Gamera: Super Monster Review

First off, I would like to say HOLY CRAP… WHERE DO I BEGIN ON THIS CRAP-FEST OF A FILM!?

Ya, this movie is bad – WAY BAD. Me just saying that this film is WAY BAD really isn’t enough for this flick. If you think that Godzilla’s Revenge was the worst giant monster film ever? Think again, because this film sets an all-time low for acting, quality, visual effects, and story. This film makes Godzilla’s Revenge thousands of times better and that you would definitely prefer to see that film over this hideous contraption that calls itself a film.

I really don’t feel like reviewing this movie at all… I mean that literally. Just thinking and writing a review about this film just leaves a bad taste in my mouth, like some dog literally took a huge dump in my mouth. But unfortunately, it’s a giant monster film that has to be reviewed; so… *sigh*… here we go…

Once the title credits roll, you’ll definitely know that this movie is going to be bad – but it’s going to get much worse after the title credits. The title credits doesn’t seem to have been rendered well with the text seem to pixelate when they zoom out of existence, and seems to have been slapped together in 10-15 minutes. The music chosen for the title credits… it doesn’t even fit in that part of the film, let alone the entire film itself. The song played in the beginning is OK, but not good nor great, as the song does get annoying later on in the film as it’s played a lot by the little boy who plays the song on his piano and one of the women alien’s organ.

Another bad part of this film is that the three alien women do this strange dance in order to transform, kind of like Power Rangers and Sailor Moon, which in another bad part is that they stay in their transformed form for a brief time to where them transforming is practically pointless. If you want your characters to transform, make sure they stay in that form for a long while, if not, then don’t have them transform at all.

One of the worse things about this film is the Star Wars Imperial Destroyer look-a-like. The production crew should have had much more creative spaceships to come up with than that. With that kind of ship in a giant monster film, it really doesn’t seem like you’re actually watching a giant monster film, but rather a cheaply-made, rip-off Star Wars film. If you wanted a spaceship, come up with something that would look like that it belongs in a giant monster film, not something that’s totally unrelated. Even how the Destroyer look-a-like was introduced in the film was a complete rip-off of Star Wars.

However, we haven’t gotten to the much worse part yet of the film, and that’s what is so mind-boggling about this film!

Next stop is the second to worst thing about this film is the story. You might think when watching this film that the story is going somewhere; well, that’s definitely not the case, and it’ll throw ya into a loop when you’re into a few minutes of the flick. It seems like the story is really trying to make it self look really serious, when it’s actually not the whole time, and there are some parts of the story that seems rather pointless. The most ridiculous thing they had in the story was that the film ACTUALLY HAD AN ANIME-STYLE SHIP FROM AN ACTUAL SHOW IN THE FILM! The film and its story’s credibility really drops to an all-time low when you get to that point of the film. I mean… what was the point of having an anime-style ship there when you already have that Star Wars Destroyer look-a-like. This just goes to show you that there’s absolutely no consistency in this damn movie whatsoever! Speaking of no consistency, if Gamera was trying to save the Earth from the pirate Zanon and from the monsters he has faced in the past films, then why did the film crew insert stock footage of Gamera facing Guiron on the other planet? If you only want Gamera to save Earth, then you should not add stock footage from the Guiron bout at all, and instead actually have the Guiron fight the only non-stock footage of the film.

Another thing about the story is that it seems to portray the boy as a complete pimp and making the three alien women his bitches, and especially making the leader of the three as a lover to the boy… I am not kidding, that’s what it looks like between these characters. If you take out the original audio and re-dub it with pimp-language or something along those lines, you would think that’s what they were actually portraying, but they’re not. That’s how bad that part of the story is.

The story was just one part of making this giant monster movie the worst of all-time. There’s at least one more thing that I believe (and some of you might believe if you’ve seen this movie) that made this film the worst in the giant monster genre, and that’s the visual effects and quality.

I just want to get straight to the part that was the worst thing about the visual effects. Ok, just several minutes into the film (I know, the worst part was in the beginning of the film), when the three alien women gather when they detect Zanon’s ship nearby, they get into a hippie-like van, driving on the highway, and then turns into some energy disc which is actually their spaceship. The actual worst part of the visual was the van and when it transformed; yes, the van was a visual effect, and you can notice it a clear as day. It was just as noticeable as an elephant in the room, the visual was that bad. Why did they need to make a van out of visual effects when there were much better options that past monster films have done? Oh, and get this, the setting for the insides of their spaceship was clear-foggy cloth and lights – no decorations whatsoever – no imagination nor creativity at all.

Another worst part of the visuals is that Gamera was ONLY viewed in a couple angles in front of a green-screen throughout the film, and also his size. When Gamera first appears, he flies over some skyscrapers… BUT IT LOOKED LIKE HE WAS HUNDREDS OF TIMES BIGGER COMPARED TO THE SKYSCRAPERS! That’s how bad it was size-wise in visuals, and it’s like that in some parts of the film. The only best part of the visuals were the phaser beams from guns and from Zanon’s ship, and no I’m going to include the visuals from the monster bouts as those are stock footage, so they don’t count.

The quality of the film looks like the same quality from the film The Last Dinosaur (if you have seen that movie). At times the quality is OK, and at times it seems to be a bit hazy and not good. The film feels like a Gamera film at times while other parts doesn’t even feel like a Gamera film. The quality was that bad.

Overall, this film was definitely horrible. After written a review on this thing, I don’t plan on seeing this film anytime soon, although I probably will have to see it again when showing this to my brother. Everything about this movie is bad, and that’s about as much I can to some it all up in just a few sentences. Yes, I know that Daiei was going bankrupt at the time this film was made, and that the crew were given a lot less cash to work with; but, it doesn’t mean that they had to totally butcher this things that calls itself a movie.

You know, when I got into Gamera more than a decade ago and when I saw a poster of this movie, I was waiting and wanting to see this movie for a long time until now, and boy, I wish I went back in time to tell my past self to never see this crap and that you’re better off just watching Godzilla’s Revenge. Just thinking of Godzilla’s Revenge now makes me appreciate that movie a lot more now because at least the film crew spent a lot of their time and creativeness into that movie.

So, before I end this review, there was another rip-off that this movie did. The part was when Gamera walks by a building and topples over a small billboard that advertised a Godzilla film. Hmmm… this sounds very similar to what an American B-Movie did… Oh ya, Laserblast did the same thing to a Star Wars billboard, only shooting it with a laser gun and the billboard explodes (again, another Star Wars reference in this review), and this movie was made two years prior Gamera: Super Monster.