Attack of the Monsters Japan/USA,
NR, 82 m (USA: 80m), 1969
Gamera
tai daiakuju Giron, aka Attack
of the Monsters (the title hung on it by American distributor AIP, though a
literal English translation would be Gamera vs. the Devil-Beast Giron),
is the fifth of seven Gamera pictures from Japan’s Daiei Motion Picture
Company (now Kadokawa Pictures), and it has all the hallmarks of what makes this
second-rate Godzilla series so much fun: ridiculous rubber-suited monsters, dime
store sets, slapdash special-effects, amateurish acting, and inept dubbing in
English. (Okay, for that last part we have only AIP to blame.) Mind, this Shōwa
era stuff has nothing on the
later Gamera offerings Shusuke Kaneko and company gave to the world during
Daiei’s far more inspired Heisei period, but I can think of worse ways to wile
away a Saturday afternoon. One starry night, two little boys, Akio (Nobuhiro
Kajima) and Tom (Christopher Murphy), are outside goofing around with their
telescope when they spot a UFO falling to Earth. The wok-shaped craft (complete
with Caddie fins and some sort of whirling transmitter on top) lands in a
clearing somewhere ahead, inspiring the kids to go play Mulder and Scully. With
Akio’s cute-as-a-button baby sister, Tomoko (Miyuki Akiyama), in tow, the
children bike over the river and through the woods to the field where the
spaceship sits idling. The two precocious boys enter the craft (sans li’l sis,
who finds it way too “scary” to join them), and they fiddle around with the
controls until the thing takes off for the heavens. Tomoko runs after it,
shouting to her brother, “You get outta there or you’re gonna get a
scolding!” (The warning goes unheeded as Akio failed to put in his Emson Sonic
Earz!) But the boys can’t turn back; they have no control over the ship. The
blasted hunk of junk has a preprogrammed destination to follow. The
boys have a high ol’ time zipping through the stars, but their merriment soon
turns to terror when they realize that they’re headed for an asteroid the size
of Ohio. But have no fear, my friends, for a giant prehistoric turtle with
pointlessly oversized incisors and fire shooting out of its ass has come to save
the day. Yes, it’s Gamera, “the friend of children,” and as his heroic
theme music booms away, he pushes the rock out of the ship’s path. But try as
he might, he can’t stop the saucer from speeding towards the nearby planet of
Terra, where it eventually crashes, knocking its tiny occupants unconscious. Upon
awakening, the boys watch as Gyaos, a humungous bird-like creature, swoops down
and starts busting up the planet. But then a nearby stream begins to
miraculously recede and flow uphill. The ground quakes and cracks open,
and a part shark, part bulldog behemoth with a knife-shaped noggin emerges. This
is Guillon (or Guiron), and he’s spoiling for a bit of the old ultra-violence.
The bird beast greets the fish thingy with a laser blast from his triangular
peepers, but Guillon successfully deflects the ray, and it shoots back to slice
Gyaos’ leg clean off. Now, if you’re watching the AIP cut of this picture,
that’s where the fight ends, but Daiei’s original edit features buckets and
buckets of more blood. In that version, Guillon uses his bladed forehead to hack
away at the rest of Gyaos’ limbs until the poor thing is left to flop about
helplessly in a pool of his own vital fluid. But Guillon can’t abide watching
Gyaos suffer for too long, so he sends him off to hell with a swift but grisly
beheading. (His name is derived from “guillotine,” after all.) As the boys are exploring Terra, they bump
into the planet’s only two remaining Terrans: Barbella (a nod, perhaps, to a
certain ‘60s crap fest starring Jane Fonda) and Flobella, two queerly
outfitted dames with visions of little boys’ brains dancing in their heads. It
seems that noshing on human gray matter will give these vamps all the knowledge
they need to make a go at Earth, which is where Barbella (we’re told it means
“as sweet as a little bird”) and Flobella (we’re told it means “as nasty
as the resident gum-smacking, trash-talking waitress at a greasy spoon run by
a miserly, pot-bellied chauvinist in a dirty apron”) must flee on account of
that pesky Gyaos (or his double from an alternate universe) fucking up their
planet’s environment. So, the evil molls serve the boys milk and sweet rolls
topped with a sleep-inducing drug. As little Akiro dreams of snowflakes and
whiskers on kittens, the Terrans shave his head and prepare to scoop out his
brains. But wait, here comes Gamera, “the friend of children,” and you
better believe he’s not going to allow these cannibalistic twats to do in our
pint-sized protagonists. But the Terrans have an ace in the hole: our old friend
Guillon (who can fling shuriken from his phallic dome just by willing it), and
he’s going to school Gamera in the fine art of backyard wrestling. Gamera (who
can walk bipedally) displays some pretty impressive gymnastics on a huge
parallel bar, but Guillon soon gains the upper claw. He keeps headbutting
Gamera’s shell until he draws a steady stream of icky green gore. Dear God, is
this the end of Gamera? Well, if you’ve seen enough of these silly things, you
know damn well how it’s all going to go down. If not, rest assured good
triumphs over evil. The movie’s close even treats us some deep thoughts from
Akiro that may remind you of Dorothy’s epiphany at the end of The Wizard of
Oz: “We shouldn’t long for other stars—just try to love instead.”
(Duly noted, little buddy, but surely Ms. Ho taught you in the second grade that
Earth isn’t a star!) Needless to say, the dialogue here is absolutely
atrocious, but I don’t know if the fault lies with the screenwriters or if
things got dumbed down at the dubbing stage. There are no less than three
versions of this thing floating around: the
original Japanese edit, the English-dubbed hack job from AIP, and a Sandy Franks
redo with alternate English looping for syndicated television. I haven’t seen
the latter, but I can’t imagine it helps to make Akio look any less stupid. It’s too easy to clown on a banal cheapie like Attack of the Monsters (akin to goofing on George W. Bush because he’s not articulate), so I’m not going to go there. The makers of these kaiju pics weren’t setting out to make high art; odds are they were every bit aware of how dippy this stuff was as you are. So to partake in MST3K-style razzing with an endearingly innocent piece of fluff like Attack of the Monsters won’t make you look particularly clever. You’ll probably just come off looking like a jerk to the little ones who get off on this stuff. As I watched my own little boy sit in rapt attention as Gamera blazed across the boob tube, I was reminded of those Margaret Keane paintings featuring children with huge, saucer-like eyes. It’s such a pity that Father Time sooner or later robs us all of that ability to marvel over guys jumping around in rubber monster suits. November 10, 2007 © Copyright 2007 by Edward Larsen Terkelsen. All rights reserved.
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