Gamera vs Barugon

Gamera vs Barugon (1966)
Daiei Motion Picture Company
Director: Tanaka Shigeo, Yuasa Noriaki (special effects)
Also known as: War of the Monsters (the American title).

The film opens with a voiceover recap of Gamera the Giant Monster (1965), which ended with Gamera being launched towards Mars on board the Z-Plan rocket. This was six months ago, since when a meteor collided with the rocket and released Gamera, who returned to Earth. (Presumably this means Gamera was three months towards Mars when the meteor hit and he flew three months back again. It’s nice to see a genre film making a plausible estimate of interplanetary travel times – NASA currently reckons it would take them nine months to send a crewed ship to Mars.) Gamera’s first stop is the Kurobe Dam in Japan. He destroys the hydroelectric plant next to the dam, feeding on the ensuing fire, then batters the dam down and floods the surrounding area. He then flies off to bask in the heat of a volcanic eruption south of the equator. (All of this is narrated by the mysterious voiceover, which will be back again later in the movie to fill in the occasional montage or other lull in the plot.)

Meanwhile in Osaka, Hirata Keisuke resigns his job as a commercial pilot so that he can join his brother Ichiro’s expedition to New Guinea. Ichiro was injured in the Second World War, so he won’t be going to New Guinea and is instead sending his friends Onodera and Kawajiri with his brother. Although it isn’t explicitly stated what Ichiro does for a living, I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that he and his pals are gangsters, because they have ready access to handguns and grenades, which they’ll be taking on the expedition. (“You never know what’ll happen in that jungle”, says Ichiro, although the example he gives is highly venomous scorpions, against which grenades feel like a disproportionate response.) What they’re looking for is an enormous opal Ichiro found on the island during the war and left hidden in a cave. Keisuke will be needed for his skills as a pilot. The three set sail as crewmen aboard the Awaji Maru.

When they arrive at New Guinea, Keisuke brings the team ashore in a helicopter. They land in a small village where they interrupt one of those exotic “native” dances (which is, sadly and all too predictably, being performed by a lot of blacked-up Japanese actors). They inspect the symbols carved on an obelisk in the clearing while the suspicious villagers close in around them. Just when it looks like things are about to turn nasty, Dr Matsushita and his assistant Karen turn up. Matsushita is a Japanese physician who lives in the village and gives medical aid to the villagers, helped by Karen, who’s a local but speaks Japanese. The expeditionary team say that they’re looking for something hidden in the jungle, and Karen warns them not to go into what she calls the Valley of Rainbows. The carvings on the obelisk apparently tell of the great danger that waits there. The trio ignore the warning, firing into the air to keep the villagers back, and run into the valley despite Karen’s pleas.

Following an interlude with some quicksand, the three reach the cave where Ichiro hid the opal. They soon find it, wrapped in a cloth and tucked underneath a pile of rocks. Kawajiri starts dancing around and shouting about how rich they’re all going to be and is promptly stung by one of those venomous scorpions. Onodera, who could have warned Kawajiri but didn’t, also takes his time fetching the first aid kit while Keisuke tries to treat the wound, and Kawajiri dies in agony. While Keisuke lingers over Kawajiri’s body, Onodera makes for the exit with the opal and throws a hand grenade behind him, apparently burying Keisuke in rubble. Onodera heads back through the jungle to the Awaji Maru.

Keisuke wakes up some time later in Matsushita’s clinic. There’s a fair bit of noise going on outside – it turns out the villagers are fearfully appeasing their gods. Karen enters and confronts him about stealing something from the cave, although she’s surprised when he talks about an opal. Matsushita apparently knows something about the “opal”, although as yet neither he nor Karen will explain what it actually is. Karen drops broad hints about it causing misery. She persuades Keisuke to take her to Japan so that together they can warn everyone about the danger.

In the meantime, Onodera is sailing back to Japan aboard the Awaji Maru and supposedly recovering from malaria. He’s also using an infrared lamp to treat a case of athlete’s foot he picked up in the jungle. As the ship approaches its destination, he’s invited to make up the numbers for a game of mah jong among the crew. He leaves the opal in his jacket pocket underneath the infrared lamp, which he’s carelessly left switched on. Unattended, the opal begins to glow, burns its way through the coat, then bubbles and cracks open. A small reptilian creature breaks free from the shell, and shortly after that the ship starts to break apart. The survivors are brought ashore; Ichiro finds Onodera and asks him about the mission. Onodera tells Ichiro that he got the opal, but Kawajiri and Keisuke fell off a cliff. Although he believes the opal was lost when the Awaji Maru sank, he suggests they can hire divers to retrieve it from the harbour floor. It’s at this point that a much larger reptilian creature wades out of the water and starts smashing the buildings in the area.

We will later learn that this creature is called Barugon. Barugon has a very large, wide mouth, a large horn on his head and spines along his back. He’s quadrupedal. He has a prehensile tongue that he uses to topple a light-tower; his spines light up when he does this. He has other unusual abilities, which will shortly be revealed.

Later, in Ichiro's apartment in Osaka, Ichiro and Onodera plan their next move. Ichiro’s wife Sadae relays the news that the monster’s heading their way and wants to leave now. Onodera accidentally lets slip that he killed Kawajiri and Keisuke, and Ichiro attacks him with his crutch while Sadae tries to stop the men fighting. Onodera overpowers them both and leaves them trapped in the apartment, where they’re killed by Barugon.

The military are powerless to stop Barugon with tanks and artillery. He fires a mist from the end of his tongue which freezes tanks, buildings and aircraft on contact. When the JSDF prepare to launch missiles against him, he fires a rainbow out of his back that destroys the missiles. Again, his spines light up when he does this. As Barugon approaches Osaka Castle, Gamera is attracted by his rainbow ray and flies overhead, apparently trying but finding it difficult to absorb the energy. While the citizenry huddle in underground shelters, the daikaiju fight. Although Gamera draws blood (and in case you were wondering, Barugon’s blood is purple), Barugon wins the fight by tipping Gamera onto his back and freezing him solid with the mist from his tongue.

When Keisuke and Karen land in Japan, they see a TV report about the fight, and it’s now that Karen names Barugon. She says they are too late but also that Barugon has a weakness. After a brief confrontation with Onodera, they contact the JSDF so that Karen can tell them what she knows. She reveals that Barugon disintegrates if he’s submerged in water and finds shiny things irresistible. In the past, the people of her village would lure Barugon’s kind to their deaths by dropping large diamonds into the ocean; the Barugons would be compelled to follow, and the water would kill them. As luck would have it, she’s carrying a diamond the size of a grapefruit with her right now. The JSDF develops a plan to drop the enormous gem into Lake Biwa. They also announce the plan on the radio, so Onodera finds out about it.

The JSDF lowers the diamond from a helicopter and flies it about in front of Barugon, but he isn’t interested. The plan is a failure, but when a Dr Sato arrives at the countermeasures HQ and relays the detail that Barugon's egg was incubated by an infrared light, Karen realises this Barugon is different from those of the past. He’s supposed to take 10 years to hatch, for one thing, so the infrared has clearly affected his development. Karen suggests the diamond’s sparkle will need to be magnified somehow to get his attention. The JSDF stalls Barugon by spraying him with water. By firing an experimental ruby laser through the diamond, they’re finally able to lure Barugon to Lake Biwa. Here they transfer the laser set-up from their truck onto a boat.

Rather than allow another huge precious stone to elude him, Onodera races to the lake, commandeers a boat and rides out to hijack the JSDF boat. He manages to grab the diamond and escape with it, but Barugon follows him and swallows him and the diamond. Everyone retreats and the JSDF reverts to spraying Barugon with water to keep him contained.

Despondent, Keisuke and Karen mooch around the remains of the missile launchers Barugon destroyed earlier. Keisuke notices by chance that the vehicle’s wing and rear-view mirrors were left untouched by the rainbow beam. This suggests another possible vulnerability. Keisuke suggests that the JSDF build a large parabolic mirror to reflect Barugon's rainbow beam back at him. They do this and get Barugon’s attention by firing some tanks at him by remote control. Sure enough, when Barugon fires back, the mirror reflects his beam and gives him a nasty burn. However, the wound isn’t fatal and Barugon is smart enough not to fall for the same trick again. Just as all seems lost, Gamera finally thaws out and flies over from Osaka. There’s another fight in and around Lake Biwa, during which Gamera realizes that water harms Barugon. He holds Barugon under the water until the beast dissolves into a mass of purple blood, firing out one last feeble rainbow beam as he goes, then flies away. It’s strongly hinted that Karen and Keisuke will shack up together back in New Guinea.

Of all the Shōwa era Gamera movies, this one’s the looker – filmed in colour and with twice the budget Gamera the Giant Monster had. It’s still only about half of what Toho were spending on their Godzilla movies around this time, though. And it’s all downhill from here – there’s a 25% drop in the budget for the third Gamera movie, and films four through seven only get half as much as that. There are reasons for both the declining budgets and the continued spending, but we’ll come back to those.

The money’s been well spent on effects, including a very nice scene of a dam breaking and flooding out the surrounding area in miniature. (It’s such a good scene, it will be cut into film after film later in the series when the funds run out.) The kaiju costumes aren’t terrific, but they’re mitigated by some good models and other effects. Barugon’s freezing mist and rainbow beam add a bit of visual interest and the egg hatching effects make for a satisfying set piece. A lot of the credit belongs to Yuasa Noriaki, who was shunted from the role of main director to SFX director to make room for incoming star director Tanaka Shigeo. Yuasa would shoulder both roles for subsequent Gamera movies.

There’s not much opportunity to play Spot the Actor in Daiei’s smaller kaiju eiga oeuvre, but two of the stars here might be familiar. Hongō Kōjirō, playing Keisuke, was formerly the driven young hero Shaki in Whale God (1962) and will reappear in heroic roles as the male lead in Return of Daimajin (1966), the construction site foreman Tsutsumi in Gamera vs Gyaos (1967) and a scoutmaster in Gamera vs Viras (1968). Karen is played by Enami Kyōko, who acted opposite Hongō in Whale God as the village chief’s daughter Toyo; this is her only Gamera movie appearance. She went on to star in Daiei’s “Gambling Woman” series of crime movies – 17 films produced in just five years (1966-71), many of them directed by Tanaka Shigeo. Her prolific acting career continued until her death in 2018.

The plot of Gamera vs Barugon is pure pulp and contains more than its share of nonsense. Barugon can be killed by being submerged in water, but we saw him wading ashore from a wrecked ship in Kobe harbour with no problem at all. His egg is supposed to take 10 years to hatch, and it’s a plot point that Onodera’s infrared lamp supercharged it somehow, yet it sat inactive in its natural habitat for 20 years. Just as implausible is the fact that Karen flies into Japan with a diamond as big as a tortoise in her pocket, which seemingly didn’t cause any problems with the airport customs officials. At least some effort is still being made to rationalise Gamera’s behaviour as seeking out energy sources, so it’s not a total coincidence that he runs into the beam-emitting Barugon, but it is all a bit perfunctory. The whole script smacks of the back of a napkin on a Friday afternoon in the bar.

Gamera vs Barugon was picked up for release in the US by American International Pictures, who had also acquired Daimajin (1966) and, prior to that, an assortment of Toho kaiju eiga including Mothra vs Godzilla (1964). However, while AIP gave Godzilla a cinematic release, they syndicated the Daiei movies through their television arm, AIT, instead. Daiei seemed happy enough to have found an American market for their turtle tokusatsu and pressed on with the next one. But Daiei was about to run into financial problems. I don’t know if it was a desire to compete with Toho, or to hold onto an overseas source of revenue, or both that kept them producing Gamera movies. As cheap as the Gamera series might have been compared to the competition, it wasn’t as good for the cash flow as Daiei’s jidaigeki and crime thriller series – one tokusatsu film a year means a less regular source of income, and less of it, than four or five a year with no expensive special effects. Whatever the case, the success of Gamera vs Barugon wasn’t the blessing it might have seemed at the time.