Gamera vs. Barugon

An odd film for the Gamera series. For one thing, Gamera barely shows up in it; you could easily cut out ten minutes and have a fully-finished film just titled "Barugon". For another, it ties the monster story strongly to the human one, attempting a tale of greed and morality. It doesn't work that well, but I appreciate the attempt, as well as the crazy monster, who can "freeze anything with its tongue" and shoot destructive rainbows out of its back.

It's a special film where a giant lizard shoots a rainbow from his back to blow up a bunch of missiles miles and miles away.

Japanese cut. The real monsters were the humans hrr drr. Gamera comes back to Japan in the most improbable circumstance, recharges his batteries, and then we switch to crappy trio who can afford to buy a helicopter on the black market but have to pose as deckhands to get passage on a ship to get there. Fucking awesome rainbow action. Weird Pacific island with dark skinned men and light-skinned women except for the blackface one. Fav scene: Gamera tossing Barugon onto a bridge.

Old school Mst3k score: 3/10, Regular Mst3k score: 7/10

Apparently by this point Gamera was powerful enough at the studio to only have to put in a few days' shooting and go home early. The rest of the proceedings are thus given over entirely to a monster which (somehow) combines fire-breathing and freon-spraying in one nifty little package.

Attack of the giant voiceover

The most "adult" oriented of the early Gamera movies, with a culture clash romantic subplot involving an innocent native girl (who adapts to miniskirts quite readily) and a modern Japanese man and no kids in sight.

The film has a strangely mature and touching storyline, which contrasts weirdly with one of the series' most bizarre monsters. The atmosphere on this one is also interesting, and elevates it above the norm.

Besides the fact that Gamera seems almost like he was written in at the last minute, this is a pretty good monster movie with a brisk pace. The fights with Gamera are really the only disappointments but that's a big disappointment for a "vs." titled movie. [MST3k: After the less than steller riffing one the first entry this one really hits the ground running with one zinger right after the other. Even without Gamera's omnipresence or little Timmies this is played out by our boys splendidly.]

As a kaiju fan this is like mildly tasteless comfort food. The human adventure plot is somewhat interesting and even a little dark. Barugon gets some cool stuff to do but gameras barely in it. All the government response to kaiju stuff was extremely generic and i tend to zone out at those scenes.

My favorite giant fire-breathing, jet-propelled turtle, a huge lizard that breathes ice and shoots deadly rainbows, and even a semi-compelling and hilariously acted treasure hunt?! Ignoring the blackface scene, this movie is an absolute delight! Even with Gamera missing most of the time, Barugon is cool enough to keep you entertained.

Barugon is a very silly and awesome monster design with his two attacks. But Gamera doesn't have more than 10 minutes of screentime and plays barely any role. Also there are some general problems common to most cheap showa era kaiju films.

Thanks to an idiotic fail in german dubbing this got pretty confusing, but entertaining nonetheless.

Often seems to lose interest in itself - characters tend to disappear for really long periods of time, Gamera for instance is sidelined for arbitrary reasons and then completely forgotten about for most of the film - but it has enough good individual moments to be worthwhile.

In-between the rubber-suited monster scenes, it almost tries to be a regular movie; consequently, it's not as much fun as the entries on either side of it.

Gamera barely appears in his own film, instead making way for a lizard who harnesses the destructive power of rainbows. I appreciate that they tried to make the humans relevant with a plot centered on the dangers of greed, but it's not done well, and comes across as schizophrenic at times.