****        Gamera and Jiger Trash the 1970 World Expo

The main defining factor of old Gamera movies is this: they’re bleeping weird. Sometimes they are too weird for their own good. Other times they are truly screwed up yet still maintain themselves enough to produce a well made and entertaining kaiju movie. This one’s the latter.

Apparently someone thought it to be a good idea to take a giant statue from some place called Wester Island and stick in the 1970 World Fair. As usual, they don’t head the warnings of the natives (or Gamera) and end up unleashing a giant monster. Gamera fights Jiger, dubbed Monster X by the media (an obvious reference to “Godzilla vs. Monster 0”), but ends up getting impaled in all four limbs. Jiger decides to head to a big model city and destroy everything in site. Gamera manages to pull the spikes out of his limbs and follow, only to be injected with something. The humans conclude that Gamera has an egg incubating inside of him, and the kids of the movie take a familiar-looking yellow submarine and drive into Gamera’s lungs. They do battle with a baby Jiger and defeat it by throwing a radio at it. Apparently radio static is at the same frequency as the noise made by wind blowing in the tube of the giant statue, and Jiger happens to be weakened by this frequency, so they hook up some big speakers and point them towards Jiger. Meanwhile they try to jump-start Gamera with some electricity, which wasn’t a very smart idea due to the subsequent blackout, which cuts the power to the speakers. Needless to say Gamera wakes up and fights with Jiger again. One statue jabbed into the head latter and chalk up another monster on Gamera’s kill list.

What we have here is a pretty standard plot with some whacked-out twists to it. A tried and true formula that works again in this case. The end result is a movie that clips about at a pretty good pace but has enough twists in it that the movie actually seems longer than what it is (but in a good way). We of course have a typical pairing of Japanese kids and Not-So-Japanese kids, who of course save the day from adults who, of course, don’t seem to understand any obvious conclusions. The good part with this particular Gamera movie is that although the kids have a fairly meaty part, it’s not so prominent as to eventually get annoying. The main human plot event is their little “Fantastic Voyage” into Gamera. I suppose Gamera would be big enough to do that, although it still isn’t the most biologically accurate depiction of the innards of a turtle. Still, it’s an entertaining and yes, weird, break from the usual kaiju stuff.

The usual kaiju stuff is still rather entertaining in and of itself. Gamera fights Jiger three times in the movie, evenly spread throughout, and they are good fights indeed. Jiger is a rather kick-arse monster, complete with a varied arsenal of attacks and the ability to give Gamera quite the challenge. Jiger also stomps cities pretty well. The model work is fairly well done, not quite to the level of Toho but almost there. The use of the World Expo is actually a pretty nice idea, mostly cause the buildings look like plastic models anyways. One final relief for this movie is that there is little or no stock footage. Great news considering Daiei’s track record.

It’s a classic kaiju movie plot combined with Gamera’s unique styling. It has good fight scenes, a descent human plot, and enough cool stuff spread throughout to make this movie fully entertaining. This is what a Gamera movie should be.

Good plot for a Gamera movie

Good special effects for a Gamera movie

Kaiju stuff evenly spread throughout movie

Good fight scenes

No stock footage, unlike the previous two movies

Jiger is a well-made kaiju (doesn’t even crawl on knees)

Although sometimes kind of original, mostly it’s not

Scientific inaccuracies abound

Although par for a Gamera movie, the special effects are sub-par to most everything else

Some nice parents there, letting their kid’s run off while a monster is destroying the city

Credits