aka Return of the Giant Monsters
(Daikaiju Kuchusen: Gamera tai Gyaosu)
Japan. 1967.
Crew
Director – Noriaka Yuasa, Screenplay – Nisan Takahashi, Producers – Hidemasa Nagata & Hideo Nagata, Photography – Akira Uehara, Music – Tadashi Yamauchi, Director of Special Effects – Noriaki Yuasa, Art Direction – Akira Inoue. Production Company – Daiei.
Geological eruptions cause Mount Fuji to become active again. Scientists investigating are attacked by Gyaos, a giant bird-like monster that emits rays from its mouth. Gyaos snatches young Eiichi, but Gamera appears and stands up to Gyaos to save Eiichi. However, the fight leaves Gamera wounded. As Gyaos conducts a swathe of destruction across the countryside, the assembled military and scientists try to find a means to combat it, but the only hope lies with Gamera.
Gamera vs Gyaos heads for children’s movie territory far more than the previous entries had. In one scene, young Naoyuki is snatched by Gyaos but is rescued by Gamera who flies him back down to the township. The locals use a cherry picker to try to get to him – Naoyuki calls out “Gamera, I can’t reach,” whereupon Gamera obligingly flies a few feet closer so they can. Afterwards, Naoyuke proudly proclaims “Gamera saved me and gave me a ride.” Later, after Gamera is wounded, Naoyuki telepathically sends out happy thoughts to Gamera “Hurry up and get well.”
As always with the 1960s/70s Gamera films, the effects are very dodgy. The monsters are being performed by men in often immobile rubber or even what looks like papier-mache suits. Amidst the relative primitiveness of the effects, there are some quite good ones – such as Gyaos’s heat ray slicing fighter jets in two and the quite cool effect of it cutting in half a helicopter and we seeing the passengers inside falling out. There also a peculiar sequence where Gyaos’s ray slices the pursuing photographers’ car in half lengthways and they continue on driving one of the halves, which feels like the comedy routine out of a 1970s Disney live-action film. Director Noriaka Yuasa often crafts strong images out of the effects scenes – Gamera and Gyaos standing facing off on opposite sides of a valley; Gyaos seen from a low-angle shot towering above as it beats its wings; some of the not-too-bad mass destruction scenes.
(l to r) Gyaos up against Gamera
The most entertaining scenes are when Gamera vs Gyaos pits the two monsters against one another. Gyaos blasts Gamera with its heat ray, almost slicing its arm off in gouts of green blood. Or else a mid-air fight where Gamera activates its purple flame jets flying along atop Gyaos, forcing it down towards the ground until Gyaos sprays toxic yellow fumes, not before Gamera drags Gyaos out to sea, grabbing onto its foot as Gyaos tries to fly away and finally biting the foot off in a gout of pink blood. (A few scenes later, we see Gyaos instantaneously regenerating a new foot). There is an entertaining big punch-up at the climax where at one point Gamera picks up a rock and tosses it right into Gyaos’s mouth to prevent it from using its heat ray.
The only version of Gamera vs Gyaos available to watch was one that had been dubbed into English – I am kind of a purist and will always opt for a subtitled version that allows a film to be watched in the language it was made. The English-language version here offers one of the best possible examples against dubbing a foreign-language film where all the supporting characters have been outfitted with horrendously racist voices that talk in lallation – saying the letter r instead of l – and no articles – no ‘the’ and ‘a’ – like a bad 1930s caricature of the Chinese.
This does at least bring out one thing – the official English-language pronunciation of Gamera and Gyaos. I had always pronounced Gamera as rhyming with camera and Gyaos as ‘guy-ay-os’, whereas the film gives it as “gam-ERA” as in ‘gam’ followed by the first two syllables of ‘America’ and Gyaos as gowse, rhyming with mouse.
