When Gamera was acquired by a new owner after the folding of Daiei Studios, now renamed Daiei Film, it was never expected that they would kill him off in the first film!  Also not expected was a glorified clip show that cut up all of his previous movies so as to save money on the budget.  Sure there were new sequences filmed, but they were essentially trash compared to the masterpieces that came before.

What were they thinking?

The actresses who played some strange superheroes were fairly terrible as was the little boy who was more than a little annoying, especially when he played his Gamera March on the organ.  And speaking of music, why the new intro song?  It is not as if it freshened the movie up in any way, at least the old Gamera tune was catchy and enjoyable.  The hack job done with this movie is something that should never have been released.

The story here finds another alien woman who comes to Earth in service to a being who wants to conquer the planet and tasks her with overcoming all the obstacles which might prevent that.  It just so happens that main obstacle is Gamera.  So it is that our monstrous hero must battle all of his old foes all over again before finally facing the big bad.  The main problem with all of these battles are that they are all lifted from the previous films and just inserted here in a random order.  The only new sequence comes from Gamera flying off to take on a Star Destroyer, fresh out of Star Wars.  You can almost hear Worf from Star Trek yelling out, ‘ramming speed!’

How the studio never got fined from George Lucas is a mystery, and why they had to kill off their titular star is beyond words, but all-in-all, it and this film just felt like a huge mistake.  Actually, it was a huge mistake and so was watching it.

Terrible.

1 out of 5

First entry – Giant Monster Gamera (1965)
Second entry – The Monolith Monsters (1957)
Third entry – Gamera vs. Barugon (1966)
Fourth entry – Tarantula (1955)
Fifth Entry – Gamera vs. Gyaos (1967)
Sixth entry – Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957)
Seventh Entry – Gamera vs. Viras (1968)
Eighth entry – The Cyclops (1957)
Ninth entry – Gamera vs. Guiron (1969)
Tenth entry – Monsters (2010)
Eleventh entry – Gamera vs. Jiger (1970)
Twelth entry – The Killer Shrews (1959)
Thirteenth entry – Gamera vs. Zigra (1971)
Fourteenth Entry – The Deadly Mantis (1957)