For the uninitiated, the giant fire-breathing turtle Gamera is Japan’s second most beloved daikaiju (literally “giant monster”), the first being, of course, Godzilla. But from his humble beginnings as a cash-in on his more popular predecessor’s genre, Gamera has grown into a famous franchise in its own right, carving out a niche in being regarded as more “child friendly” than some of the darker Godzilla films, and (rather surprisingly) a reputation for more violent and brutal monster fights, spanning twelve films and forty-one years of cinema. But everything has to have a beginning, and Gamera’s came in 1965 with the literal-minded title Daikaiju Gamera, known in the West simply as Gamera.
We begin in the Arctic with a visit by Dr. Hidaka (Eiji Funakoshi), his assistant Kyoke (Harumi Kiritachi) and journalist Aoyagi (Junichiro Yamashiko) to a remote eskimo village, only to witness an altercation between American and Soviet planes in the region, during which one of the Russian planes crashes and accidently sets of an atomic bomb. This causes an enormous rupture in the ice that releases the gigantic turtle Gamera who, finding himself in a giant monster film, instinctively trashes the nearest vestiges of civilisation, in this case the research ship Chidori Maru. On a side note, the actors playing the American military who send in the planes to engage the Soviets are some of the worst I’ve ever seen in my life, barely able to spit out the script without the words banging into their teeth. Initial hopes that the monster would die of radiation poisoning prove to be overly sanguine, and he reappears to destroy a light-house in Hokkaido. The light-house keeper’s son Toshio (Yoshiro Uchida), as something of a turtle enthusiast, runs up the light-house to get a better look and is nearly killed when the building collapses, only saved when Gamera catches him and places him gently onto the ground. This experience convinces Toshio that Gamera isn’t really an evil monster, just a huge wild animal who can’t help but cause devastation due to his size. However, the J.S.D.F. disagree and, during an attack on a geothermal power plant, hatch a plan to dispatch the beast by freezing him in place with prototype bombs and using high explosives to collapse a hill around him. The plan goes off without a hitch, and Gamera falls victim to the turtle’s greatest natural predator – the law of gravity. Flipped over onto his back he appears helpless until he reveals his trump card; by firing jets of flame from the arm- and leg-holes in his shell, Gamera is able to spin at high speeds and actually take flight, travelling all over the world in a matter of hours.
It’s back to the drawing board, as the scientists of the world unite to devise a strategy to get rid of Gamera once and for all. The most useful thing about the attack at the power station was the revelation that Gamera eats energy in any form, whether flames, petroleum or radioactivity, and this could be used to lure him to a specific location to spring a trap. Meanwhile, Toshio is still obsessed with Gamera and attempts multiple times to get close to him again, even during an attack on Tokyo while Gamera is destroying buildings and incinerates vast amounts of people with his flame breath. The cabal of international scientists finally come up with the enigmatically-named Plan Z, and put it into action with immediate effect. The idea is to lure Gamera to an isolated island with flame jets and burning petrol, and there to encase him within a collosal rocket and launch him towards Mars. Toshio stows away to the island in a crate, so as to be closer to his idol, and spends most of the finale yelling at Gamera to leave, frightened that the authorities are going to injure or kill the creature. The plan almost fails thanks to Gamera’s prodigious appetite for fire, but a plot convenient volcanic eruption keeps him around long enough for the plan to succeed and the world to be rid of the shelled menace, with an uplifting message of the virtues of international co-operation.
Gamera’s most famous identity both within Japan and without is as “friend to all children”, as unlike many monsters he has generally been destructive but heroic, taking special pains to protect children. While his first outing potrays him more as a monster of no intelligence and violent instinct, there is a hint to this later character trait when he saves Toshio. That being said, the way Toshio is acting is far more in keeping with the later, more child-friendly Gamera, in his insistence that Gamera isn’t really a threat to humanity. He undeniably is, however innocent his path of destruction, and really there was no other path that the world could take than to get rid of him. Interestingly, (and almost-definitely not accidently) there are some parallels with the most recent Gamera film, the reboot Gamera the Brave, especially in the character of Toshio. He is convinced that his own tiny pet turtle Chibi actually became Gamera, just as Toru’s pet turtle Toto actually does grow up to become Gamera, and both have a connection to Gamera and can’t bear to see him harmed.There is a rule of monster movies, made popular in Jaws, that when making a monster film you do not see the monster until sufficient tension has been built up, sometimes as much as an hour into the film. This might be more properly called the “rule of King Kong“, as to my knowledge it’s the earliest example, and many films both before and since Jaws took advantage of this method, from Godzilla to Cloverfield. But Gamera has no truck with this, showing the monster extensively and prominently from the word go. This is both a good and bad thing; it avoids the common problem with boredom in a monster film, where the monster is the big attraction and we have to wait for what seems like an eternity while people just talk without seeing any destruction. But you also lose the ability to draw the audience into the film through the tried and tested means of dramatic tension, making us want to keep watching to see what’s causing so much devastation. Jaws used this time effectively to build tension around the animal, revealing it little-by-little until the climactic reveal, but there are many that utterly fail, notably Godzilla vs. Megalon, where the top-billed monster doesn’t appear until the 45-minute mark of a 70-minute movie! I would say that Gamera strikes a fairly good balance, as the film doesn’t have the kind of characters who could carry the film for long without some action scenes.
That this is an attempt to cash-in on the craze begun in Japan by the Godzilla franchise is abundantly obvious. Several shots seem to be directly taken from the 1954 film, most noticeably a shot of Gamera appearing over a hill, and the plan to stop Gamera with electricity is extremely similar. The miniature work is less detailed than the Toho Company’s, but the scenes of destruction are all well done, especially some of the darker shots, where the slightly goofy-looking Gamera suit looks like a demon incarnate, surrounded by the flames of a burning metropolis, so kudos to director Noriaki Yuasa. With the exception of the Americans, every actor is competant enough, though no-one really stands out. Oddly, this film is in black-and-white, though previous Godzilla films had been in full colour, which probably speaks to the budget problems that its parent company Daiei. Indeed, this is the last giant monster movie to be filmed in black and white. But it has endured for many years with a dedicated fan following, and there is a very good reason that it became a franchise. The design of the monster and the unique aspects of heroism make Gamera a good start to the series, and while it isn’t as good as Godzilla, it still deserves its place as second-best.