 |
Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
|
Always make sure of DVD-compatibility!!!
|
|
|
 |
|
Two not quite comforting things happen in Japan around the same time:
First, a ship carrying thousands of tons of Plutonion crashes into an
island that has seemingly come out of nowhere, & second, 3 giant bird
creatures attack people.
The Japanese gouvernment has the great idea to capture the bird
creatures alive, & hire doctor Nagami (Shinobu Nakayama) to do it wor
them. She thinks the idea is whack (it is, as it later turns out) but
still devices a plan to lure the 3 birds into the Fukuoka baseball
stadium, then close the stadium's roof on top of them ... A plan that is
spoiled when the soldiers get trigger happy before the roof is closed,
& one of the birds escapes ... only to be stopped cold in Fukuoka
harbour on its escape, when seemingly out of nowhere, a giant sabretooth
turtle emerges from the water (the turtle by the way is Gamera & has
previously been taken for above mentioned island). Then the turtle heads
for the stadium, destroying everything in his way, & tries to kill the
other 2 birds too, but they manage to free themselves & escape.
Gamera, able to fly as well, flies off too, spinning around like an UFO.
Doing a bit of research, doc Nagami & her newfound friends,
professor Kusanagi (Akira Onodera), his daughter Asagi (Ayako Fujitani)
& Yonemori (Tsuyoshi Ihara), who's something with the army, uncover a
message presumably from Atlantis from 12.000 years ago, which says that
both the turtle Gamera as well as the birds, now called Gaos, are
artificial creatures, & while Gaos has led to the downfall of
Atlantis, Gamera was their only hope to defend Atlantis, but the turtle
arrived too late ... & now it seems history is repeating itself ...
Soon, our heroes head off to an island where the Gaos were last sighted
& immediately get into the thick of it, when one Gaos attacks them
& they are only just saved by Gamera, who shoots a blast from his
mouth to kill it.
But when Gamera goes after the last surviving Gaos, the army attacks
Gamera with missiles, since the gouvernment has decided to kill Gamera but
capture the Gaos alive (those fools ...).
Soon, Gamera, gravely wounded, retreats to the depths of the Ocean
while the last surviving Gaos heads for Tokyo to have a night on the town,
& when a missile intended for him blasts away Tokyo tower, he takes
the ruins as his new living quarters.
But now it turns out that little Asagi has a telepathic link with
Gamera & she calls him to Tokyo ... where the 2 monsters have a fierce
showdown, as they battle in the city, above the city and in outer space.
A no-prize for who guesses the winner (hint: Tokyo has not een
destroyed by a bird-creature - yet) ...
Despite some enjoyably whacky moments, the Gamera-series
is in general considered inferior to the pretty similar Godzilla-series,
& by and large I tend to agree, & the new series wouldn't do much
better than the classic series ... There's monsters destroying the city
all right (& who doesn't love that), but then again there are also
endless stretches of dialogue that don't really seem to go anywhere &
unnecessarily slow down the film a bit. Of course, it's still nice once
the monsters are onscreen (if this is your cup of tea of course,
otherwise, don't watch it).
The creature Gaos by the way has, apart from an outward similarity
(& of course the name), little to do with Gaos from Gamera
vs Gaos, the weird vampirelike monster that only hunts by night,
& Gamera: Guardian of the Universe is certainly not a remake of
that movie even if some sources would like to have it that way.
|
amazon.co.uk
amazon.de
eThaiCD.com
