Oprah Movie Club Pick: Gamera vs. Guiron

1969 turtle superhero movie

Rating: 5/20

Plot: As rumors of unidentified sort-of hovering objects swirl, a Japanese kid and Beaver Cleaver stumble upon an abandoned space craft constructed from cheap cardboard and what appears to be pieces of discarded stoplights. The ship takes off with the lads inside, leaving a whiny homely girl behind. While she tries to convince Mom that the boys did indeed fly off in a spaceship, the boys have landed on the tenth planet in our solar system (sorry, I didn't catch the name) where they watch some goofy monsters fight and are forced to endure the annoying voices of the planet's only inhabitants--two gals wearing capes. But these girls have a plan for the boys, and Gamera (a friend to children apparently) is needed to save the day.

Kent picked a classic for our first Oprah Movie Club pick of the year. There's one other Gamera movie on the blog, the superior but not nearly as much goofy or fun Gamera the Invincible. This one begins with some gross effects that look like they could serve as the backdrop for a really cheap Pink Floyd cover band, probably one called The Vegetable Men, and then makes us wait a while before we see any monster-on-monster action. The worst dubbing I think I've ever heard is enough to keep things entertaining though. It's not just the poorly-chosen voices for the characters either. No, there's something terribly wrong with the pacing in the delivery of the lines, almost like that guy from the "Hooked on Phonics" commercial who could barely get through a story about a train is reading everything. The child actors are irritating, but there's an adult actor who actually makes them look like master thespians in some early scenes where they're together. His name is Kon Ohmura, and I'm not sure how he Konned his way onto a movie set, but he's in another Gamera movie and a few other things. His character here (Goonjob? Coonja?) is there for comic relief, just like the rest of the movie, and Ohmura's wonderfully Torgorific as he's threatening to shave the children's heads [Spoiler Alert: That's foreshadowing!] or even just standing around. That's right. Ohmura's the type of actor who can't just stand there during a scene without being a complete distraction. That's talent, folks.

Finally, we get a Gamera sighting when the kids leave the earth's atmosphere. A nearly endless Gamera/spaceship race brings the action hard. You also get a close-up of the inside of Gamera's mouth (Do you ever get to see a close-up of the inside of Godzilla's mouth?) as he, I'm pretty sure, attempts to make out with the ship. But the best action sequence is the superbly realistic scene on that tenth planet between a metallic birdy thing and what I thought was a monster with three-fourths of a dolphin for a head but what actually turned out to be a monster with a knife for a head. Didn't find out until later that the latter was the menacing titular bad monster in this movie. It's not much of a fight. Guiron repels a cheap-looking yellow beam and dismembers the metallic birdy before doing a Jabba the Hutt impression. It's pretty badass and kind-of gruesome for a monster movie intended for children. But honestly, Guiron is so dumb looking that it's hard to take any of it seriously. He could have been raping my grandmother, and it wouldn't have seemed all that bad.

When our hero gets to the planet (because he's a friend of children, and there are children who need savin'), he gets beat up pretty good by the villain. He even bleeds some green stuff. He recovers later on, of course, probably because the producers of Gamera vs. Guiron weren't finished demonstrating their complete disregard for all things logical. First, the heroic turtle is on his back at the bottom of a lake and can't get up no matter how much the boys yell his name or how much he struggles. But then a giant rock hits him in the chin, a development that inexplicably gives him strength. The two battle again (hence the "vs." in the title), Gamera repeatedly racking himself and nearly teabagging Guiron before doing some gymnastics and, as one of the boys explains, "dancing go-go." I love it when Japanese monsters dance. The good guy wins, there's an improbable spaceship repair and some of the worst blue screen work you're likely to see this week, and we eventually get to a happy ending. It's really only happy because we get to see Goobjohn again.

I enjoyed the cheapo set design of the alien planet. It looked like a muted sci-fi train set. The interiors were probably borrowed from another cheap Japanese science fiction movie, and I'm sure the only requirement the casting director was looking for with the child actors was that they were well behaved enough to not run around and accidentally knock down a cardboard wall or two, an act that would have likely cost the studio tens of dollars. As Guiron tries to get to the children and destroys the building their in, large rocks fall all around and even on the children. They don't seem to harm the boys though thankfully, and that makes just as much sense as rocks falling from the ceiling of a building that looks to be made entirely of metal.

It all ends with a nice message about how the world could be a nice place without traffic accidents, the same thing Al Gore's been preaching for years. He probably saw this one actually. I don't know about you, but I was slightly aroused because of the squeaky-voiced alien chicks, even when they were threatening to "eat their brains raw." And you've got to dig the cutesy music. What is it with Japanese children's movies and irritating and inane sing-a-longs?