KnotMissPriceless Why so much hype?

AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks

Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Staci Frederick Blistering performances.

JLRVancouver "Gammera, the Invincible*" was Daiei Studio's chelonid answer to Toho Studio's popular Godzilla series. The film was targeted at a younger audience than contemporary Godzilla movies and one of the main characters is a young, turtle-loving boy. The monster design is on par with the late Showa-era Godzilla characters, although making a turtle look menacing is challenging. The film opens with the accidental detonation of a nuclear bomb, which releases Gamera from his 200,000,000 year icy hibernation. This is a one-monster-show, so most of the action revolves the shelled-kaiju's destruction of cities and power plants, and the JDF's various fruitless attempts to destroy him. The dubbed version I watched had a lot of tedious, cheap-looking English footage added (including, among others, Brian Donlevy), primarily cold-war tinged discussions about what to do about the situation). In keeping with his later appearances, Gamera is child-friendly, catching young Toshio (Yoshiro Uchida) when he falls from his lighthouse home (unfortunately, as the kid turns out to be an incredibly annoying character). Even by Showa-era kaiju films, the 'science' that explains Gamera's evolutionary history and current existence is ridiculous, as is the cunning plan devised to get rid of him. While silly, the black-and-white film is much more somber than later entries in the series (noticeably absent is the cheerily infectious "Gamera theme") and resembles the original Godzilla (1954) in style (although the Toho film is substantially better). Some of the matte scenes are reasonably well done, as are the miniatures (esp. the thermoelectric plant), but the gigantic, tusked, bipedal, flying turtle pretty much strains 'suspension of disbelief' beyond the breaking point. Kaiju fans will want to include the towering turtle's debut on their life lists but other than fans of 'camp' (who will probably prefer the MST3K annotated version), I can't imagine a modern audience showing much interest in the movie (although the Japanese version may be better that the 'westernised' version I watched). *The American title of the film seems to be the only instance of the "Gammera" spelling.

O2D It is very easy to sum up this movie, Godzilla turns into a turtle.The end.I was slightly familiar with Gammera but was a little surprised his origin is almost a shot for shot re-make of the first Godzilla movie.There is basically no plot.Some kid doesn't want Gammera to get hurt.Is that the plot?Weak.There are a couple good things about this movie.The best is that they totally rip-offed the Batman TV show theme song and just changed the one word to "Gammera".It's lame that they stole it but you will be singing it before you get to the end.The other good thing is that there is a Japanese Colonel Sanders(I think he was in a few Godzilla movies but I've seen so many bad movies that they all just run together).I almost forgot, Dick O'Neill is in this movie.Who is he?Go to his IMDb page and you will know who he is.He's that guy that was in everything and you never knew his name.Not bad for a monster movie, give it a shot.

MartinHafer This "clever" film was originally a Japanese film. And while I assume that original film was pretty bad, it was made a good bit worse when American-International Films hacked the film to pieces and inserted American-made segments to fool the audience. Now unless your audience is made of total idiots, it becomes painfully obvious that this was done--and done with little finesse or care about the final product. The bottom line is that you have a lot of clearly Japanese scenes and then clearly American scenes where the film looks quite different. Plus, the American scenes really are meaningless and consist of two different groups of people at meetings just talking about Gamera--the evil flying turtle! And although this is a fire-breathing, flying and destructive monster, there is practically no energy because I assume the actors were just embarrassed by being in this wretched film--in particular, film veterans Brian Donlevy and Albert Dekker. They both just looked tired and ill-at-ease for being there.Now as for the monster, it's not quite the standard Godzilla-like creature. Seeing a giant fanged turtle retract his head and limbs and begin spinning through the air like a missile is hilarious. On the other hand, the crappy model planes, destructible balsa buildings and power plant are, as usual, in this film and come as no surprise. Plus an odd Japanese monster movie cliché is included that will frankly annoy most non-Japanese audience members, and that is the "adorable and precocious little boy who loves the monster and believes in him". Yeah, right. Well, just like in GODZILLA VERSUS THE SMOG MONSTER and several other films, you've got this annoying creep cheering on the monster, though unlike later incarnations of Godzilla, Gamera is NOT a good guy and it turns out in the end the kid is just an idiot! Silly, exceptional poor special effects that could be done better by the average seven year-old, bad acting, meaningless American clips and occasionally horrid voice dubbing make this a wretched film. Oddly, while most will surely hate this film (and that stupid kid), there is a small and very vocal minority that love these films and compare them to Bergman and Kurosawa. Don't believe them--this IS a terrible film!FYI--Apparently due to his terrific stage presence, Gamera was featured in several more films in the 60s as well as some recent incarnations. None of these change the central fact that he is a fire-breathing flying turtle or that the movies are really, really lame.

Michael DeZubiria Gammera, one of the most famous Japanese monsters to hit the big screen in the 1960s makes his debut in this zero-budget, politically charged monster thriller. It is interesting to consider the tensions that were taking place between certain nations at the time that the movie was made, especially between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union. There is no effort made to disguise the animosity that existed between the two, more than likely since that bitterness was needed as a catalyst to bring Gammera back from 200 million years of hibernation. The U.S. shoots down a suspicious bomber, which turned out to be Russian, over the arctic region. As is to be expected from those sneaky Russians, the bomber was loaded with hydrogen bombs which, upon impact, explode with sufficient force to not only thaw but also infuriate the sleeping Gammera. Lots of havoc is wreaked upon poorly constructed models of cities and airplanes and landscapes and such, and there is some strange subplot about a little boy obsessed with turtles who wants to expose Gammera for the gentle creature that he really is. Inspiration for the Iron Giant, maybe? The special effects are astonishingly bad, but there was no budget and in the movie's defense, I have to say that the people involved in making it knew that they had no budget but they took very seriously their task of doing as much as they could with as little as they had.Classic Japanese monster fare.