Gammera the Invincible (1966) Online

Gammera, one of the most famous Japanese monsters to hit the big screen in the 1960s makes his debut in this zero-budget, politically charged monster thriller. It is interesting to consider the tensions that were taking place between certain nations at the time that the movie was made, especially between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union. There is no effort made to disguise the animosity that existed between the two, more than likely since that bitterness was needed as a catalyst to bring Gammera back from 200 million years of hibernation. The U.S. shoots down a suspicious bomber, which turned out to be Russian, over the arctic region. As is to be expected from those sneaky Russians, the bomber was loaded with hydrogen bombs which, upon impact, explode with sufficient force to not only thaw but also infuriate the sleeping Gammera. Lots of havoc is wreaked upon poorly constructed models of cities and airplanes and landscapes and such, and there is some strange subplot about a little boy obsessed with turtles who wants to expose Gammera for the gentle creature that he really is. Inspiration for the Iron Giant, maybe? The special effects are astonishingly bad, but there was no budget and in the movie's defense, I have to say that the people involved in making it knew that they had no budget but they took very seriously their task of doing as much as they could with as little as they had.

Classic Japanese monster fare.

An atomic blast in the freezing Artic caused by a downed fighter plane awakens a gigantic upright walking, flying, fire-breathing (and eating!) prehistoric turtle from its centuries of slumber. Naturally, said titanic turtle is in a very grouchy mood; he proceeds to lay waste to everything in his lethal path and eventually does the almighty mondo destructo city stomp on Tokyo. When conventional methods for stopping the turtle prove ineffectual, scientists all over the world join forces to concoct a special plan for thwarting the behemoth beast.

Boy, is this delightfully inane creature feature flick an absolute hoot and a half: Among the silly stuff to enjoy herein are the expected lousy dubbing, a derivative plot which blatantly imitates both "Godzilla" and "The Beast from 20,00 Fathoms," choice dopey dialog ("This Gammera is obviously an object of terror"), wonderfully hokey (far from) special effects, amusingly hammy or endearingly wooden acting (Brian Donlevy as a gruff general, Albert Dekker as the pragmatic Secretary of Defense and Dick O'Neill as a grumpy ramrod general all sink their teeth into their roles with delectably juicy scenery-gnashing aplomb), a sickeningly sappy subplot concerning an obnoxious little boy who befriends Gammera, funny characters (one whiny US senator looks like a dead ringer for Henry Kissenger!), and, best of all, a supremely groovy surf-rock theme song complete with a rippin' reverb guitar riff. Sure, this movie is admittedly quite absurd, asinine and juvenile, but that's exactly why I dug it so much.

I purchased "Gammera the Invincible" at Suncoast Videos for $5.99 plus tax. It was on the sale rack, and I was honestly shocked because I think this movie is a gem to own for those who love monster movies. It's one of those flicks that you watch late at night, with a 2-liter of Pepsi and a bowl of popcorn. Better still, this is the kind of movie you watch on a lazy day after Thanksgiving, with a Turkey sandwich and a Coke.

Anyone looking for serious things from this movie is going to be disappointed. These kind of movies as best enjoyed with an open mind. The special effects for the year this flick was made are actually very decent.

This film pretty much plays out like any Godzilla movie. This was the first in a series of films featuring a giant turtle that flies.The thing that stood out to me was the American inserts which I think added a good deal to the story. Many times American distributors will add inserts to modify the story to make it marketable in the U.S. They succeeded here. I love when Gammera starts spinning and flies away! The dubbing overlaps in some spots which can be annoying. The models look pretty realistic and the acting isn't too bad. This has to be the only movie in which the monster has it's own theme song! Here's some trivia: Wes Farrell, who wrote the Gammera theme song also wrote "Hang on Sloopy" which was a 1960s hit for The McCoys. I have to admit I watch this movie every so often because it really is enjoyable if not totally believable. If you like giant monster films, give this a try.

Gammera the Invincible was the first of the Gammera movies form Japan and I found this great fun.

A nuclear bomb which explodes in the frozen wastes of the Arctic wakes up the giant turtle Gammera and he starts a trail of destruction. He destroys a ship, lighthouse (echoes of The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms here), power station and then heads for Tokyo. The military try their best efforts to kill him but don't succeed. They get rid of him in the end by shipping him off to Mars in a rocket. But that is definitely not the last we will see of Gammera...

Like Godzilla, Gammera is played by a man in a monster suit.

The cast includes Albert Dekker (Dr Cyclops) and Brian Donlevy (The Quatermass Experiment, Quatermass 2).

This movie is a must for all monster fans out there. Fantastic.

Rating: 3 stars out of 5.

This movie was in a sci-fi 50-pack a friend of mine got me for Christmas. It is very similar to the first Gozilla movie, and like that movie, has scenes with American actors inserted for no real reason. One interesting thing about the inserted scenes is that there's a Cold War tension portrayed between America and Russia. Like in Godzilla, Gamera is awakened by an atomic explosion and rampages across the world, paying close attention to Tokyo because no big monster movie is complete unless Tokyo bites it. All in all, this is an okay movie. Some of the scenes involving Gamera, particularly the scenes in Toly, are quite spectacular and have special effects that were pretty decent at the time. If you like Japanese giant monster movies, you'll really get a kick out of this one. I give it a 4 out of 10. Had this been the unedited Japanese version that I watched, it probably would've gotten a 5.

Gammera (or Gamera) is a giant turtle. He walks upright. He flies. He breathes fire. He wrecks ships, lighthouses, and assorted utility companies. He's got a real bad attitude toward technology. Anything manufactured seems to irk him to the point where he feels it necessary to incinerate the offending object and anyone in close proximity. He's a technophobe, and no mistake. It all started when he was rudely woken from slumber beneath the cold, quiet Arctic by a pesky atomic bomb alarm clock with a broken snooze button. Believing an icebreaker ship is the very clock that roused him, he tanks the craft in an obviously futile attempt to hit that snooze bar and get an extra eight minutes of sleep, but in his half-awake state he decides to just fry the clock and go back to bed. Yet the bed is too cold, so he decides to find a warmer place to curl up in...like volcanic Japan! Hmm...nice and toasty there, what with geothermal vents and cities to burn. But first, gotta put out that tacky light of the neighbors that's always flashing into his bedroom. Then it's time to slip beneath the sea for forty winks.

Gammera's day just gets worse from there. He just can't catch a break. People keep screaming at him and making all sorts of unpleasant noises to keep him up. And machines are the worst of the lot, so he tries to silence as many as possible. But there's still too much commotion for a tired monster to bear, so he investigates claims of a sensory deprivation tank at a remote facility which prove mostly true. He slips into the tank and enjoys a brief moment of quiet before the thing roars up into the sky to deposit him on Mars where he can continue his nap uninterrupted. Plan Zzzzzzzzz is a success...

"Gammera the Invincible Sleep Deprived Giant Turtle"

I am not a sci fi fan. I watched this movie for one reason - it features one of the last performances of Brian Donleavy. Fans of Mr. Donleavy will find this movie very sad - he appears to have some sort of health problem and is barely able to deliver his limited number of lines. Much to my surprise, I found the rest of the movie much better than I had expected. It has hokey "1960s Special Effects" which are so bad they are funny.

Other reviewers have compared this movie to the original Godzilla movie. While there are certain parallels, I think this is a much better film.

It is worth watching.

The original 1965 Japanese film "Gamera" http://pro.imdb.com/title/tt0059080/ was essentially an updating of the darker, less kid-oriented Gojira (Godzilla)for 1960s sensibilities. Gamera, of course, is a giant, flying, flame-throwing turtle who literally consumes energy - not quite as big as some versions of Godzilla, but generally similar in most ways.

This version of the original film was edited and recut by the notorious Sandy Frank. And just like the Americanized version of Godzilla ("Godzilla King of the Monsters"), "Gammera the Invincible" gets more than just the spelling wrong. The American scenes are not nearly as ludicrous and annoying as those added to the great Gojira, but don't really add much to the story either because there is little follow up on them.

The film starts off promising, there are a few scenes worth of character development, and there are enough personalities to create some tension outside of the main plot. Once Gamera appears, however, the film begins to descend into a fairly run-of-the mill kaiju film.

The acting is good enough- even the American add-ons are OK. The directing is pretty good for this period and genre, and the special effects are not bad at all for their time (all miniatures). Some of the sets and backdrops are actually very good.

The biggest problem here, of course, is that there is little to nothing original about this film. Gamera, however, develops a much more unique personality in his later films - most of which are worth watching if you are a kaiju fan.

With the rising popularity of the now iconic Godzilla series, like with any hit cinema event, there was inevitably going to be a crowd of imitators trying to cash in on the success on the big lizard. With Godzilla came the dawn of a rising popularity of the kaiju (giant monster) genre. Many sought after success; a few gained it. One of the few that not only profited, but garnered popularity was Gamera, a giant turtle that could breathe fire in and out and fly by spewing flames from the sockets in his carapace as a means of jet propulsion. But unlike Godzilla, Gamera was marketed as a friend to all children, later fighting other monsters to save kids in peril, and thus Gamera became very popular amongst the kiddies. Unfortunately, that's about the only audience mainstream that the original Gamera series will have any appeal to. While the new Gamera movies directed by Shusuke Kaneko are marvelous, revolutionary monster movies, the original series, including the original, is nothing special.

The first Gamera movie, titled in Japan as "The Giant Monster Gamera" was clearly a Godzilla want-to-be. Even though the movie was produced in the era of color films, it was shot in black-and-white. Why? To imitate the first Godzilla movie from the 1950s. Gamera also attacks Tokyo. Because Godzilla attacked Tokyo in the first movie. I don't know much about the Japanese version, for the version I am familiar with the Americanized version, where scenes were cut and new footage with American actors were inserted (is it coincidence that the same thing happened with the first Godzilla film?) Now whether this adds or takes away from the film, I cannot say. But "Gammera the Invincible" is really nothing more than a ponderous bore that just plods along like the big turtle himself.

"Gammera the Invincible" is a very routine-orientated movie. The characters are from a stock of science-fiction standards, the story is inane, the monster has no real motive for attacking civilization, the acting is laughable, and so on and so forth. The only thing that differentiates it from the Godzilla series is the ending of the movie, but that's also a detractor since the plan that eventually halts Gamera's rampage is completely phony and ridiculous. Now the rest of the movie and many other entries in this genre also fit that description, but this is a direfully stodgy monster movie.

And although Shusuke Kaneko would later transform Gamera into an interesting monster with his trilogy in the 1990s, in the original series, Gamera was not an attractive screen presence. He was neither scary nor sympathetic. He just waddles around like a toddler, swaying with each step, and knocks miniature sets over. As usual, everybody wants to destroy Gamera except for a little kid (Yoshio Uchida who was lazily left out of the credits though he plays a 'central' role) who thinks Gamera is a nice turtle.

Most movies in the genre that "Gammera the Invincible" is a part of are easy targets for criticism and this one is subject to extra pressure. Even in the company of many other Godzilla-imitators, this Gamera film is not a particularly good entry. And as far as my cinema experience goes, the rest of the movies in the series are either just as boring or worse. Like Godzilla, Gamera would be filmed in color and go on to fight monsters. And like Godzilla, he'd get cheaper and cheaper with every film until it was time to revive the series and make him serious again.

It's peculiar. Usually I recommend people to stick with the originals and pass on the remakes. But in the case of Gamera, my verdict is just the opposite. I strongly encourage people to watch the 1990s Gamera trilogy directed by Shusuke Kaneko and to skip over the original series unless interested. The new films are inventive, well-made, exciting, and above all, fun. The original series is a long stream of boredom.

Gamera the Invincible (1966)

** (out of 4)

The stupid American government drops an atomic bomb at the North Pole and soon the gigantic turtle named Gamera is set free. He flies across the world before landing in Tokyo to destroy the city. I'm not a huge fan of these Japanese monster films but this one works….a little. Some of the special effects are nice including one scene where Gamera destroys a chemical plant but there's some laughable moments as well. I watched the English dubbed version, which gets a few more laughs due to the silly track.

Gammera is almost as fun as the famous Godzilla - it's not quite as good as Godzilla but it is a blast to watch. Silly looking special effects that will get you to smile, over-the-top story, the dialogue is sometimes hilarious but that is what makes a film like this one so much fun. And the theme song is so laughable... "Gammera! Gammera!"The film is watchable if you are into the "big monster" type of flicks.

If you liked Gammera the Invincible or Godzilla then you might like to make this movie a double feature with another fun Japanese film called Monster from a Prehistoric Planet (1967)... it's on the same wave-length as the other two films.

5/10

It is very easy to sum up this movie, Godzilla turns into a turtle.The end.I was slightly familiar with Gammera but was a little surprised his origin is almost a shot for shot re-make of the first Godzilla movie.There is basically no plot.Some kid doesn't want Gammera to get hurt.Is that the plot?Weak.There are a couple good things about this movie.The best is that they totally rip-offed the Batman TV show theme song and just changed the one word to "Gammera".It's lame that they stole it but you will be singing it before you get to the end.The other good thing is that there is a Japanese Colonel Sanders(I think he was in a few Godzilla movies but I've seen so many bad movies that they all just run together).I almost forgot, Dick O'Neill is in this movie.Who is he?Go to his IMDb page and you will know who he is.He's that guy that was in everything and you never knew his name.Not bad for a monster movie, give it a shot.

This is a great movie. It has a great story line. It also has great acting. It is very scary. The sequel Gamera vs Barugon is better. The third Gamera movie Gamera vs Gyaos is also better. The fourth movie Gamera vs Viras is also better. The fifth movie Gamera movie Gamera vs Guiron is also better. The sixth Gamera movie Gamera vs Monster X is also better. The seventh Gamera movie Gamera vs Zigra is also better. The eighth Gamera movie Gamera super monster is also better. The reboot Gamera guardian of the universe is also better. The sequel to the reboot Gamera attack of the legion is also better. The third part to the reboot series Gamera 3 the revenge of Iris is also better. But still this a great movie. It is very scary. 5.1 is a good ratting. But this is such a great movie that 5.1 is underrating it. I give it 7. This is one great horror film.

This another Japanese movie about a destructive monster. This time they bring in Brian Donlevy to add some punch even though his role is actually pretty minor. But hey he is a good actor. So here is Gammera awoken from a 200 million year frozen sleep by the shooting down of a Russian bomber, loaded with a nuke, that is over US territory. It seems Gammera is only looking for a food source but his source is the humans problem because his appetite is for energy of one kind or another. In this quest it causes a lot of destruction and causalities. In a rather humorous ending they manage to trap Gammera in an enclosure that is resting on top of a space rocket. They launch it towards Mars. Since it seems able to survive most anything I guess there will be more.

Gammera The Invincible set the famous prehistoric flying turtle on the same road as Godzilla. First this film like Godzilla was created out of another Japanese film with simply adding the footage with Raymond Burr to make a different story. Here a whole slew of Occidental players like Brian Donlevy, Dick O'Neill, and Albert Dekker were used.

Secondly however where Godzilla starts out as a fire-breathing villain in later films he becomes a monster hero as more terrifying monsters invade earth and we need our home grown monster to defeat them. The producers here foresaw that possibility and left it open to happen, they were better concerned with continuity.

Having said all that Gammera The Invincible is like all these other Japanese monster flicks great fun, not to be taken too seriously. He's a sulfur eating creature and there's a great scene of him chowing down on a train tanker car eating it like a hot dog.

And he's full of tricks. Foolish humans who think that because they get this turtle on its back he's down for the count. One of the great scenes of Japanese horror films is when on his back he lifts off and flies like the proverbial flying saucer.

Cheesy special effects, Occidental actors looking like they're waiting for their paychecks to clear, but still lots of fun.

That thought went through my mind when all the persons in authority were trying to figure out how to get rid of Gammera.Explaining the big pot theory requires commenting on one of the reasons the movie didn't get a ten from me.This little boy in the movie(about eight years old)is somewhat of a problem to his parents.Seems as though in school he's a social misfit only interested with playing with his turtle and the teacher notifies his parents to tell the boy to wise-up.Because the little problem child likes turtles Gammera which looks like a turtle has a soft spot for him,sort of.When Gammera knocked off the top half of the boys lighthouse home I'm still not sure if the creature spared him or it was just a coincidence he wasn't launched into space.Later in the film there is evidence that the juvenile-creature relationship may not be a solid one.In that scene gammera is flailing away doing some big time destruction when the boy calls out to him,Gammera doesn't let up and almost looks like he flips him off.If the boy was trying to slow Gammera down it doesn't help that he was about ten football fields away with explosions going off.Maybe it sounds like this eight year old is not a favorite of mine in the picture but that's not true.Recently an eight year old relative stayed at my house for more than a month,now I almost don't like any eight year old.Actually the eight year old in this movie is annoying on his own merits because he's playing one of those seldom seen characters in the movies.His part says"You adults do not know what you are doing but I do because the invader likes me even if there is no apparent reason why he should like me".----The good part of the movie is the special effects.The miniature detailed sets in the Japanese movies have impressed me for a long time.Along with slow motion filming these miniature sets have all the looks of a big city or refinery being demolished.This sort of film is more impressive for me than computerized explosions.The scene where Gammera is on his back and flames come out of his shell is a favorite of mine.He takes off flying like a Frisbee and looking like a flaming cartwheel,so cool to me.The rest of the film is not a problem for me-bad dubbing was done in a lot of the triple features of my youth.The spliced in American scenes are done with enthusiasm and some are entertaining.Even the scientist with the col.Saunders look and the sideways marcel is not a problem.If an identity is sought for the Japanese cast that's a problem.After a little research I could only find three Japanese names credited in the cast but no mention of which character they were.Along with that my ears aren't that keen to pick up the names along the way.Maybe other readers have the same problem and like me start to make up names for the characters-"the nosey kid","the wise old scientist","The father of the brat",etc.The made up names for the pretty females I've decided not to go into.Shortcomings aside this is an entertaining special effects movie that surprised me.

What's that there in the skies? Is it a plane? Is it Superman?? Errr, no… It's a TURTLE!?! See, that's what becomes of the Cold War! Nothing but bad news and other issues! The Americans shoot down a Russian combat plane somewhere over Artic territory and the subsequent explosion defrosts & literally awakens the giant prehistoric turtle-creature named Gammera. He/she is not a very friendly critter as it promptly ensues to destroy everything and everyone on its path. The arguing governments finally decide to kill the ugly bastard with a brand new and super-sophisticated ice-bomb, but Gammera has another surprise in store… The damn turtle can fly! The first time this happens results in a tremendously grotesque and hilarious sequence! Gammera lies on his back looking defeated when suddenly fire blows from his armpits and he skyrockets himself up in the air. How can you not love that? Then there's also a dire sub plot about an annoying kid who's able to telepathically communicate with the monster, but that's just not interesting enough. Flying turtle, people!! There's very little else to write about this Japanese (and American re-edited) Sci-Fi effort, apart from that it's an obvious and totally shameless rip-off of such classics like the original Godzilla and The Beast from 20.000 Fathoms. The effects and monster designs are extremely hokey and, unlike the aforementioned films, it never succeeds in creating an apocalyptic ambiance. Respectable actors like Brian Donlevy ("The Quatermass Experiment") and Dick O'Neill ("Wolfen") seem unaware of what film set they're on and even the original Japanese mayhem-scenes aren't very convincing. Gammera's very own and personalized theme-song is rather cool, though, so it gets one extra point for that.

Like Godzilla ten years before him, Gamera is a Japanese movie monster that's long held audiences in thrall after his debut in this very movie. Like Godzilla, Gamera emerges as the result of a nuclear explosion, a giant turtle disturbed from his deep-ice slumber to wreak havoc across the world (of course, the primary target is Japan). The similarities between the two films are endless, whether it's the crisp black-and-white photography adding to the atmosphere of the films, the inclusion of scenes with US actors for the American version or the scenes of mindless destruction.

However, the films are different in a significant way, and that's because Gamera just isn't as frightening as Godzilla (not that the rubber-suited Godzilla is frightening, but in comparison to Gamera he sure is). Gamera's more of a lovable rogue, and his rolling eyeballs and waving claws never scare for a second; his sentimental connection with a little boy recalls King Kong and makes him even less menacing. His lack of menace shows: in the climax, the authorities can't bear to destroy the monster, so instead send him off in a space rocket. Unsurprisingly, Gamera returned in a slew of sequels in the late '60s, and the even less surprising twist is that he became a good guy, just like Godzilla.

I saw the Americanised version of the film and it was okay. Some scenes outstayed their welcome, and ironically these are the American-shot bits; they all consist of actors sitting around chatting, which is no fun. Some of the actors, like horror stars Albert Dekker and Brian Donlevy, are okay, but others overact completely and become laughable caricatures. The original Japanese bits of film are fantastic, if you can ignore the wobbly special effects, of which the (toy) planes are the worst. Gamera is a cool creation, and even the bits with the little kid don't irritate. Okay, so there isn't a great deal of destruction here in comparison to other kaiju flicks, but it's not half bad when it happens. We have to thank this film, because it invented a whole new Japanese giant monster we could all know and love, who would continue to appear in films some 30-40 years after his birth. Gamera rocks, even if his first outing is a little too po-faced and serious for its own good.

This is not the best movie in the world, but I think it is sure better than Gappa, the Triphibian monster. There seemed to be more of a story to this one, and it did not drag on as did the other one. It basically kept my interest so as such I enjoyed it. I also think the name Gamera sounds more fiercesome than Gappa.

Gamera is a giant turtle that awoke when a nuclear bomb exploded in the north pole. One must ignore the fact that if a nuclear bomb was detonated at the North Pole then the world would be flooded from the resulting rise in sea levels, but we must suspend our imagination. As is typical of Japanese monster movies, Gamera goes to Japan and starts trashing everything. Why Japan? Because it can. Then the scientists find a clever way to neutralise the monster because they cannot kill it.

I did like this movie, though I cannot comment much more on it, because there isn't much more to comment on. I never saw many monster movies when I was younger, because I probably never thought about watching them. I might have seen Godzilla or something like that, but nothing really comes to mind. The one comment I must make is Des Mangan's comment at the beginning of the movie. He is criticising the bad American actors at the opening to the movies and says, "they don't make actors like these any more, because they can't find the wood." Gamera is a cool movie, and goes well as a monster movie, because you see more of the monster, and less of the annoying people around the monster trying to create a moral to the tale. If there is one here, it is don't try killing everything that you do not like, because sooner or later there will be one that you simply can't kill.

"Gammera, the Invincible*" was Daiei Studio's chelonid answer to Toho Studio's popular Godzilla series. The film was targeted at a younger audience than contemporary Godzilla movies and one of the main characters is a young, turtle-loving boy. The monster design is on par with the late Showa-era Godzilla characters, although making a turtle look menacing is challenging. The film opens with the accidental detonation of a nuclear bomb, which releases Gamera from his 200,000,000 year icy hibernation. This is a one-monster-show, so most of the action revolves the shelled-kaiju's destruction of cities and power plants, and the JDF's various fruitless attempts to destroy him. The dubbed version I watched had a lot of tedious, cheap-looking English footage added (including, among others, Brian Donlevy), primarily cold-war tinged discussions about what to do about the situation). In keeping with his later appearances, Gamera is child-friendly, catching young Toshio (Yoshiro Uchida) when he falls from his lighthouse home (unfortunately, as the kid turns out to be an incredibly annoying character). Even by Showa-era kaiju films, the 'science' that explains Gamera's evolutionary history and current existence is ridiculous, as is the cunning plan devised to get rid of him. While silly, the black-and-white film is much more somber than later entries in the series (noticeably absent is the cheerily infectious "Gamera theme") and resembles the original Godzilla (1954) in style (although the Toho film is substantially better). Some of the matte scenes are reasonably well done, as are the miniatures (esp. the thermoelectric plant), but the gigantic, tusked, bipedal, flying turtle pretty much strains 'suspension of disbelief' beyond the breaking point. Kaiju fans will want to include the towering turtle's debut on their life lists but other than fans of 'camp' (who will probably prefer the MST3K annotated version), I can't imagine a modern audience showing much interest in the movie (although the Japanese version may be better that the 'westernised' version I watched). *The American title of the film seems to be the only instance of the "Gammera" spelling.

This is the American version of the very first Gamera movie, where an atomic explosion awakens the fire-breathing turtle monster from his hibernation and causing him to go on a destructive spree on Tokyo. U.S. footage with American actors were inserted and I couldn't tell if they contributed to the plot or not since I at the time of this review haven't seen the original. However, I do recall that most of those scenes involving endless meetings of the authorities in how to deal with the monster was boring because it distracts from the monster action.

The special effects were decent as you can see a good dose of Gamera stomping on buildings and setting them on fire. And, you have a simple plot of the humans trying to think of a plan to stop this horror. Other than that, I thought this was pretty much a below average monster movie, one that precedes just over a half-dozen very childish and kid- oriented Gamera movies with recycled alien-invasion plots. Somehow, this first Gamera movie doesn't have that charm, riveting monster horror and intrigue that most other Japanese monster films, especially those made by rival movie studio Toho, have. From what I can see for just the American version of the film, it is a very typical and basic monster-on-the-loose flick.

If you want to see more exciting and sophisticated Gamera movies, check those from the 1990s era.

Grade D+

*Spoiler/plot- 1966, Gamera the Invincible, Gamera is unleashed from hibernation below the Arctic ice by a nuclear blast. The legendary rocket flying turtle seeks fire energy for sustenance creating havoc across the plant Earth. Scientists work feverishly to stop Gamera with the aid of a young boy. This boy has empathic link with the mega creature. The Japanese country side takes a destructive hit by the creature until stopped by being shot into outer space. *Special stars- Long time great US actors, Brian Donlevy and Albert Denker find themselves as a Secretary of State and General in the American scenes that meld well into the Japanese plot scenes. Much better that those American ones in the first Gozilla films. *Theme- Mother Nature throws a curve to Mankind, but Mankind wins out with a little boys's innocence and help. *Based on- ???? *Trivia/location/goofs- The first adventure of the child-loving super prehistoric turtle films. In sequel films, the main turtle character's nature changes 'sides' to help the Earth against others monster baddies. *Emotion- An unexpected decent film when compared to the B&W film schlock in this Japanese genre.

There's not much to say about this one. Gammera is some kind of fire breathing turtle. He is loosed by a nuclear explosion. He heads for land and begins to destroy building and tanks and other junk (oh yeah, power lines. I almost forgot). At one time, early in the film, he befriends a little boy, and instead of just throwing him away, or squashing him, he places him down on the ground. Safe. From then on we have to watch this chubby faced little twerp show up and run away, show up and run away, show up and run away. For some reason, Gammera is able to hear this kid from 20,000 feet away. Oh, well, the plot is to try to get Gammera to get to a place where he can be put on board a rocket and shot into space. As usual, the monster is lumbering and uncoordinated (a guy in a Gammera suit). The Japanese army (with the help of Americans), uses up enough ammunition and fire power to solve the national debt, and, of course, it does no good. They should know this anyway. We've seen a lot of monsters stomp on Tokyo. Not to put these down because they can be fun, but it's really not very good.

An atomic explosion awakens Gammera--a giant, fire-breathing turtle monster--from his millions of years of hibernation.

Enraged at being roused from such a sound sleep, he takes it out on Tokyo.

This is so believably done that you'll be on the edge of your sleep.

The igloos are extraordinary. So life like.

The fighter jets too are so real you'll think you're there.

Even the over dubbing is superb.

And when the turtle gets down to business, you will be besides yourself.

A wild and crazy ride in Black and White.