices the ship in half, injuring one of the scientists (turns out that injury in the Terran society is a fatal mistake, which may explain what really happened to the Terran society). Gamera, at the pleas of the children, springs back into action and destroys Guiron by dropping him on his head from about 100 feet up, and while he’s stuck in that position, Gamera uses a convenient rocket to blow Guiron up (the surviving scientist is also finished off).
Yeah, they could have just left Guiron alone, as he was stuck for a while, but instead they blew him up. For something that loves Earth kids, Gamera sure sets a bad example.
Gamera then repairs the spaceship, the boys board it, and Gamera takes them home by putting it in his mouth and taking flight.
What hurt? The dialog and/or dubbing, which was both dreadful and awful. The monsters are hardly any better, just guys in rubber suits, and while Guiron is sort of interesting, Gamera still has rockets up his ass, and this creepy interest in Earth’s children. The special effects in general were also awful.
But there are elements of a real story here. Gamera is not impregnable, as Guiron not only makes him bleed, but knocks him unconscious. And the monsters’ battles do have elements of cleverness, which adds an element of ebb and flow of tension.
And for all that the dialog was awful, the bones of this story are not rotten. Both the boys and their antagonists are clever. The boys formulate a plan and you expect it to work – and it doesn’t. So they try something else. There’s an actual bit of anticipation, although you know the boys are hardly likely to actually end up in an oven.
So it’s sort of looking at a soup full of rotten vegetables and realizing the carrots are not rotten. I wouldn’t watch it again, but I can’t quite categorize it as utterly trite trash. You have to comb it for a while, but there’s just a little bit that’s OK. The soup’s base fish stock was made from a rotten piscine, and most of the veggies are rotten, but every once in a while a bit of turnip is OK.
Good thing I spent most of my time “watching” this actually making and eating dinners, though.
