****          Gamera returns to fight Baragon, er, Barugon!

With their Gamera movie a success, Daiei decides to make a second one. Luckily for adults, they decide to not throw a little kid in (the only Gamera movie to do so, unfortunately)! They also decided to make their monster have almost the same name as a popular Toho monster of the same time, even though he only vaguely resembles it.

An asteroid hits the rocket that Gamera was in, and Gamera is released! He returns to earth, and attacks a dam. Meanwhile, some tomb-raider-type people decide to go off to some island to get a giant opal. The natives say they shouldn’t go into "Rainbow Valley" (ooh, scary name!), but they do it anyways. They find what looks to be a giant opal, and the jerk of the group gets greedy and kills the other two members (actually, one survives to pop back later to beat him up and save the world, the other was killed by a scorpion), and goes back to Japan. Well, due to an accident with some sort of athlete's foot treatment, the opal gets exposed to infrared light. It turns out that it's really an egg, and the light makes it hatch and make the monster inside grow at an abnormal rate. This monster runs around destroying things with his freezing breath from his tongue, and Gamera shows up when he sends out a giant rainbow (yes, I'm not kidding, this guy has a giant deadly energy rainbow for a weapon)! Gamera gets frozen (he's weak against low temperatures, remember?), and everybody tries to stop the monster by throwing him into a lake, because he's weak against water (man, now there's a lame weakness! Oh no, water, ahhh!). They try luring him with a giant diamond (he likes shiny objects), but that doesn't work because he's a freak (well of course). They send infrared light through the diamond, but bad guy shows up! He gets eaten, and so does the diamond. They try reflecting Barugon's rainbow, but he doesn't get hurt enough. When all is lost, Gamera shows up (finally)! He battles Barugon, and drowns him.

Well now that's a long plot! Well, it's a long movie. In fact, it's longer than most of the recent movies, and way longer than all the original ones! 101 minutes of boring torture to some, but I thought it was pretty good. The plot is very good. Long, complex, and with no little kids! It's quite dramatic, and at times over dramatic! The main problem that I saw is this: the main good guy sees someone he barely knows die, gets all teary eyed, but when his brother dies he doesn't seem to care as much. When his brother was alive and he heard that the other brother was dead (main character), he didn't seam to care as much either. Very odd (I heard of sibling rivalry, but yeesh). But otherwise the plot is quite good. Daiei was known for their dramatic non-monster movies, and it creeps into the monster movies themselves, particularly this one. What I found is that Gamera movies may look cheap and rubbery, but they usually have a great plot to back it up (even though it gets a bit far-fetched at times, and then there's the kids). Since this wasn't supposed to be a kiddy movie, they went all out with the plot! A little too much at times, but too much plot is better than no plot!

Actually, this one has what I consider to be some of the best special effects work of any Gamera movie! Reason is probably that they put more money into it then any other Gamera movie! Gamera and the other monsters always looked extremely fake, cheap, and rubbery, but this one isn't as bad. Barugon doesn't look very "rubbery" at all (well, except for the tongue). They even threw in glowing spines! There is a lot of other special effect works including great model cities, great rainbow effects, great toy tanks, great model planes, terrific monster blood squirting, good mat work, good superimposing, and a real helicopter! They went all out with this one, and it shows. It's a long movie, but it's packed with fun stuff all the way! The only thing that is boring is shear length, but that's so relaxing isn't it! Now if your looking for a good movie with Gamera running around doing the things he does, well then this isn't that good. Gamera makes only a cameo appearance; Barugon steals the show. But, it's still a great monster movie! I recommend it to anybody who likes Japanese guy-in-a-rubber-suit monster movies!

Great Plot!

Great Special Effects (for a Gamera movie)

Long, but good as a whole.

Short, but good battles.

Spared no expense (for a Gamera movie)!

Barugon may be extremely weird, but he's cool man!

No whiny brat kids!

Over dramatic at times!

Reasonable, but it's still fake looking!

Did you realize that mirrors don't reflect all the energy that it takes in?

So, where’s Gamera? Oh, there he is! No, wait, he's gone again.

The odds for an asteroid hitting a space ship are approximately 3,720 to 1!

You killed my brother! Now, I will hurt you a little bit and let you go about your business!

Credits