Gamera vs Gyaos by Jack Teagle

Gamera vs Gyaos

What to do when a modest but genuinely excellent creature feature like Gamera vs Barugon underperforms at the box office? Well, you aim the follow-up squarely at youngsters and hope they end up dragging along the rest of their family for the show. Thankfully, despite this inauspicious conceptual detour, director Noriaki Yuasa's Gamera vs Gyaos has, in Naoyuki Abe's Eiichi Kanamura, a central child performance that registers as delightfully chaotic rather than prim or pandering. Eiichi, usually seen combing through phone registry-sized comics or firing cap guns at his toy police car, is only lightly threaded into a human-level intrigue that takes in a village full of ageing farmers who are trying to wring the maximum amount of money out of a nearby road development that has, naturally, disturbed the more predatory of the title monsters. Since it's extremely difficult to care about greedy adults too timid to actually commit any exciting crimes, Yuasa's film depends on the stout, indefatigable Eiichi to stumble upon the people chomping bats that menace this parochial prefecture. 

Snatched up by a ravenous monster then rescued by everybody's favourite rocket-powered turtle, Eiichi takes all of these developments in his stride; quickly returning to his bedroom to depict his blazing hero in a lurid crayon etching. In this sense Eiichi's adventures prefigure Ishiro Honda's undervalued All Monsters Attack, the Godzilla franchise's belated attempt at catering directly to the younger audience it had cultivated. Unlike All Monsters though, Gamera vs Gyaos isn't hobbled by recycling footage culled from earlier instalments. Instead Yuasa, who also helmed this film's special effects photography, stages a series of impressively barbarous encounters between these warring behemoths that sees flippers lasered to the flapping bone, toes chewed off then regrown, and an injured Gamera raging underneath an emerald mask of his own blood. A special mention then for Gyaos, a pointedly malevolent animal who looks and even behaves like a cute capsule toy in chuckling close-up but, when fully revealed, also manages to transmit the terrifying uncanniness of a man's body adorned with massive, leathery wings. Unlike its benevolent, reptilian opponent - who suffers slathering injury to protect a child - Gyaos is pure consumptive glee, never happier than when it's able to scoop up screaming bystanders and feast on them like a skyscraper-sized vampire. 

Gamera by Eric Schuster

Gamera vs Barugon

Although it would be absurd to claim Gamera vs Barugon as some sort of unfairly maligned masterpiece, director Shigeo Tanaka's film does contain individual ideas and moments that range from conceptually sound all the way up to genuinely beautiful. Gamera's second big screen outing largely dispense with the rocket-powered turtle to mooch around with a gang of lawbreakers chasing a magnificent opal that is, in fact, a monster egg. Koji Fujiyama's Onodera is the most thrilling element in this human strata, a greedy thug who is allowed a tremendous lack of repercussion for his murderous actions, enabling him to hurry the plot forward whenever the boring do-gooders hit a brick wall.

Onodera's most incredible moment arrives deep into the third-act: the burly wrongdoer staging a heist in the middle of a calamitous, barely-holding-together, military operation. With the Japanese Self-Defence Force distracted - their attention captured by a mission that demands they dangle glimmering trinkets in front of title pest Barugon - Onodera blasts in out of the darkness, interrupting the painstaking attempt to lure this materialistic monster to his doom. Fujiyama's thief crashes his speedboat directly into the military command vessel before jumping aboard then outgunning the soldiers guarding the dazzling diamond being used as bait.

Onodera's unapologetic villainy is such that he feels precisely zero shame about inflicting further Barugon carnage on the world. He just wants to get paid, even if that means stealing the solution to a problem he has directly caused. Human greed and an indifference to ecological balance is a frequent driving force in kaiju films but it's fun seeing these ideas expressed specifically in terms of street level criminality and a passionate (but illogical) self-interest. The Gamera series is so committed to making human ingenuity a plausible solution to monster landings that it seems equally important, not to mention exciting, to pursue the ways in which the individual can work to scupper an otherwise unified defence.

Which brings us to the monsters themselves. While both Barugon and the barely featured Gamera conduct themselves with a stiffness normally associated with poorly pressed pocket money toys, Gamera vs Barugon does have an ace up its sleeve - special effects director Noriaki Yuasa. Daiei Film may not have the same kind of money, or international appeal, as Toho's irradiated output but Yuasa is able to iterate and innovate on the established language of monster confrontation. The special effects director's approach is distinct from that of Godzilla powerhouses Ishiro Honda and Eiji Tsuburaya in that Yuasa is less interested in terrifying cataclysm, preferring to luxuriate in the company of these special effects and their surreal, seismic relationship with our world.

Perhaps lacking the confidence that Gamera and Barugon's Imperial stamped outfits will stand up to close scrutiny, Yuasa hides the creatures in night-time sorties, lit by tracer rounds and blanketed by luminous, but sooted, smoke. The background and foreground are stacked with shattered detailing, stressing both the danger of proximity and the sheer scale of these beasts. This smouldering approach to monster mise en scene is absolutely rooted in Tsuburaya's work on the original Godzilla but Yuasa pushes the smoked-out technique further, accounting for clashing, blood-thirsty characteristics in these less otherworldly creatures. Tsuburaya's Kaiju tower over their surroundings, Yuasa's are caged by them, stuck thrashing against humanity's shattering structures. This is wonderful, influential, work. Yuasa's gloriously gritty approach to special effects staging clearly discernible in Teruyoshi Nakano and Eiichi Asada's later, exemplary runs with the Godzilla franchise.

Gammera the Invincible

This American chop-job of Gamera: The Giant Monster amplifies the basic city-stomping premise, exploding the scope of the giant turtle's destruction from a few isolated appearances off the Japanese coast to a full-on, catastrophic world tour. Unfortunately for Gammera the Invincible, this escalation is communicated through dull office set-ups and circuitous dialogue rather than an expanded suite of exciting special effects shots. Localisation director Sandy Howard laces Noriaki Yuasa's film with bursts of secretarial faff, all shot flat and sensible. Survive this meeting room intrigue and Invincible eventually treats the viewer to the murky, atmospheric effects photography of Nobou Munekawa. Gammera's rampages see the giant turtle rubbing up against various factory landscapes, all of which are battered beneath his scaly feet. Presumably nocturnal, Gammera is only glimpsed at night, the all-encompassing darkness accentuating the turtle's flamethrower head and the white-out electric shocks that irritate him. Despite an attempt to iron out the film's peculiarities for a drive-in crowd, it's Munekawa's camera work that leaves the biggest impression. If anything the mind-numbing war council scenes provide an overly sensible point of contrast for the genuinely ethereal sight of enormous, inky smoke clouds lingering over the ruins of heavy industry. 

FRIEND TO ALL CHILDREN

Katsuhito Ishii's proof-of-concept trailer for an upcoming Gamera reboot has been screened at the New York Comic Con. Ishii directed cult fav Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl, as well as contributing to both Redline and Kill Bill Volume 1's animated sequence. Based on this footage, Ishii is turbo-charging CG monster mashers with the kind of yucky detailing and dynamic destruction you'd expect from the very best apocalypse anime.

Gamera 3: The Revenge of Iris

Gamera 3: The Revenge of Iris starts incredibly strong. Shusuke Kaneko and Kazunori Ito concoct a first act that functions like the last, confrontational, word on the entire kaiju genre. We're not in a fantasy land of last minute evacuations, Gamera doesn't pivot and contort during battle to shield puny humans like he did in Gamera: Guardian of the Universe. When the jet-propelled turtle faces a gang of winged Gyaos over Shibuya there is a human cost. Every step brings calamity. Subways cave in, commuters are vaporised. Even the bubbling mulch of Gamera's vanquished foes ends up flattening a gang of boozed up bystanders.

Gamera is given a makeover to better tally with this imperfection. He's no longer rounded and cute, instead he's spiky. His head is small and brutal like a snapping turtle, his neck ugly and elongated. We're primed for a dour, realistic take on fallibility of gigantic saviour Gods. Unfortunately these thematic ideas don't really inform the ebb and flow of the film. Instead they're consumed to serve the character arc of a sullen little girl. Ayana lost her parents and her cat when Gamera strode through the building they lived in. His actions aren't excused, he isn't thrown into the building by an enemy's attack, he's just, in that moment, oblivious.

Understandably, Ayana detests Gamera. When she discovers the egg of an ancient tentacled God, postulated to be Gamera's opposite, she forms a symbiotic relationship with the creature. This then becomes the film's focus - Gamera and his effect on the world is subordinated to concentrate on two characters whose motives are, at best, remote. Their hatred isn't a burning, maniacal drive, it's a simmering constant expressed through evasive eye contact, ultimately discarded when Ayana finds herself out of her depth. Compounding this disappointment are the numerous asides about Gamera being elsewhere, participating in a more exciting film about an apocalyptic extinction war with armies of prehistoric bats.

Gamera 2: Advent of Legion

Gamera's problem is that he doesn't have a pop. He lacks a memorable roar, a pounding, foreboding theme tune doesn't announce his every appearance. Gamera's appeal is a little less obvious. He isn't a show-off, he's a stocky mid-card scrapper that soaks up punishment and fights like hell. This humble approach to world saving informs the tone and reflects the slighter budget of Daiei's films. So while we don't get the sweeping majesty of a moving mountain bumbling through a minutely detailed recreation of the Tokyo skyline, we do get a screaming, bleeding turtle covered in tiny, razor sharp crustaceans.

The basic thrust of Kazunori Ito's script delivers on misleading American publicity for Godzilla vs The Thing, namely a heroic monster fighting an alien interloper that threatens to consume our world. Gamera 2: Advent of Legion matches the gigantic turtle against multiplying alien drones and their airborne crab queen. Both title creatures take a beating. Shinji Higuchi's team roll with the carnage, dreaming up majestic new modes for the shredded pugilists. Two films deep, it feels like the strength of the Heisei Gamera cycle has been a lack of expectation at a conception level. The Godzilla films of the period started off strong with new, vivid enemies, but got bogged down in repetition when the box office wasn't busted. Gamera succeeds through modesty. His films don't have to be the year's biggest earners, they just have to be solid monster movies. Toho was obviously taking notes, Gamera 2's influence is all over the Millennium Godzillas.

Gamera: Guardian of the Universe

Gamera: Guardian of the Universe lacks the pomp and circumstance of similar Godzilla cycles. For a start the title character isn't regarded with paralysing religious awe. Despite clearly acting in mankind's best interests, Gamera is treated as an irritant by Japan's political elite and their Self-Defense Force. When large reptilian birds named Gyaos are discovered on a remote island, the fleeting opportunity to trap them and make some theme park money is scuppered by the arrival of the titular jet-propelled turtle. It's not until the Gyaos begin cannibalising each other to create an alpha example that Japan gets on board with its half-shell hero.

Shusuke Kaneko keeps this Gamera clipped and crisp. Basic unstoppable force machinations are flavoured with short, shocking calamity. Aside from a mid-air action finale, the stand out sequence is the attempt to capture the infant Gyaos. Cattle carcasses are piled up to lure them to an empty baseball stadium. Once the birds begin their feast, the military plan to close the retractable roof and tranquillise them. It's an elegant solution to more modestly sized, and budgeted, monsters. Gamera doesn't need to fabricate fantastical sci-fi gun platforms to challenge these new threats, its world instead has a reasonable, but realistically fallible response. Shinji Higuchi's special effects landscapes are also scaled to monsters much smaller than those seen in contemporary Godzilla films, better able to stress the idea that something horrible and alien has infected this environment rather than simply trampled it.