Attack of the Monsters, also knows as Gamera Vs. Guiron, is a late-‘60s giant
Japanese monster (or kaiju) movie for
kids. It stars a gigantic,
jet-powered flying turtle with really large tusks. He fights a gigantic lizard-thing with a head shaped like a
giant Buck knife and knees that clearly hadn’t been reinforced, because they
start to tear in the film’s later stages.
It’s all great fun, with nice model scenery just waiting for destruction
and monsters scary enough for an eleven-year-old yet fake enough for a
two-year-old.
Here’s
the story: Gamera (the turtle) rescues a couple of boys who explore a flying
saucer that had touched down near their home (And really, what self-respecting
boys wouldn’t?). See, the saucer
is a trap! It’s remote controlled
by evil, brain-eating aliens who look just like attractive Japanese women in
shimmery silver leotards! When the
saucer takes off and flies to the Planet of Attractive Japanese Women in
Shimmery Silver Leotards, Gamera pursues and does battle with Guiron, the
aliens’ attack knife-lizard thing.
Meanwhile, the boys, brave and resourceful, must find a way to escape
the clutches of the attractive Japanese women in shimmery silver leotards. Stuff like this is what popcorn was
made for, and my kids ate up every minute of it.
Me? Well, I had a good time! Attack
of the Monsters so earnestly tried to entertain my kids that it charmed the
heck out of me. The Gamera franchise occupies a pleasant sphere as Daiei
Studios’ child-friendly answer to Toho Studios’ more teen-oriented Godzilla. This outing’s aliens were just menacing
enough, its sets and costumes just good enough, to help me suspend my disbelief
and roll with it. This isn’t half
the movie that my next entry, The
Earrings of Madame De… can boast of being. But it isn’t trying to be. It’s trying to be light entertainment for monster-hungry
preadolescents, and it succeeds. Attack of the Monsters is a winner.
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