Imagine if you will (not being said by Rod Sterling) it’s the 1960s. You’re a movie production company called Daiei and you’re seeing how much attention Toho’s Godzilla series is getting. Naturally you’ll want to cash in yourself. But you don’t want to go with another giant lizard, so you go with a fire breathing turtle, and he flies. Yeah… saying it like that makes it sounds like they were smoking the good stuff. Yet you can argue they also created the second or third most recognizable giant monster ever so let’s not nit pick.So let’s get on with it.

Gamera is really neat. He is filled with… Okay I’ll stop now so hit the jump.

We start off innocently enough with a research party, consisting of a scientist, his female assistant and a reporter (more on why he’s there later) visiting an remote Eskimo village in the middle of the arctic while the ice cutter ship that brought them there goes on it’s way. There they witness a group of silent jet planes fly over head. Nearby an American (I’m assuming) air military outpost detect these planes and send out an intercept group. They can neither get the jets to knowledge who they are, were they’re from or get them to land so they shot them down. The resulting crash results in the reveal that one of them was carrying an atomic bomb. the scientist says his group and the Eskimos should be far enough away that the fallout shouldn’t effect them. However under the ice an ancient, gigantic turtle breaks free. As they prepare to leave the chief remembers he has this old, I mean really old, stone tablet and gives it. The scientist asks if this is supposed to be the represent the giant turtles that used to inhabit Atlantis, it was what he came to talk to them about apparently, and the chief says it name was Gamera. But they can’t figure out why it has curved lines to represent water.

 Meanwhile the revived Gamera makes it way toward the cutter and eventually destroys it. The military intercepts it’s garbled S.O.S. and sends more planes out to investigate. They find nothing at the site: no ship, no crew and no giant turtle. The scientist speculates that the radiation from the bomb reawakened the turtle but the radiation would eventually kill it. With no more sightings it felt that it did die and was probably somewhere on the bottom of the ocean. But Turtle mania had died before then since everybody is no looking for these mysterious UFOs that had been spotted. While the scientists laments the loss of since a specimen, the reporter (told you I’d get back to this) reveals that he won a pool among the other reporters on the ship to be the one to accompany the duo. Since they all wanted to be near the female assistant he considers her to be his Goddess of Good Luck, I’ve heard some pick up lines before but wow.

 At this point we’re introduced to a boy named Toshi, who is into turtles. I meant really into turtles. To the point were all he writes and draws about in school is turtles. After catching him taking food during dinner to feed his pet turtle his sister and father confront him about it, eventually they make him get rid of his pet. Making him a little shelter out of rocks by the beach and goes back up and lays down on the ground very sad. Then Gamera shows up. Toshi runs back to his father and village saying that he saw a giant turtle. But they don’t believe him, knowing his fascination with turtles, until they see him for himself by the lighthouse his father works in. Toshi stops being scared and runs up the lighthouse to get a better look. Toshi realizes he should be scared again right before Gamera knocks a hand into the lighthouse causing Toshi to fall to his death. Or so we think until Gamera catches him then puts him down. His family says Gamera saved him, happy but still scared. The next day Toshi goes to visit his hidden pet only to find him gone. After searching and not finding him he comes to the conclusion his pet turned into Gamera.

 The scientist hearing that Gamera is still alive hurries with his assistant and the reporter who was was assigned to get pictures of Gamera. And again calls the assistant his Goddess of Good Luck. And this point she looks like she’s wondering what the stalker laws were in 1965. After they arrive and talk to the head of the Defense Force for the situation Gamera is seen coming toward a geothermal plant. The professor decides to use the high tension wires and the full electrical out put of the plant to stop it. Take a guess how well that plan works. In fact not only does he go one to destroy the plant he starts eating the flames. They leave to discuss Gamera with an colleague of the scientist who speculates not only can Gamera ingest inorganic matter, like petroleum and fire, his skin must be more resilient than modern metal and no modern weapon can harm him, including a nuclear bomb. Fortunately they get back in time to stop an American nuclear strike the defense force had called in.

 While Gamera gorges himself on the plant the scientist and captain discuss how to contain Gamera. The Captain reveals that they have been working on a new freeze bomb after they figured he might be susceptible to extreme cold. Unfortunately things only stay frozen for ten minutes before they start to thaw. With no other plan coming to mind they decide to go with the freeze bomb. Gamera starts to head up Hell’s rock, with a hot spring resort nearby, they bomb him and the freeze bombs work. The Defense Force quickly set up some explosive and sets them off as soon as Gamera revives and knocks him off the mountain. Gamera lands on his back and since turtles can’t get off their back all they have to do is wait until he starves to death and everybody celebrates. Well until he pull his head and legs into his shell and fire starts spewing from the limb hole, starts to spin and flies away. The scientist realizes the waves on the tablet were actually clouds and they Atlantians were saying the Gameras could fly. At this point everybody realizes the flying saucer was actually Gamera all along.

 Toshi and his sister has moved in temporarily to live with their uncle near Tokyo since their home and the lighthouse was under repair. Toshi had brought rocks from home with him, hidden in his bag since he was planning to build a house for Gamera, seeing how he still believes it was his old pet turtle. Those rocks gets dumped in the river later by his cousin, because he’s a jerk. They also take up an offer from the professor’s assistant to come visit since they were in the area. There Toshi say Gamera doesn’t mean to be bad he’s just lonely and that since all turtles were good he had to be good too. I think the scientist wants to believe him but knows they still have to stop Gamera. Meanwhile strange things are happening, fish have disappeared from the sea, water suddenly rises and floods a part of the city. And the scientist, while saying he has on physical proof, feels Gamera was responsible for the occurrences. Hope Toshi wasn’t watching that particular newscast. Gamera finally shows and starts taking out Tokyo.

 During the rampage they try to figure out what to do about Gamera and decide to use this plan Z they had in the works before Gamera showed up. But they need twenty four hours to get it finished. And in order to keep Gamera in one place long enough so they can finish this plan they feed him fire and petroleum shipped in from all over the world. Toshi, still thinking Gamera is his friend, jumps on the train heading toward the giant monster, only to be pulled off before it explodes. To get off track for a second, I know this isn’t proper and PC in this day and age, but this was 1965 where’s the adult saying the kid needs a good smack? Getting back on track they’re ready to go with Plan Z on a separate island. Toshi stows away on one of the ships, seriously where is that adult?, and is caught as soon as they land. They draw Gamera to the island by dumping a line of oil behind a couple of ships and lighting it on fire. Unfortunately there was a typhoon coming, the winds blow them out. A laborer decides to to set a building on fire. they stop him but it revealed to be the reporter, since he couldn’t come along as a reporter he volunteered to do grunt work. He gets them to see that they need to make a huge fire to draw Gamera in. And it works until rain from the typhoon hits and puts the fire out, much to Toshi’s delight.

 All seems lost until a volcano erupts keeping Gamera on the island until they Z plan can be initiated. The next day they’re ready to do. Using flames they draw Gamera to a metal indention in the ground. Once there they quickly move the side panels, encase him in a giant dome and shoot him off in a giant rocket to Mars.

 This was the only Gamera Movie shot in black and white. Gamera is, well a giant turtle, with saber tooth tiger teeth on his bottom jaw. Like most giant monsters coming out of Japan his skin is impervious to modern weapons. Although he does have a weakness to extreme cold. Something that’s was only used against him only one other time. In this movie Gamera can fly by by drawing his limbs in and emitting enough flames that he spins around and takes off. He also breathes fires and can walk on all fours or on two. His internal power source also emits some sort of electrical frequency that jams radios. This is something that’s never mentioned again in other movies as far as I can remember. I’m not sure if it’s for the full suit a puppet like apparatus but the eyes and mouth do move, always a nice touch. There’s also this puppet looking Gamera they used to show him crawling up a mountain. And I’m assuming there’s another puppet head they used to show the fire breath because it always looked a tad flame throwerish to me. Also at this point I don’t know if they planned on him being the “Friend of all children” when they created him, but if nothing else the lighthouse scene planted the scene in somebody’s mind.

 Miniature work in this is pretty good, and used often. From the ice cutter and far away jeep shot in the arctic to the cityscape as Gamera goes to town. they were also very creative to show scale in certain scenes. Like in the scene were Gamera is destroying the boat, it looks like they painted people running away from the ship. I love touches like that. There also a scene later showing the interior of the complex where they made the Z plan rocket. The exterior was the standard model, interior was a matte painting that they superimposed the actors on to show some scale. Although it does look like it belongs more in a sci-fi space movie than a kaiju film. Then there’s the Z rocket which is about ten time taller than Gamera as it comes out of the ground, and Gamera is about 60 meters tall according to those into the movie. Somebody’s compensating for something.

 The human cast is alright, you’re generally not looking for Shakespeare in this type of movie. There are a few, I wold say unneeded moments, that didn’t really have nothing to do with the rest of the movie. Like the atomic powers guys trying to figure out what to do with their stockpiles fearing Gamera would come for it, and never mentioned again. I guess they wanted to show how Gamera is effecting everybody but they could have cut a couple of them. Then there’s Toshi, the kid most people cringe at in these movies. The kid, as I stated before, is obsessed with turtles and doesn’t want anything to happen to the title monster. Going so far as to try and get the Defense Force to stop shooting at Gamera or trying to yell at him to stop him from coming to the island. I was seriously surprised he didn’t try to get away and join Gamera on the rocket before it launched. And while he did seem to find a new interest with all the science stuff he saw on the island, he did say he was going to grow up and visit Gamera. One last time where’s that adult? While they did turn it down in future movies he was the template to what was to come.

 All and all I think this is a good movie. It’s not perfect and drags in a couple of places but it works. Much like Godzilla Gamera’s debut is a one monster movie. If you can get past that I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. Also I should point out there are different version out there on DVD. Some with the original Japanese, some with the original subtitled. But there’s one with some new american scene. I have one DVD with two guys are discussing the possibility of a giant turtle, one call the other a jacksss on live TV. But since this review was done using the original 4 out of 5 stars.