*** Giant Sea-Life Attacks Random Island!

While Toho was busy making low-budget Godzilla movies back in the day, they also made this low-budget rubber monster flick. The usual fun still happens, and proves that you don’t have to have any recognizable monsters to make an entertaining movie.

The space probe "Helios 7" is sent to land on Jupiter (even though Jupiter doesn’t have much of a surface). On the way it is taken over by a particular "astro-quasers", which are basically sentient space amoebas that want to take over the world (as usual). The probe lands near an island, which happens to be the same island our plucky cast of humans want to build a tropical resort. The glowing alien protists happen to have the ability to take over other beings and make them gigantic in proportions. Our heroes have to deal with a giant squid, a giant lobster, and a giant turtle with only a small stockpile of weapons and gasoline. Eventually the figure out that the space amoebas are hurt by high-frequency sounds, and go about a plan to unleash a horde of bats. Counteracting this the aliens take over a certain guy in a white leisure suite to kill all the bats on the island (unfortunately he doesn’t grow large and start attacking villages, he just gets super-strength). Eventually he fights off the possession with sheer will power, and the bats end up causing the turtle and a second lobster to fight each other. A convenient volcanic eruption takes care of the problem, and the world is saved (as usual).

Most of the time these sorts of movies take place on a large global scale, but in this case we pretty much only have one local. Luckily they picked an island with nice scenery. The part of only a small group of people taking on giant creatures with only basic tools is a refreshing change of pace. There’s no massive secret weapons or large military power, it’s just a people with drums of gasoline, a few rifles, and inspired creativity. The plot of how they get into the situation, figure out the situation, and resolve the situation is for the most part fairly well done. It moves at a fairly relaxing pace, but enough stuff happens so you are rarely bored. Plus they have enough monster action scattered throughout the movie.

The real star of the flick is Gezora, the giant squid. It’s big, floppy, and very goofy looking, but at the same time entertaining to watch. You rarely can tell it’s a guy in a rubber suit, and for the most part the destruction and people grabbing are well done (but occasionally very silly). Ganime is a giant lobster, seemingly based on Ebirah but still different enough. There is a lot of attention to detail, from the way it walks to the way the mouth moves. Kamoebas the giant turtle has a rather weird habit of jabbing it’s head and tongue out. Very strange looking, and certainly different from looking than Gamera. Although there have been kaiju based on real-life animals before, this time they do a pretty good job making them biologically accurate but still with their own quirks. The suitimation is good for the most part, and they did a great job with the special effects considering the budget.

This movie is mostly a footnote on Toho kaiju movie history, often overlooked and fairly obscure. Still doesn’t mean there isn’t anything contained here; for the most part it’s an entertaining movie with some nifty rubber monsters running loose. A bit of a change of pace from the norm, but still very much a movie containing typical giant monster fun.

Fairly good plot that gets the job done

Good for the most part special effects

A good selection of music that doesn’t go overboard with the typical themes

Nice location for a movie that stays in the same location

Entertaining ways of combating the giant monsters with limited materials at hand

Gezora, Ganime, and Kamoebas are pretty nifty kaiju

There was a chance for the plot to get deeper and they didn’t take it

Overly convenient circumstances at times

A number of badly-done special effects

Typical screwed-up science

Somehow I don’t think squids naturally have metabolisms producing sub-zero temperatures

Credits