Film Review: Gamera Super Monster - Breaking it all Down

There have been some great examples of film studios putting out classic works of cinema and their last gasp before the end. Belladonna of Sadness was the final work of Mushi Productions. Jigoku was the last film out the door from Shintoho. There’s examples of studios wanting to go out on a high note. On the other hand, there’s Daiei, with Tokuma Shoten trying to salvage the state of their newly acquired company by making a new Gamera film, leaning heavily on stock footage, with Gamera Super Monster. This doesn’t work well.

The plot, as much as there is one, is focused on a planned alien invasion of Earth, with the invasion force approaching on their space battleship, which looks like a kitbashed mass market model of an Imperial Star Destroyer from Star Wars. There are three women on Earth who are sent here from Not The Planet Of Light to protect the earth, but they can’t transform into their supersuits because the aliens will detect them if they do.

Meanwhile a small child gets a turtle from a pet store, but his mother tells him to release the turtle into the wild (parents, don’t do this) – that turtle becomes Gamera, and fights the various kaiju sent by the space aliens. Also, there’s a lady spy working for the aliens who is also looking for the super women when they aren’t transformed. Honestly, there is exactly one male actor in the cast, and he’s in the for one scene, where the child character reads some Shonen Jump manga, leading to a riff on the manga KochiKame, in what feels like what was probably a literal ad read the Japanese version. Consequently, the decisions for the cast feels like the studio relying on pay differentials between men and women, with women being paid less, as a cost cutting measure. The performances from the women (physically – I watched this dubbed) were good, and I’m glad these performers got spotlighted. However, I feel like the casting decisions were made less out of a desire to spotlight these women, and more to save money. This particularly carried over to the super suits for the women. The tops are basically taken from aerobic exercise clothing with (ahem) no support, and apparently instructions not to wear bras, so the women’s big fight scene is in street clothing so they can do stunt work without their breasts uncomfortably bouncing around.

Then on top of that, there are inexplicable inclusions of clips of Space Battleship Yamato and Galaxy Express 999 into the movie as well. They don’t even try to merge it into the film gracefully. No explanation is given for why the kid’s turtle becomes Gamera. The film is repeatedly padded by the women transforming, getting shot at from space (leading to a bouncy and likely uncomfortable judo roll), and transforming back. Oh, and also the kid playing and singing the Gamera March (called that by name), in its entirety, on his keyboard.

This film took inspiration from Akio Jissoji’s Ultraman compilation film, but I feel like it doesn’t have the stylistic flair to nail that. It’s aiming for some more from-the-mind of a child elements for the framing narrative of its stock footage, but I think that calls for more optical effects and matte paintings then they had a budget for – like 1977’s House.

Ultimately, Gamera Super Monster isn’t a good film, and unlike others that swing above their weight class, what it presents isn’t really endearing. If this film gets a MST3K or Rifftrax treatment, I’d recommend seeing it that way.

If you do decide to stream it, it’s available on: