** Gamera Movie Made From Stock Footage! Run For Your Lives!

 Essentially the Gamera equivalent of "Godzilla’s Revenge" due to a similar format; both movies prominently feature a little kid as a main character and have a large quantity of stock footage passed off as new material. The difference with this one is that there is very little in the way of new footage, but the advantage is that every single Gamera movie has the main battle of each rehashed into a single movie. A number of wacky events fill out this 90-minute sorry excuse for a movie.

It is debatable if this movie is even part of the same continuity as the other movies, and it is also debatable as to if any of this stuff actually happened or if it was instead just dreamed up by the main character. I’m just going to pretend this stuff really happened in the overall continuity. The main little kid character of the movie has an obsession for comic books and turtles, and somehow this makes him the world-leading expert on Gamera. This is noted by a trio of "spacewomen", who came to Earth to fill the usual super hero role with their ability to fly, their high-tech keyboard, and their flying van. Meanwhile, a large space ship that looks suspiciously like a star destroyer goes into orbit around the planet. Onboard is an evil race of space pirates called the Xenon, who for some reason wish to conquer the Earth. In order to wipe out any threats, they send a single member of their race to Earth to find out everything about the planet. Apparently the space pirates are low on employees, but she ends up finding the greatest defenders of Earth anyways. The usual "idiot plot" ensues with everyone running around every which way trying to figure out who is who, what is what, and getting it all wrong. About the only character with any intelligence is Gamera, who of course takes on Gaos, Zigra, Viras, Jiger, Guiron, and Barugon in a succession of battles that seem suspiciously similar to previous encounters. At one point, Gamera is brought under control by the Xenon and sent to destroy random cities, but the space women do their part and release him from control. After beating up every monster that comes his way, Gamera then decides to end the space pirate threat by ramming himself into their spaceship.

Really the above description doesn’t do this movie justice, because the plot is in reality surprisingly coherent. A lot of silly stuff is combined with stock footage in a fairly well-done manner, free of any major plot holes or unexplained events. In fact, their insistence on making a movie with a continuous plot succeeds in simply making the movie more slow-paced, but at least you can’t complain about poorly inserted footage. Still, much of the silly events could have been taken out without a loss, such as the occasional sing-along with the Gamera theme song, as well as the increasingly annoying transition of the space women as they take on a "human" form (conservative clothes instead of pink spandex and capes). Still, the movie does keep you entertained with all the happenings, and really the experience isn’t all that painful, although the younger you are the more entertained you will be.

The special effects range from pretty good to mind-numbingly bad. It all depends on which scene you look at. Being the last Gamera movie made, as well as being produced post - Star Wars, means that the effects guys had much more fancy technology at their command. The result is the occasional effect that blows the other Gamera movies away. Too bad the low budget led to inconsistency. The majority of the effects come from the stock footage of the Gamera battles, which are thankfully mostly intact. They were entertaining the first time around and are almost as good the second time around, especially since they take place within the plot as opposed to the useless filler found in "Gamera vs. Viras". Yes, there is stock footage from "Gamera the Invincible", but at least the editors had the foresight to make the main characters watch it on a black-and-white TV so as to not be so jarring. For some reason, the movie also has stock footage from a Japanese anime movie "Galaxy Express 999" and the TV anime called "Space Cruiser Yamato", which ends up being very out-of-place. Actually, if you never watched or heard or were told of any of this stuff and simply watched the movie, you wouldn’t realize that the movie was so cheap and be much more thrilled about it.

As with most Gamera movies, it is campy as all heck, fun to laugh at, and filled with great monster battles. Thing is, if you were to buy only one Gamera movie, this would be it, because it contains the best parts of all the previous Gamera movies. With one quick viewing, you can sample the entire Show Gamera series in one bite. Yes the movie is bad, but it is useful to have around, and anybody who wants to have all the Gamera movies should get this one as well.

Very silly and very campy plot that is surprisingly coherent and entertaining

A lot of the new special effects are actually pretty good

The kaiju battles were entertaining before, and they still are now

Provides a somewhat fitting end for the original Gamera series

A useful movie for a quick Gamera fix

Stock footage, lots and lots of stock footage

Cartoon footage really doesn’t belong in a live-action movie

Has some of the most idiotic space women I have every seen, on both sides of the conflict

What amazes me is how they expect us to not realize that the space ship was designed after a "Star Wars" Star Destroyer

AAARRRRGGGHHHH! Why must you sing the Gamera theme song! You can’t play the keyboard and you can’t sing so for the love or giant turtles would you please stop!

Credits