312 - GAMERA VS. GUIRON

Genre:  Japanese Monster (1969, Color)

Synopsis:  This, the fourth Gamera movie featured on the show, takes a serious turn toward the juvenile (as if the earlier films weren’t juvenile enough) in the giant turtle movie series.  It doesn’t star a single annoying kid in short-shorts – no, instead, this movie stars THREE annoying kids:  the Kenny-esque Akio, the Richard-Burton-esque American boy Tom, and the old-lady-esque girl Tomoko.  These three little brats are the only people in Japan to see a flying saucer land, so they go and try to find this flying saucer.  When they do find it, the two boys get inside the empty flying saucer to play when it automatically takes off to return to the “star” (a.k.a. planet) of Terra, located on the opposite side of the Sun. (Say, isn’t that where everyone drives Plymouth Furys?  Or am I thinking of a different planet Terra?)  Once on the other “star” of Terra, the boys soon see Gaos flying around when, out of the ground, comes Guiron, a rather cool-looking monster with a giant knife for a head and who crawls around on all fours.  The two monsters have a fight that Guiron easily wins and then slices up Gaos for dinner.  After seeing the fight, the two boys meet two women in funny outfits with helmets screwed on too tight, who are the only human-like inhabitants of the “star” Terra.  The women talk about going to Earth with the boys, but then secretly decide that there’s not enough room on the saucer for all of the boys, just their brains!  So the women feed the boys some drugged donuts and begin to shave their heads for dinner.  Gamera, though, shows up to rescue the boys, so the two women unleash Guiron – who is basically their guard-dog – from his hole in the ground to fight the giant turtle.  Gamera is wounded in the fight and so must, yep, go to the bottom of the ocean to heal.  The monster fight somehow damaged the flying saucer, so while the two women are fixing it, the two boys get out of their confinement and start messing with controls.  The boys accidentally release Guiron again and he cuts the flying saucer in two as the two women try to escape.  After cutting the saucer in two, Guiron attacks the control center trying to kill the two boys. (Hey, now I really like this Guiron fella!)  But now the healed up Gamera show up again and has a long fight with Guiron, both on land and underwater, in which Gamera gets to demonstrate his gymnastics skills on the parallel bar (with a near perfect dismount).  Gamera then uses Guiron as a stake and eliminates the monster by throwing a missile with Satchel Paige like accuracy.  Gamera next shows off his mechanical skills by using his hot breath to weld the flying saucer back together and return the two boys to Earth to the annoying strains of the Gamera song.

Don’s Review:  This movie, one of the goofiest of the Gamera movies, is sequentially the fourth Gamera experiment, but the feature is actually the FIFTH Gamera movie (BBI skipped one called Gamera vs. Viras, although footage of that movie is shown in this one during a flashback of recycled footage).  The plot of this movie is absolutely ridiculous: besides the other planet (I mean “star”) silliness, the plot is so contrived that it simply has an empty flying saucer go to Earth, pick up the two boys, and return to Terra, with only a lame explanation of why.  And the “adult” scenes back on Earth feature the aptly named “Cornjob” and some extremely pause-laden dubbing.  Luckily the “bad” monster Guiron was pretty cool looking, with his knife head and Ninja Star projectiles, and that partially redeems the movie.  And, after this movie, Gamera would return in two more, even goofier movies before this initial Gamera series ended.  J&tBs do a very good job riffing this ridiculous movie, I particularly liked the “Hello, Thank You” scene and the Scotch-soaked Richard Burton riffs.  The host segments were pretty good too, especially the “really neat” Gamera song and a very funny visit by Michael Feinstein (played by Mike, whose great piano playing skills are shown here).  As a fan of the goofy Japanese Monster movies, this is an experiment I definitely recommend.
Trivia Note:  This is the second time that this movie was featured on MST; the first time was episode K08 during the KTMA days of the show.

Don’s Rating: 

Related Links:
   (1) Mighty Jack’s MST3K Review (Episode Review)
   (2) Stomp Tokyo Video Reviews (Movie Review)
   (3) BadMovies.org (Movie Review)