Ranking the Gamera Films
Hey everyone, it's sonicfan0001.
I thought I'd next rank the Gamera films, following up on my ranking of the Godzilla films. So, since there are only 12, let's just put them all onto one list. :)
12: Gamera: Super Monster (1980) SHOWA IMDb: 4.4/10 Rotten Tomatoes: 31% (Monsters: Gamera, Zigra, Zanon (Viras), Barugon, Gyaos, Jiger, Guiron)
Director: Noriaki Yuasa
Soundtrack: Shunsuke Kikuchi
This movie is pretty much Gamera's equivalent to Godzilla's Revenge- all of the fights are stock footage from prior films. There's barely any new footage of Gamera in this at all. So, what's there to say about the plot? Well, let's see here. There are these Earth superheroes called the Superwomen who try to protect the Earth from an alien named Zanon. They are unsuccesful, and they call upon Gamera to protect them. Zanon then revives all of Gamera's previous foes to fight him- and yes, all of his fights are just footage from the movies with those monsters in them.
He ends up sacrificing himself at the end to destroy Zanon's ship, which looks like this by the way:
Look familiar? Well, it should. This ship was clearly based on an Imperial Star Destroyer to try and capitalize on Star Wars' success. So yeah. This movie's really cheesy and bad. However, like Godzilla's Revenge, Daiei was on a low budget (pretty much bankrupt) when making it. Toho wasn't near bankruptcy, but their budget was slashed from Destroy all Monsters. But yeah. This one's really bad.
11: Gamera vs. Zigra (1971) SHOWA IMDb: 3/10 Rotten Tomatoes: 15% (Monsters: Gamera, Zigra)
Directors: Noriaki Yuasa & Bret Morrison Soundtrack: Shunsuke Kikuchi & Kenjiro Hirose
Oooh. This one makes me cringe. It's just BARELY better than Gamera: Super Monster, and that's only because it doesn't use stock footage. What do I even say about this one's plot? Some ship attacks a moon base and lands on Earth. Some guys are kidnapped and are instructed to tell the Earth that Zigra (The ship) is some genius. There's some space woman who speaks for Zigra. She does some things. Zigra turns into a giant shark thing. Gamera fights and kills it. Yeah. It's really bad. There's also a moment where Gamera plays his own theme song on Zigra's spine. o_O
This movie was supposed to be followed up with Gamera vs. Garasharp, but the company went bankrupt for the most part and it never got finished. But then they made Gamera: Super Monster instead 9 years later. Why...?
10: Gamera vs. Viras (1968) SHOWA IMDb: 4.7/10 Rotten Tomatoes: 28% (Monsters: Gamera, Viras)
Director: Noriaki Yuasa
Soundtrack: Kenjiro Hirose
Ugh. This one's also horrible. But it's a bit different.
So some aliens come down to Earth and Gamera destroys their ship. But they warn their world of Gamera, calling him their enemy. A second ship appears and learns of Gamera's weaknesses. They put him under their control and begin to destroy Japan. They also capture two boys. They discover a squid-like creature onboard. They manage to free Gamera, and he attacks the ship. All of the aliens end up being these squid-like things, and they all merge into a giant monster called Viras. Gamera fights him. Yep. It's pretty bad.
9: Gamera vs. Guiron (1969) SHOWA IMDb: 3.7/10 Rotten Tomatoes: 27% (Monsters: Gamera, Guiron, Space Gyaos)
Director: Noriaki Yuasa
Soundtrack: Shunsuke Kikuchi
Boop. ANOTHER BAD ONE. So these two kids accidentally get stuck on a spaceship. They are flown to the planet Terra, where they meet two female aliens who plan to eat their brains. They also have a guard monster, Guiron, who completely (and cheesily) mutilates a Space Gyaos by chopping its limbs off. Gamera appears and fights Guiron to save the kids, and kills it and the Terrans. That's it. And yeah, it's also bad.
8: Gamera vs. Jiger (1970) SHOWA IMDb: 5.7/10 Rotten Tomatoes: 33% (Monsters: Gamera, Jiger, Baby Jiger)
Directors: Noriaki Yuasa & Bret Morrison
Soundtrack: Shunsuke Kikuchi & Kenjiro Hirose
Erm... this one's... okay, I suppose. This one has a fairly involved plot, so I'll try and be quick about it:
Gamera tries to stop some people from removing a statue from an island for the World's Fair. He gets shot at and retreats. They remove the statue and leave. A kaiju emerges from the hole where the statue was named Jiger. Gamera immediately tries to fight it and is beaten.
Members of the ship with the statue begin to crazy. They eventually discover that the statue is emitting a white noise, which is causing Jiger pain. This is why she begins to attack Japan. Jiger has a ridiculous heat wave attack that turns people into skeletons.
Gamera fights her again, and she ends up injecting an egg into one of his lungs. This hatches into a baby, which the humans manage to kill.
Gamera fights her again and finally ends up killing her with her own statue.
So it's okay, but still not very good.
7: Gamera the Invincible (1965) SHOWA IMDb: 4.4/10 Rotten Tomatoes: 28% (Monsters: Gamera)
Directors: Noriaki Yuasa & Sandy Howard
Soundtrack: Tadashi Yamanouchi, Wes Farrell, The Moons
Yep, the very first one. And it's... meh. It could be better.
There's very little to say about this one. Gamera awakens and attacks some stuff. He saves a kid. They launch him to Mars. The kid tells everyone that he's just out-of-place and that's why he destroyed everything. That's it.
It's pretty much just a "Meh" kaiju film.
6: Gamera vs. Gyaos (1967) SHOWA IMDb: 4.4/10 Rotten Tomatoes: 35% (Monsters: Gamera, Gyaos)
Director: Noriaki Yuasa
Soundtrack: Tadashi Yamanouchi
This one's actually decent. It introduced Gamera's most lasting and iconic opponent, Gyaos, and it was the second film where Gamera faced another monster.
So a U.N. helicopter is destroyed by a beam from a cave at Mt. Fuji. Humans discover a large bat-like bird monster known as Gyaos living there. Gyaos eats someone and Gamera arrives to fight him. Gamera holds Gyaos back with his fire. He also tries to keep Gyaos in the water until the sun rises, but Gyaos seversh is own foot to get away. The humans try to keep him out until dawn with some synthetic blood. Gamera fights him and the sun comes up. Gyaos is weakened, and Gamera throws him into an active volcano. So this one's okay, I guess.
5: Gamera vs. Barugon (1966) SHOWA IMDb: 4.3/10 Rotten Tomatoes: 36% (Monsters: Gamera, Barugon)
Director: Shigeo Tanaka
Soundtrack: Chuji Kinoshita
This one's okay too. It was the second Gamera film and the first one where Gamera fought another monster. And no, Barugon is not BARAGON from Godzilla. -_-
This movie also doesn't have a child protagonist, which is odd.
So anyway, a meteorite collides with Gamera's rocket and he falls back to Earth.
A group of thieves steal some opal from a mountain, which ends up hatching a really odd monster known as Barugon, who can freeze things with his tongue and shoot... rainbows out of his back.
There's not much to say. Humans try to lure Barugon into the water to drown with an infra-red ray. Gamera fights Barugon a couple of times. Barugon drowns anyway.
So this movie's okay, I'd watch it again.
4: Gamera the Brave (2006) HEISEI IMDb: 6.9/10 Rotten Tomatoes: 65% (Monsters: Toto, Zedus, Gamera, Gyaos)
Director: Ryuta Tasaki
Soundtrack: Yoko Ueno
So this one's actually really good. Like, a quantum leap over the Showa ones. And this one's also unique because the protagonist monster is actually Toto, Gamera's son.
So basically a large number of Gyaos are attacking Japan and Gamera is no longer able to breathe fireballs. Gamera self-destructs to kill off the Gyaos and save Japan. This kills him as well.
A boy ends up finding a small turtle and names it Toto. Toto begins to have strange abilities, such as flight and breathing fireballs. Toru's (the main character) friend Mai begins to suspect that Toto is the son of Gamera. Toto begins to get very large, and one day disappears. As he mourns the loss with his friends, a kaiju appears: Zedus.
And my god, does he look cool. Zedus is some kind of dinosaur-lizard thing that apparently got mutated from eating the Gyaos' corpses. He has a dagger-like tongue he can dart out really far, and one other thing: he eats people.
Seriously, there's a scene where he's just eating a bunch of cornered people. Damn.
So Toto appears to stop him, and wouldn't you know it, he's really big now. Toto gets completely destroyed when he tries to battle Zedus the first time.
Toto is observed and healed.
Zedus returns again, and Toto once again appears to fight him. Toru uses a stone to give gim power, and Toto ends up killing Zedus by ripping out his tongue and sending out a large fireball.
So yeah, like I said, this one's great. It has a nice story and Zedus is awesome.
3: Gamera: Guardian of the Universe (1995) HEISEI IMDb: 6.9/10 Rotten Tomatoes: 75% (Monsters: Gamera, Gyaos, Super Gyaos)
Director: Shusuke Kaneko
Soundtrack: Kow Otani
Wow. This one's fantastic. It's also the first film in the Heisei reboot series. The suits look awesome, the plot's pretty good and the fights are great. Gyaos also makes a return in this one.
So 10,000 years ago, the Atlantians created these big bird creatures called Gyaos to clean up pollution. The Gyaos grew more powerful and eventually ate the Atlantians. They created Gamera, a giant turtle to keep them at bay. They went into hibernation, and were forgotten about.
So basically, in 1995, three of them get woken up along with Gamera and they all fight. Gamera kills two, but the third ends up turning into a Super Gyaos, which is Gamera's size.
There's also some girl who finds a stone and is now mentally connected with Gamera.
I don't want to go too in-depth on the plot of this one. It's kind of fun to figure out over time.
But yeah. This one's amazing.
2: Gamera 2: Attack of Legion (Gamera 2: Advent of Legion) (1996) HEISEI IMDb: 7.3/10 Rotten Tomatoes: 84% (Monsters: Gamera, Mother Legion, Symbiotic Legion, Legion Flower)
Director: Shusuke Kaneko
Soundtrack: Kow Otani
What is there to say? This one's even better than the last one, and the suits are once again amazing.
Gamera seems to have gone away for now. One night, however, a science teacher witnesses a large meteor touch down on the Earth's surface. Two security guards end up coming across some crab-like insect creatures the size of humans stealing glass bottles. The creatures end up taking over a city, and are revealed to be extraterrestrial beings dubbed "Legion". Their name comes from a demonic army in the bible. The small ones are dubbed "Symbiotic Legion"...
...and they begin to kill residents. They are found to be silicon-based, and they move via pressurized gas. They are increasing oxygen to help burst their "Legion Flower"...
...which will send up a seed and call down more of the Legion. Gamera suddenly appears and destroys the flower, but the Symbiotic Legion begin to swarm him and weaken Gamera. Just then, the giant Queen Legion bursts out of the ground and flies away to start a second hive.
And yeah, she looks amazing.
So another flower grows in a new hive and Gamera tries to stop it again. This time, however, the Queen Legion stops him and the two fight. Gamera is defeated and the seed launches, and it is assumed Gamera is dead. This, however, is not the case.
The Queen Legion tries to destroy the military.
The girl calls out to Gamera at the cost of their bond breaking.
The Symbiotic Legion are lured out of any major areas. Gamera follows the Queen Legion and manages to almost defeat her.
However, his final move to kill her ends up draining the Earth's mana, a major plot point in the series.
So yeah, it's great. But only one can top this movie...
1: Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris (1999) HEISEI IMDb: 7.4/10 Rotten Tomatoes: 91% (Monsters: Gamera, Iris, Hyper Gyaos)
Director: Shusuke Kaneko
Soundtrack: Kow Otani
Oh my god. This is honestly one of my favorite kaiju films ever. Gamera looks amazing, Iris looks amazing, it has a good plot and it's a very brutal film.
We learn of a girl whose family was killed during Gamera and Super Gyaos' fight, and she hates Gamera for it. She comes across a strange egg and starts looking after it.
Meanwhile, strange creatures known as Hyper Gyaos begin to pop around Japan, and they're somewhat akin to Gyaos zombies.
So Gamera appears, killing tons of people in the process, and attacks two of the creatures. He manages to defeat both of them.
So the egg hatches a creature that later turns out to be a mutated Gyaos baby, and the girl names it after her dead cat, Iris.
She becomes very attached to it, and it ends up becoming huge and "becoming one" with her.
One of her friends frees her from something she's been imprisoned in.
The military discovers Iris, who is now a badass-looking giant monster.
This movie has lots of awesome moments, and it all leads up to a really unique fight at the end in a train station.
I won't say anything else. Just watch this movie, it's amazing.
So there you have it. And before you ask, yes, I will continue to rank kaiju/other film series. I will NOT, however, do Ultraman, because Jesus Christ there are so many different movies and series. Yeah.
See you all next time. :)
-sonicfan0001
