Too much of everything

Stylish but barely mediocre overall

A Brilliant Conflict

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Archeologists searching for artifacts to display at the 1970 Osaka World's Fair release a giant, tusked lizard-pig monster that follows them to Japan with devastating results. Only Gamera (as usual with the help of two young boys) can stop the creature and save the Fair. The film is a low-rent opus: the Gamera costume does little to hide the fact that it's just a skinny guy in a turtle suit, Monster X ('Jiger/Jaiga' in the Japanese original) is an interesting looking kaiju but is not very convincing when moving - it rarely 'walks' and frequently relies on 'jets' to swim or fly around (allowing use of an empty suit or non-articulated model), and most of the kaiju dust-ups are on an island or amongst simple and poorly detailed buildings. The film targets kids, so the two boys (annoyingly) have all of the answers and take the lead in rescuing Gamera from Jiger's parasitic offspring while simultaneously discovering the parent monster's fatal weakness. The film is famous for the scene in which parasitism is explained using graphic footage of writhing worms being removed from an elephant's swollen trunk (grim if real, well done if fake), an image sufficiently nasty to be commented on decades ago in the biker magazine "Easy Rider". The acting and script are laughable and, other than the "Fantastic Voyage" (1966) inspired rescue of the brooding turtle, the humans are primarily side-lined cheerleaders ("Gamera has such strength" enthuses the lisping little sister). The film is a pretty typical Showa-era Gamera outing, amusing in a silly way, but likely only of appeal to nostalgic boomers, campophiles, or kaiju-fans. I watched a low quality English-dubbed DVD version, which did nothing to improve the experience.

I am a big fan of Japanese monster movies and grew up watching Godzilla, but also took on a handful of Gamera films. Overall, these movies are treasures from my childhood and even to this day. However, as with all movie trilogies, there are a few that stick out in a negative way including this one.Some of those flicks are so cheesy and bad, it's good. This Gamera flick, about the flying turtle trying to save Japan from Triceratrops-like monster Giger awoken at the Expo '70, doesn't reach that scale. The plot and story are very plain and suffers from a lack of excitement, tension and thrills - nothing to captivate the audience. The cast of characters (adult) are not memorable and didn't really contribute a whole lot to the story - they were just thrown in to be bystanders, letting the main three kid characters take center stage, this time trying to save Gamera (shown in a very campy scene where they board a submarine and enter Gamera's body to detect the source of his illness in the movie). Every Gamera movie except Gamera vs. Barugon in the first series featured at least one kid as the main character and a good handful of them were pretty annoying. Lastly, the cheap-looking monster suits continued in this film; the monsters didn't show any emotions or characteristics like the creatures you would see in Godzilla films. They just look like stiff, moving museum models.Again, most of the Gamera films are mostly for children and they would be good to use to introduce them to the world of Japanese kaiju. Other than that, most, including this one, were very campy and cheesy with bad acting, bad special effects and non-captivating stories. If you enjoyed these films as a kid, you would probably grow out of them - the enjoyment factor is not as everlasting as the Godzilla movies or the later Gamera films in my opinion.Grade D--

This is a children's movie. Is it a great children's movie? No.But, it is an enjoyable children's movie. Sure Gamera looks like he was constructed at the last second out of an old shopping bag; and, Monster X looks like something that you pulled out of a Salvation Army drop-box. But, this movie has children as the main characters, doing the bulk of the heroics and making the bulk of the sound decisions...There are a tremendous number of plot-holes in this movie; but, if you've got children, and a little patience, you can enjoy ninety minutes of pig-headed adults, brave children and flying turtles...Also, there is a certain resemblance to the science fiction novel Blameless in Abaddon...anyone else notice?...

This was the first feature I had seen in the kaiju genre. I was familiar with the television show Ultraman, but I had not known that movies about monsters had also been made.This one is fun! One aspect of the genre that Daiei was better at than Toho is in the depiction of quadrapeds. Jiger looks like a four legged creature, not a person crawling on his knees, as several of the Toho characters were known to do.Some of the dialogue is hideously bad. I recently saw this one again after twenty years, and had a good time adding a few comments of my own. At one point the two boys are inside Gamera's lung, walking around, when one says, "What are we looking for?" The other replies "Anything unusual."I piped up, "We are in the lung of a 200-foot turtle, but we are still looking for anything unusual."Still, this one has several interesting scenes. Unusual footage of a surgery on an elephant, x-rays of Gamera, a neat minisub, and cool communicators. It is a fun ride!