Saturday, September 18, 2010

S03E02 - Gamera

Plot

While trying to cross American airspace with nuclear payloads, Soviet bombers are shot down by American fighter planes and crash into the ice below. The resulting nuclear explosions awakens a monstrous and giant turtle called Gamera, who destroys a Japanese research ship before heading to Japan and beginning a rampage of destruction. The world's scientists try to figure out a way of combating this terrible threat before all of the world succumbs to Gamera's wrath.


Movie Review

In response to the enormous success of Toho's Godzilla franchise, Japanese movie company Daiei created a kaiju monster franchise to call their own. That monster was Gamera, the giant monster turtle. Okay, not the most threatening monster around (no matter how much the University of Maryland wants us to "fear the turtle"), but the actual Gamera monster is pretty well designed. Such a shame that Gamera's first, self-titled film couldn't say the same.

This film is bad. Bad, bad, bad. And the worst thing is that it didn't have to turn out that way. The overall story of Gamera is actually fairly generic: monster is awoken by atomic blast, goes on rampage in Tokyo. Pretty standard stuff as far as monster films go. It's also given one of those terrible dubs that Japanese live-action films always seem to get, though it's certainly not the absolute worst. The production values? Not bad, especially for the 1960s. No, these factors aren't what make this film so wretched. One factor and one factor alone pushes this movie from mediocre to atrocious.

Kenny.

Holy hell, Kenny is the worst character this side of the protagonist in Moon Zero Two. In fact, he's even worse in that he is completely unnecessary and horrendously annoying. If he is the reason that kaiju films often include superfluous kids in their productions, then Gamera deserves all the scorn it can receive. This little brat destroys the film from the inside out, taking the film's potential to be decent and turning it in the direction of loathsome. Yes, he is that bad.

I mean, for starters, the kid is utterly retarded. He happens to be a lover of turtles, which marks one of the film's most ridiculous coincidences. His home is attacked by the giant turtle Gamera, and instead of staying with his family, he runs to the top of a damned lighthouse, which gets pulverized by Gamera. But the giant turtle, in its worst moment in the film, saves Kenny from death (why he does this is never explained). After that, Kenny thinks Gamera is a "friend of children" and spends the rest of the movie pining after the turtle, claiming that he is not bad all while Gamera kills thousands during his rampage on Tokyo. And his tendency to insert himself in every important moment is eye-clawingly horrid. Kenny should not be encouraged for his behavior, he should be smacked upside the head! Repeatedly!

Sadly, Kenny is not the only annoying character in this film (though none can leap over the high bar that Kenny has set). After Gamera attacks a Japanese research ship (and kills everyone on board, Kenny!), the three crew surviving crew members who were off the ship at the time - a professor, his daughter, and a reporter - spend the rest of the movie wandering around like blank-eyed mannequins rather than characters. The professor is a generic "science" professor whose expertise is never revealed, but because he survived Gamera's first attack he is considered a leading authority on the monster and is able to command Japan's army. His daughter is the Japanese stereotype of a submissive woman who does absolutely nothing but look pretty and cast her eyes down when she's shy. And the reporter is an irritating bozo who only follows the other two around because he's smitten with the daughter in the film's required forced romance.

Outside of these characters, there really isn't that much else to find at fault with Gamera...well, okay, perhaps just one. Gamera the creature is actually a fairly well designed monster for the most part...except for one thing. When he flies, he does is in the most ridiculous way possible: he fires jet engine-like fire bursts out of his shell's leg holes and spins around like a Frisbee. Putting aside kaiju film's tendencies for occasional silliness...who ever thought this would be a good idea?

Really, I wouldn't have hated Gamera with a fiery passion if it weren't for Kenny. If he were excised from the film, it would be upgraded from the atrocious mess it is now to a standard mediocre mess. But with the little brat, this movie is one of the most irritating shown on MST3K thus far.



MST3K Review

Thankfully, though, Joel and the bots put up with Kenny and his antics well enough to eviscerate this film to hell and back. The riffs were sharp and merciless with great timing from beginning to end. There was even a bit of self-referential humor when, while Gamera is being shot into space by a rocket, the bots taunt Joel with the MST3K theme song. A thoroughly enjoyable episode that's a definite high point of season three so far.


Stinger Review

I'm sooooooo glad that they chose not to go with any of Kenny's idiocy for the stinger (can you tell I hate Kenny yet?). Instead they went with a weird moment near the film's end when an Eskimo bids farewell to the film's protagonists. The way the poorly dubbed Eskimo utters "bye" so awkwardly and then stares off into space like he did something wrong is just beautifully bizarre.

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