30th June 2007: Japanese Rubber Monsters part 2!

Destroy All Planets

Japan 1968 colour

aka Gamera Tai Viras, Gamera vs Outer Space Monster Viras, Gamera vs Viras, Gamera Tai Uchu Kaijû Bairasu

Director Noriaki Yuasa Writer Nisan Takahashi

Cast Kojiro Hongo (Mr Shimida), Toru Takatsuka (Masao Nakaya), “Kurl Crane”/Carl Craig (Jim Crane), Peter Williams (Dr Dobie)

Welcome to Gamera The Flying Turtle movie #4, after War Of The Monsters and Return Of The Giant Monsters, purchased and dubbed into English by AIP for American television. If you were just a tiny tot in the late 60s and early 70s these rubber suited Japanese space operas were regulation Z-grade viewing. But if you’ve never seen or heard of Gamera before, you’re in for a treat: a journey into the nether regions of tacky Japanese monster movies guided by the flame shooting out of a flying turtle’s arse.

Destroy All Planets from 1968 starts off promisingly: within the first ten minutes Gamera defeats an invasion force from outer space housed in the coolest spaceship that looks like inner tube lined with bumble-bee bottoms. Then, being a Gamera film, the kids take over the asylum, and the film degenerates into a pre-teen scout adventure where two tykes are actually allowed by top Japanese scientists to test-drive their new submarine. “Oh, go on...” And wouldn’t you know it - Gamera just happens to sail past them doing the breast stroke. “Gamera is our FRIEND!” you hear them shriek with delight.

Luckily the invasion force returns, and they capture the mini-heroes, before watching Gamera’s previous fights with knife-nosed Barugon and would-be pterodactyl Gaos on a tele-screen as a kind of greatest hits package. And we’re not supposed to know that at least 20 minutes of the film is recycled! At least when the Simpsons do it, they can make fun of the process. Oh well.

Back to Gamera, who after freeing himself from the invaders’ powerful mind control, must rescue the little bastards AND Earth, and must battle Viras, an astounding-looking giant alien squid, while cheered on by his prepubescent cheer squad. Most astounding of all is that no-one bats an eyelid over monsters from outer space, least of all our terrible twosome. God I hate these kids, and I know you will too, and maybe Gamera will someday but I doubt it: Gamera is friends to all children, and so, reviving the child in all of us, here’s your friend and mine, Gamera in Destroy All Planets.

The X From Outer Space

Japan 1967 colour

aka Invasion Of X From Outer Space, Uchu Daikaijû Girara, Big Space Monster Guilala, Gilala, Girara

Director Kazui Nihonmatsu Writers Moriyoshi Ishida, Eibi Motomochi, Kazui Nihonmatsu

Cast Eiji Okada (Dr. Kato), Toshiya Wazaki (Capt. Sano), Itoko Harada (Michiko), Peggy Neal (Lisa)

From Shochiku Productions comes the the scratchings from the lowest shelf in the fridge: The X From Outer Space, or considering its main protagonist is a rubber chicken monster, the Eggs from Outer Space.

The latest Mars mission to launch from Mount Fuji discovers a UFO has been blocking previous spaceships from reaching the Red Planet. An onboard cabal of German and Japanese scientists - and isn’t it heartwarming to see the Germans and Japanese collaborate on something again! - aren’t exactly the most confidence-inspiring bunch, although Lisa, the Aryan ubernaut, manages to wear a cocktail dress under her spacesuit AND manages to keep every hair in place in zero gravity. Hurrah!

After a quick cointreau and trampolining on the Moon, the Mars mission continues until the flying saucer (“It looks like the world’s largest fried egg!” remarks one of the crew) coats the ship in what looks like bird poo, but on closer inspection looks like crystal eggs. Safely back on Earth, the egg hatches, the lab is trashed, and the chicken prints lead to a bloody big hole in the floor.

If the crew doesn’t fill you with confidence, the earthbound scientists are less likely to. As always, the logic of scientists is empeccable: this chicken print looks remarkably like THIS chicken print... The trail of broken egg shells leads all the way to Tokyo, where it is being crushed undergoot - or under claw - by a huge glowing monster the scientists name “Gilala” - part chicken, part dinosaur with collossal drumsticks, a bar-b-q for a mouth, a staggering array of tubes and antennae out of a head framed with just one expression: of startled, open-mouthed hostility.

And so it goes, zipping along agreeably and loaded with miniature sets and effects that can only be described as “cute” or “dinky”. Compared to its much bigger budgeted contemporaries like Godzilla or, God help it, Gamera, this chicken monster may be a turkey, but in the best possible sense of the word, and in retrospect the sight of a toy car being chased by a rubber claw is priceless.

This is easily one of my favourite Z-grade Japanese monster fests, not just because there’s no annoying little monsters screaming “the giant chicken monster is our FRIEND!” No, it goes so much deeper than that; this is classic BAD movie terrain that will absolutely scramble your brain: ladies and gentlemen, The Eggs From Outer Space.

2nd June 2007: Japanese Rubber Monster double #1!

Gamera

Japan 1965 b&w

aka Gammera The Invincible, Daikaijû Gamera, Giant Monster Gamera

Director Noriaki Yuasa Writer Nisan Takahashi

Cast Eiji Funakoshi (Dr. Hidaka), Harumi Kiritachi (Kyoke), Junichirô Yamashiko (Aoyagi), Michiko Sugata (Nobuyo)

Tonight we travel to a parallel universe where the appearance of giant prehistoric monsters flattening cities are part of the daily routine. It’s the world of Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra Ghidrah and their kind - a strange world, and one made even stranger by the appearance of an unidentified flying turtle called Gamera.

Forever in the shadow of the monolithic Toho Studios, second rung Daiei Studios were more famous for samurai sagas than monster movies. In the mid 60s they decided to join the giant reptile race and designed a rival monster series to Toho’s mammothly successful Godzilla. They wisely chose Gamera as their flagship - a giant turtle that shoots flames from between its snaggleteeth, and spins through the air by shooting flames through its shell’s feetholes (and at one point you almost see the paper mache shell catch fire!).

The first Gamera film “Gamera The Invincible” (as it was sold to the US) is a virtual mirror of the first Godzilla film, only 10 years behind. American fighters chase an unmarked plane over the Arctic to its fiery demise - the nuclear bomb on board ignites and awakens the giant Gamera from its icy slumber. Feeding off atomic energy, it immediately goes on a rampage, and the world wants to destroy Gamera once and for all, but a little Japanese boy named Kenny, who has a psychic connection with the giant turtle and even keeps a miniature version in an aquarium by his bedside, believes Gamera is essentially kind and benevolent. He’s like a little Jewish kid with a pinup of Hitler. “Gamera is a GOOD turtle,” he pleads, then sulks, and puts on a face like someone’s pooped in his coco pops. Miraculously the world’s leaders listen to him, and so begins Z-Plan to save the world AND Gamera from complete destruction.

Kenny: Gamera saved me, didn’t he?
Dr Hidaka: Yes. Gamera saved your life.
Kenny: Because he knows I like turtles.
Mother: Gamera likes you. Gamera must have a good heart.
Kenny: Yes. Gamera is a GOOD turtle.
Mother: He is good. He IS good.
Dr Hidaka: (laughs) Yes, he is.

Released in 1965, Gamera was a surprising hit. The annoying infantile anthropomorphism actually worked on kiddie audiences in both Japan and the US, and the sight of Gamera on two feet stomping miniatures of Tokyo and the North Pole is gloriously chintzy. Most surprising of all is the longevity of the series: eight original Gamera films, plus a slew of recent remakes. Not bad for a mutant reptile whose only friend is mewing eight year old milktoast - and if I hear “Gamera is friends to ALL children” one more time I’M going to crush Tokyo. Which appears to be an easy task in the parallel universe where children are smart and turtles are bigger than a Seiko billboard in the 1965 turtle-fest Gamera.

Warning From Space

Japan 1956 colour

aka Uchûjin Tôkyô Ni Arawaru, The Mysterious Satellite

Director Koji Shima Writer Hideo Oguni

Cast Keizo Kawasaki (Toru), Toyomi Karita (Hikari Aozora/Ginko), Bin Yagasawa (No. 2 Pairan), Shozo Nanbu (Dr Toro Isobe)

Welcome back to our second Japanese science fiction feature, a much earlier tinfoil effort from Daiei Studios. Warning From Space, released in 1956 to capitalize on the success of Godzilla, has the honour of being the first Japanese space opera film in colour. It also features some of the most bizarre out-of-this-world creatures ever witnessed on Schlock Treatment - star creatures from the planet Paira who have giant eyes for belly buttons and look suspiciously like a cross between Tellytubbies and the KKK.

Their spaceship hovers over Tokyo, creating mass hysteria and the usual cries of denial from the stuffed shirts in the government. After frightening a few geishas, the star creatures decide to “transmute” into a more pleasing form to the human eye. And so as to not attract undue attention, the lead alien morphs into the most famous female singer in Japan, appears at a country club doing ten-foot volleys on the tennis court, and walks through walls in front of crowded rooms.

Father (holding a tennis racquet): Hmm... it’s very strange.
Son: The racquet?
Father: No! The girl!

Her message is simple - Earth is on a collision course with the renegade Planet R and, as Planet Paira is dependent on the Earth’s gravitational pull, the fate of both planets are at stake. Dr Kamura’s plan is to use the earth’s stock of H-bombs to blast the planet out of existence, but the rest of the world won’t listen, and as Planet R dwarfs the Earth in its shadow, earthquakes and tidal waves split Japan in two. It’s a perfect picture postcard of post-war angst: barely 10 years after Hiroshima and the Japanese population are running from air sirens into bomb shelters while their country is flattened by outside forces.

Interestingly, the A-bomb is seen as the potential saviour of Japan - or maybe that’s something the American dubbing studio lost in the translation. And speaking of the dubbing, why do half of the characters sound American, and the other half are straight out of Monkey Magic? Still, it’s an interesting, uniquely Japanese manifestion of Cold War paranoia, with a very cool backdrop of 1950s Tokyo. Remember to keep your eyes on the stars as we prepare for the imminent destruction of the Earth - AGAIN - with the 1956 Warning From Space.