GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS FOR GAMERA FANS

One of my fanboy passions is the giant turtle Gamera. I was introduced to this Godzilla rip-off through watching the five of Gamera's cheesier adventures from the 60s on the cult fave Mystery Science Theater 3000. However, the big turtle kind of grew on me and the idea that he was less predictable a giant monster than Godzilla definitely appealed to me. I mean, Godzilla is a lizard--that's an easy choice for giant monster. But a turtle? What was threatening about a turtle?

Well, like the very first, unedited Godzilla film, the first Gamera film was actually fairly dark. So was it's first sequel. Watching the films in their original Japanese really let me feel for the characters and story a lot more than the crappy dubs (though I still enjoy the crappy dubs--SANDY FRANK, YOU'RE MY HERO!!).

Enter Shosuke Kaneko--a life long Godzilla fan and film director, Kaneko-san had always dreamed of directing a Godzilla film but before that happened, he was offered a chance to remake Gamera in the 1990s. He ended up making a trilogy of modern Gamera films each darker and, dare I say it, more realistic than the previous one (yes, kaiju films that are realistic!!). It goes without saying that any of these films was infinitely more realistic than any of the original Gamera films. Gamera 3 has got to be the greatest kaiju (giant monster) film of all time.

Not your Otosan's Gamera.

In it, Kaneko shows us the true consequences of a real giant monster walking through a modern city. People die on camera, squashed under Gamera's feet and bodies are seen being incinerated by Gamera's fireball-breath. The consequences are emotional, too. In a previous visit of Gamera's to Tokyo (when defending it against Legion in Gamera 2), Gamera backs into an apartment building, killing (among other people) the parents of a young girl who from that day forward wishes for revenge on Gamera.

Several years after losing her parents, she is 16 and living in the country where she finds a small monster egg buried in an ancient Japanese shrine. Her hatred hatches the egg and the monster inside learns to hate Gamera as much as she does.

Pretty damn complicated for a big dumb monster movie, woudn't you say?

G3 is available on DVD in the US under the title Gamera: Revenge of Iris--you should check it out if you have the vaguest interest in seeing CG used properly in a monster movie (unlike that crappy Tristar Godzilla). You should also check it out if you're at all interested in being won over by a film that, to paraphrase MST3K's Joel Robinson, will make you believe a turtle can fly... and kill a lot of people...

To whet you're appetite, I've uploaded [http://thepete.com/uploads/g3teaser.mov|a teaser trailer for Gamera 3]. It's a 12.7mb QT/mp4 that is about 30 seconds long. Sorry--still trying to figure out how to get these damn QT files small...

All that gushing aside, I've been depressed that Kaneko-san hasn't graced us with a Gamera 4. A couple years back I had heard that Toho, the owners of Godzilla, and Daiei, the makers of the 1990s Gamera films, were talking about a Godzilla Vs. Gamera movie. This would be like having Roger Moore and Sean Connery both playing Bond in the same film. Apples and oranges!

Thankfully, Toho decided to do a 14-monster-fest with Godzilla alone for their next movie.

Sadly, what will be the next Gamera film may be worse than a match up that should never happen...

I stumbled across [http://www.cinegenre.net/archives15.html|this page] at CineGenre.net--a French movie site. A ways down that page I found a reference, in French, to Gamera. I had to use [http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cinegenre.net%2Farchives15.html&langpair=fr%7Cen&hl=en&safe=off&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools|Google Language tools to translate it] but essentially it quotes some sports magazine as talking about a new Gamera film. I then found [http://www.tokyomonsters.com/news307.php|this post] at TokyoMonsters.com which, reports that there will be another Gamera film, but it won't be directed by Kaneko and it will be about how "Gamera is the friend of all children."

That was the most annoying thing about the showa (or "classic") era Gamera films--that stupid saying "friend of all children" indeed...

Here's a quote from that post:

Years ago Gamera saves a group of kids from Gyaos attack. 30 years later the son of the boy from the battle finds an egg and Gamera grows from it...the kid kinda "trains" him, Gamera spins and flies and shoots fireballs, etc. and a friendship develops...meanwhile a monster invasion is coming...

Filming starts in June '05 for a Spring '06 release"

Sheesh... Gamera and kids again... great. He goes from total scary, bad-ass to "the friend of all children."

Shoot me now...

Then I got the bright idea to check out Gamera.jp which is the official website of Gamera. There, was a picture of a kid, and a little turtle...

Then I saw another pic of the cast posing with a model of an unconscious Gamera from the new film--he's not even green and he's all cartoony. Just great. Oh well, there goes one of my favorite cinematic characters right down the poop-shoot.

[http://gamera.jp/movie/gamera_trailer01_l.wmv|Check out the trailer to The Tiniest Heroes - Gamera] (Windows Media).

ugh... All right Gamera, just step on my head already...