For those of you who don't know, Gamera is a giant radioactive turtle/spaceship created by Daiei Motion Picture Company to cash in on the giant monster craze. Appearing in seven low budget films during the sixties and seventies, Gamera was to Godzilla what the Monkees were to the Beatles; a poor imitation, but entertaining nonetheless. Of course in this case the entertainment value came from how hilariously bad the films were. Imagine one of the campiest Godzilla movies, oh say Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster or vs. Gigan. Now imagine that is has a fraction of the budget, the monster costumes are twice as cheesy, and it makes half as much sense. That describes most entries in the series.
This, the second Gamera film, picks up right where the first left off, with stock footage from the ending of the previous film. This time Gamera gets to play the hero by fighting Barugon, a weird lizard/dog monster that has a crippling weakness to water, releases a freezing mist from its tongue, and fires devastating rainbows from its back. And no, I am not making this up. Fans of Toho Corporation's movies may notice that Barugon looks suspiciously like Baragon, a Toho monster who first appeared only a year before.
And the similarities to Toho's films don't end there. In a subplot that rips of both King Kong vs. Godzilla and Mothra vs. Godzilla, there's a group of criminals who scheme to recover a massive opal from an island in the South Pacific, not realizing that it's actually a monster egg. And in the interest of padding the runtime, the filmmakers also included a series of needlessly complex plans for defeating Barugon whose explanations make no sense. One of them involves getting the monster to attack his own reflection, and is code named Operation Rear View Mirror. Plus, just for kicks, they've thrown in some poorly staged fights between some of the human characters. In the end, the Barugon is of course defeated, the boy gets the girl, and everyone lives happily ever after despite the fact that another giant monster is still on the loose.
This entire production is slipshod, filled with plot holes, and just doesn't make much sense. And in the process of adapting it for American audiences, the distributors added a bunch of unnecessary narration, and a typically lousy dubbing job which includes parts where the actor's mouth just keeps moving while he says very little, lots of awkward pauses, and grand pronouncements like "I have to go now" and "Ah, I see." There's also a line about how "When an animal has been hurt by its mistake, it will never make the same mistake again." Apparently whoever wrote this line has never met a dog.
What I'm trying to say here is that Gamera vs. Barugon is not a good movie, but neither is it a horrible movie. In the end, it's saved by its own cheesiness. It doesn't quite achieve the so-bad-it's-good status of War of the Gargantuas or Plan 9 from Outer Space, but it is often amusing and contains many laughs, even if they are unintentional. And there's also the whole weirdness factor going for it; I mean come on, a monster does shoot destructive rainbows. So the original print isn't all that bad, and will probably please small children. And in the hands of Joel Robinson and his robot pals, Gamera vs. Barugon made one of Mystery Science Theater 3000's best episodes. By all means, watch this version, and even if you wind up stuck with the original, it could be worse.
