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Gamera vs. Zigra
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| Year: |
1971
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Director: |
Noriaki Yuasa
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| Stars: |
Kôji Fujiyama, Daigo Inoue, Reiko Kasahara, Daihachi Kita, Goro Kumon, Shin Minatsu, Akira Natsuki, Kei'ichi Noda, Isamu Saeki, Yasushi Sakagami, Mikiko Tsubouchi, Eiko Yanami, Yoshio Yoshida, Arlene Zoellner, Gloria Zoellner
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| Genre: |
Action, Science Fiction, Adventure |
| Rating: |
  6 (from 3 votes) |
| Review: |
In the late 20th Century, Japan had built a base on the Moon to further mankind's exploration of the stars, but what we had not counted on was the presence of other entities regarding our Earth with envious eyes. So it was that the base was blown up by a mysterious alien craft which in the process kidnapped a scientist who had been carrying out research on the surface of the satellite. These aliens called themselves the Zigra, and what they wanted was our planet's resources, specifically the oceans where they planned to live - whether we wanted them to or not.
And we do not, because they prove to be very hostile neighbours what with their tendency to blow up our military, cause earthquakes, and borrow our lawnmower without giving it back. There's only one person to call - well, not so much a person, more a giant flying turtle called Gamera, for it was he, making his final appearance in the original run of the franchise unless you counted the stock footage-packed cheapo revival from 1980, Gamera: The Super Monster. Given that wasn't much of a send-off, you'd probably be better to recall him this way, in his heyday before financial difficulties prevented any more of these being made.
Scripted once more by Nisan Takahashi, as the whole series was, here he took a leaf out of a certain other giant monster's book, for just as Godzilla was battling the Smog Monster about the same time, the themes were ecological as that took over as the main concern for science fiction and horror into the nineteen-seventies. However, in a rather muddled development, it was Zigra who wanted to preserve the environment and we humans who were ruining it, so the aliens in effect operated as a punishment for our mishandling of our planet, though you would doubtless consider their methods of the "Out of the frying pan into the fire" variety.
As with most of these films, we were intended to see this outrageous yarn through the eyes of a child, two in fact, Ken (Yasushi Sakagami) and his best friend Helen (Gloria Zoellner), again a Westerner signed up for more international appeal (her sister was in this as well). They are kidnapped with their fathers, two scientists - Dr Ishikawa (Isamu Saeki) and Dr Wallace (Kôji Fujiyama) - when out on the sea for a trip, and taken aboard the spacecraft by apparently the sole representative of Zigra they could be bothered to send, a woman in a green and silver catsuit (Eiko Yanami), but her actual provenance is revealed later on. She freezes the scientists with hypnosis, but is foiled by the kids who make good their escape.
Wait a sec, isn't there someone missing here? Where's Gamera? Well, he does appear intermittently, but this was one of the most giant turtle light instalments, even by this series' standards; he appears for a big battle with Zigra nearer the end, by which time the spaceship has transformed into a giant spear-nosed shark (so how does it stand up when on land?), but aside from a skirmish halfway through he spends most of his time upside down in a hypnotised position under the sea. In the meantime were are treated to Zigra's pompous pronouncements, and he has a very high opinion of himself when he proclaims that we humans are too ugly to run the world, whereas he is beautiful and therefore presumably just right, though worryingly he does see we land based animals as a food supply, so there's all sorts of problems going on with that. Ending with Gamera preposterously playing his own catchy theme tune on the giant shark's spines, this was preachy, but amusing enough in its silliness. Music by Shunsuke Kikuchi.
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| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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