Gamera vs. Barugon

Gamera vs. Barugon (Daikaiju Ketto: Gamera Tai Barugon) (1966)

Runtime: 100 minutes

Directed by: Shigeo Tanaka/Noriaki Yuasa

Starring: Kojiro Hongo, Kyoko Enami, Yuzo Hayakawa, Takuya Fujioka, Koji Fujiyamwa

From: Daiei

I will note two things: I'll be posting another review tonight and... what I promised in the beginning of this review, I don't deliver on; I pulled a Rise of Skywalker! Tomorrow's review will be of another Gamera movie and this time I'll tell the story, promise: 

Barugon: LGBT Icon?

Remember how I said a few days ago that my schedule was chaotic but that it settled down? Well, someone I know has had some health issues as of late... minor as they are comparatively, in the past month they have had one thing after another happen to them, from the stomach flu to them receiving a virus that gave them a fever. That's caused some concern, but hopefully now there is more normalcy in my life. Something that I did last night inspired me to see this movie, which I'll explain at the very end.

This is the third Gamera movie I've seen, and as I've written before I've actually seen the early movies in the franchise as a kid, when the Sandy Dennis dubbed versions were released on VHS. I am glad those films are now on disc-even if it's from Mill Creek. As I remembered from way back when, this Gamera movie has a surprising lack of the flying turtle. This detail was the only thing I recalled... for certain the human story that is like Indiana Jones in being inspired by a 30's adventure serial-I had no memory of that. So was Athlete's Foot being part of the plot.

Barugon is a lizard w/ spikes and a freezing tongue; that is pretty tubular, but not as great as a RAINBOW shooting out of his spikes... that causes destructive damage. To me, that at least makes him more of an LGBT icon than The Babadook... anyhow, as a kid I recalled the movie as being dull, although I had viewed it only once. As an adult, I realize this is actually fine as the human story was focused upon, and one of them is an irredeemable piece of crap. I mean, he does many awful things throughout, which does lead to a juicy comeuppance. He is the one who caused all this trouble, as he believed the lizard's egg was actually a giant opal. But this drama was interesting and along with the cool destruction that Barugon inflicts upon Japan, that keeps things not dull; when Gamera is along it does raise hell itself.

Sure, the suits and miniature sets are fine (although not as good as what Toho did at the time) and this unfortunately stole an idea from Toho and portrayed some “islanders” by having Japanese men in blackface, but... overall this was better than I gave it credit for, even if it probably should have been shorter than 100 minutes. This gave me enough kaiju action to satisfy and Gamera was not a babyface hero quite yet so there was some ambiguity, not to mention this was not incredibly trite and slight.