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Released by: Mill Creek Entertainment
Released on: April 29th, 2014.
Director: Various
Cast: Various
Year: Various
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The Movie:
GAMERA VS. GUIRON:
Also known as Attack Of The Monsters, this first movie begins when a mysterious unidentified flying object lands in a field outside of Tokyo. Two curious young boys, Akio (Nobuhiro Kajima) and Tom (Christopher Murphy), set out to check out the crash site and see what exactly happened. They enter the ship and wind up taking control of the ship and piloting it on a joyride of sorts. Unfortunately, most twelve year old boys suck at driving and these two are no exception - they crash the ship on a foreign planet where they see Gyaos doing battle with a creature with a giant knife for a head named Guiron. Making matters worse for our heroes is the presence of two female aliens, Barbella and Flobella, who intend to eat their brains, steal their spaceship, and head to Earth to make all kinds of trouble.
What Gyaos, Barbella and Flobella don't count on is the fact that Gamera is on watch and he's not going to take any of their shit. He spins around really fast, breaths some space fire, and goes on an ass kicking rampage of epic proportions!
Okay, ignore the obnoxious kids or pretend that you live in the perfect world where the alien chicks really would have eaten their brains and enjoy the plethora of rubber suited chaos that this movie offers up in spades. Sure, the plot is dopey and ropey but what matters here are the battles and on that level this is a pretty great entry in the Gamera series - where else in the series are you going to see a strange creature with a knife-head use that knife-head to saw off his opponent's noggin? Nowhere! While the writers seem to have gone on vacation this time around, the effects technicians and monster suited powers that be have more than made up for that, stock footage inserts be damned.
GAMERA VS. JIGER:
Released in North America as Gamera Vs. Monster X, our second feature begins on a strange island somewhere in the South Pacific where the natives are irritated by the presence of a strange, noisy statue. Thankfully for them, Expo 70 is going on in Japan and some exhibitors seem keen on displaying it there for the world to see. Moving the statue proves to be a bad idea, however, as it awakens a giant lizard named Jiger who follows the exhibition crew to Tokyo to wreak death and destruction. Gamera shows up but the first round of their battle goes to Jiger when he stabs him with his tail which somehow manages to make Gamera a host for its creepy insect larva hatchlings!
This time around, it's up to Hiroshi (Tsutomu Tawkawa) and Tommy (Cary Varis), two boys not at all unlike those seen in the first film, to pilot a mini submarine through Gamera's body and eliminate the parasites so that he can get back to full strength and send Jiger back where he belongs.
Not quite as insane as the first feature, this is still a movie ripe with quality monster battles and miniatures being trashed by guys in rubber suits. This entry also has the bonus of not recycling so many clips from earlier films, though there are a few early on in the picture. Some interesting, almost documentary style footage of the actual Expo 70 occurring for real in Tokyo will interest those with an affection for such things, though again, the child actors hired to play in this picture are pretty irritating.
Jiger isn't quite as cool an opponent for everyone's favorite space turtle as a knife-headed beastie, but he's still a fun bad guy thanks to his unique insemination skills. This isn't the best entry in the series or even the best entry on this set, but it's still a fun time at the movies.
GAMERA VS. ZIGRA
Made on a noticeably smaller budget than the Gamera movies that came before it, this film starts off when a giant space monster named Zigra lays waste to a moon base on his way to Japan where he intends to wreak havoc on Tokyo. At a theme park called Kamogawa Sea World, a kid named Kenichi (Yasushi Sakagami) and his friend Helen (Arlene Zoellner) live with their fathers, Dr. Yosuke Ishikawa (Isamu Saeki) and Dr. Tom Wallace (Koji Fujiyama), who are employed there as scientists. When Zigra lands in the ocean near where they live, the scientists rush out to investigate where they meet Woman X (Eiko Yanami), a stone cold fox who is basically Zigra's mouth piece. They learn that the nefarious space monster instead to take over the planet and eat people.
After Zigra causes an earthquake, the kids decide it's up to them to stop the monster and so they get Gamera to help and a bunch of rad monster battles ensue.
About as goofy as they come, Gamera Vs. Zigra was obviously intended for a children's audience and director Noriaki Yuasa plays to what kids want out of a film - light action, lots of monsters and rubber suit stomp outs, corny comedic moments and heroes their own age who they can relate to. On that level, the movie works just fine and when watched with a few younger viewers around it becomes obvious that kids will have no problem enjoying this picture. As far as adult viewers go, well, there are moments where the whole thing comes off as a glorified commercial for Kamogawa Sea World and it's probably not a coincidence that the park is featured so prominently in the movie. The effects, however, are just as cool here as they are in Gamera movies past and if it feels toned down a bit, it's still entertaining if you're in the right mood for it.
GAMERA: SUPER MONSTER
Made nine years later, Gamera: Super Monster was once again directed by Noriaki Yuasa. Daiei had gone out of business at this point but the company that owned the rights to the Gamera series wasn't going to let a good thing go to waste so easily and so this film, essentially a greatest hits reel, was put together to cash in on the series' fan base. They did, however, at least write a new story on which to hang all the recycled footage.
Giruge (Keiko Kudo) leads a group of his fellow aliens towards Earth in a spaceship intent on conquering the planet with some help from a group of evil monsters made up of Barugon, Gyaos, Viras, Giron, Jiger, and Zigra. What they don't count on is the presence of Kilara (Mahha Fumiake - a wrestler who appeared alongside Etsuko Shiomi in The Great Chase), an alien woman who runs a pet shop and keeps her true origins a secret. She's not alone, either - she's got two alien lady pals around to help her: Marsha (Yaeko Kojima) and Mitan (Yoko Komatsu).
When the monsters attack, Kilara will have to enlist the aid of a kid named Keiichi (Koichi Maeda) to get Gamera back in action - just in time to save the planet from certain doom!
With all of the actual footage of the monsters duking it out culled from other Gamera movies, there aren't a whole lot of surprises here. At least the story aspect of the film is original and some new effects bits show up in the form of footage of spaceships flying around and what not. The whole thing is put together rather poorly, however, and while the new story is obviously a good thing at this point the writers were simply going through the motions. It's all very predictable and hokey to a fault but at least the alien ladies are interesting and stocky Fumiake is a blast to watch.
Video/Audio/Extras:
All four films have been slapped onto a 50GB Blu-ray disc in their original 1.85.1 widescreen aspect ratio. Though the packaging indicates that these are 1080p transfers, they are in fact interlaced. Each of the four films shows some compression artifacts (that'll happen cramming four movies onto one disc even if it is a 50GB) but how noticeable that will be is going to depend a lot on screen size and viewer attentiveness. The artifacts certainly don't ruin the movies and most of the time the interlacing effects aren't particularly noticeable. Color reproduction is decent and skin tones look pretty natural. There aren't any obvious noise reduction issues and edge enhancement is never a problem. These aren't reference quality, in fact you could probably safely assume they're the same transfers that were done years back for the Japanese Blu-ray set which in turn made their way onto the Shout! Factory DVDs, but they do look pretty good all things considered.
The films are each presented in DTS-HD Mono in their original Japanese language with optional subtitles provided in English. The audio is obviously and understandably limited by the source material but the tracks are fine. There are no issues with any hiss or distortion and the levels are properly balanced. Some will lament the absence of the English dubbed tracks, and that's fair, but these get the job done without any problems.
Outside of a static menu and chapter selection, there are no extras on the disc.
The Final Word:
Mill Creek's release of Gamera: Ultimate Collection Volume 2 on Blu-ray, just like Volume 1, offers a whole lot of bang for the buck and while again, the transfers aren't perfect, they are pretty good. The films on the disc are all pretty entertaining, even if the last one is for all the wrong reasons, and fans of the flying space turtle will no doubt appreciate this budget release.
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
