Following Gamera: Ultimate Collection Volume 1, Mill Creek Entertainment’s Gamera: Ultimate Collection Volume 2 features the latter four films in Daiei’s original Gamera series (known as the Showa series) on Blu-ray: Gamera vs. Guiron, Gamera vs. Jiger, Gamera vs. Zigra and Gamera: Super Monster.

Gamera vs. Guiron (1969)
AKA Attack of the Monsters

The cliche of sending horror icons to space when they’re out of ideas existed long before Jason, Pinhead or Leprechaun. After mysterious electric waves are detected from outer space, two boys discover a spaceship and accidentally launch themselves into space. They end up on Tera, a tenth planet that has gone undiscovered because it’s very much like earth but on the exact opposite side of the solar system, so it’s blocked out by the sun. The planet has a “guard dog” named Guidon. The planet also features a Space Gyaos – which is a prop from an earlier film repainted silver to save money. Guidon hacks it to pieces pretty brutally for the time.

The majority of the film takes place in space with the two kids and two alien women who want to eat them, not leaving much time for kaiju action. When the battle does occur, boy is it cheesy. Gamera does flips and the go-go! It’s especially a shame because Guiron is one of Gamera’s better adversaries. Seemingly right out of a child’s mind, the four-legged monster has a giant blade for a nose and shoots ninja stars from its head. With the exception of some monster blood, Gamera vs. Guiron is essentially a sci-fi movie for kids; look no further than the uber-tacky Gamera theme (which would go on to be featured in the next two installments).

 

Gamera vs. Jiger (1970)
AKA Gamera vs. Monster X

When an ancient statue known as the Devil’s Whistle is moved from its island location to Osaka for the 1970 World’s Fair, a monster known as Jiger is unleashed. (Parts of the movie were filmed during the actual World Fair, adding production value.) Jiger’s emergence also marks the return of Gamera, of course. Unfortunately, our giant turtle friend spends a good deal of the film out of commission. Jiger injects Gamera with its eggs, and Gamera passes out until a pair of boys take a mini-submarine inside Gamera to fix the problem.

Jiger is one of the coolest monsters in the Gamera franchise. The dinosaur-like creature is somewhere between a triceratops and stegosaurus, but its head looks like a Jim Henson creation. The first female enemy of the franchise, Jiger has the power to shoot quills, fire an energy beam that can destroy entire city blocks at a time, and inject enemies with its egg-toting stinger. While the previous couple of Gamera movies lacked in city destruction, Gamera vs. Jiger delivers.

Gamera vs. Zigra (1971)

The Gamera series relied a bit too heavily on aliens later in the series. This time, a UFO equipped with “a 4th dimension ray with instant transfer power” from the planet Zigra abducts a pair of marine biologists from Sea World (featuring some footage shot on location) and their two children. It threatens the planet with earthquakes while offering social commentary about the pollution of our oceans.

Gamera vs. Zigra spends too much time on the silly subplot with the kids. The monster – also known as Zigra – isn’t introduced until more than halfway through the film. It’s a neat one though; the metallic, deep-sea creature is seemingly modeled after a goblin shark. Their battle proves that Gamera can breathe fire underwater. It’s a pretty rough movie to watch, so I see why it was the last Gamera movie for several years.

 

Gamera: Super Monster (1980)

Gamera: Super Monster is a strange beast. No, not the giant turtle, but the film itself. It was created after Daiei Film was brought out of bankruptcy by Tokuma Shoten. Nearly a decade after the previous installment, they used stock footage from the previous Gamera films to create a new movie aimed at kids.

Gamera: Super Monster was probably pretty cool to watch as a kid who hadn’t seen the previous Gamera movies, as there are a lot of kaiju battle scenes. Watching it as an adult, however, is painful. It features the monster fight scenes from the previous six films – adding up to about a half-hour of old footage – with a wrap-around story about an alien, Zanon, attempting to take over the planet. A trio of female superheroes take on Zanon, with the help of Gamera. There are a couple of minutes of new Gamera footage, which was made on the cheap and looks worse than those created 15 years earlier.

Gamera would remain dormant for 15 years until it was rebooted in 1995 with a trilogy of new films. Yet another reboot, Gamera the Brave, was produced in 2006. There are rumors of more Gamera films, especially with the new Godzilla on the horizon, but time will tell. Personally, I hope we haven’t seen the last of the classic kaiju.

Much like the first volume, Gamera: Ultimate Collection Volume 2 offers four nostalgic films on Blu-ray at an affordable price. I was a bit concerned that the quality would suffer from compressing four films on a single Blu-ray disc, but I’m happy to report that they look quite good for the most part. While Volume 1 undeniably has the better movies, Gamera: Ultimate Collection Volume 2 still packs plenty of fun. These sets are a must-own for kaiju fans.