Gamera vs Gyaos

Gamera vs Gyaos (1967)
Daiei Motion Picture Company
Director: Yuasa Noriaki (also handling SFX, and ditto for all the rest)
Also known as: Return of the Giant Monsters (the extremely bland title of the version first shown on American TV).
Also discussed: Gamera vs Viras (1968), Gamera vs Guiron (1969), Gamera vs Jiger (1970), Gamera vs Zigra (1971).

A series of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions – an undersea volcano and one on Miyake Island – culminates in an eruption at Mt Fuji. Gamera promptly turns up to absorb the heat energy of the lava. (At this point he still has to be drawn to the scene by the prospect of a meal – subsequent films will have him just turn up to defend people, and particularly children.) He’s watched by a delighted child called Eiichi. A research team flies in by helicopter to investigate the seismic activity, but their helicopter is sliced in half by a mysterious yellow beam that shoots out from a glowing cave in the foothills.

Meanwhile nearby, road corporation foreman Tsutsumi is struggling with the delays to his expressway project. The work’s been stopped because of the eruptions, and Tsutsumi’s bosses want it resumed quickly, but the local residents want a higher price for their land and are taking advantage of the hold-up to sabotage the workers’ facilities and further delay construction. While Tsutsumi and the villagers are arguing, the journalist Okabe sneaks past in the hope of trekking up to the mysterious cave and getting an exclusive story on what’s up there. He runs into Eiichi and persuades him to act as his guide by suggesting Gamera might be hiding in the cave. Spoiler alert: there’s something hiding in the cave, but it isn’t Gamera. Okabe abandons Eiichi and tries to save himself, but is seized and devoured by the inhabitant of the cave, which then turns its attention to Eiichi.

This creature will later be named Gyaos by Eiichi, in imitation of its distinctive call. It looks like an enormous, angular bat, or possibly some sort of black-skinned pterosaur. It has a wedge-shaped head, eyes with red irises and yellow sclera and a rather flappy lower jaw. Its presence in the cave is denoted by a pulsing green glow, although it’s never explained what actually produces the glow and how it relates to Gyaos.

Before Gyaos can eat Eiichi, Gamera turns up to confront him. Gyaos fires a yellow beam from his mouth – the same one that destroyed the helicopter earlier – and cuts deeply into Gamera’s forelimb. (For the record, Gamera’s blood is green – it seems it’s OK to show blood gushing all over the screen in a kids’ movie provided it isn’t red.) Gamera responds by pulling his head and limbs back into his shell and rolling edge-on down the hill into Gyaos. Gyaos drops Eiichi and Gamera catches him. He then torches Gyaos with his fiery breath – presumably he was holding that back while Eiichi was in danger. With Eiichi on his back, Gamera flies to the village, where he lands next to a ferris wheel so that Tsutsumi can ride up and take Eiichi safely away. Gamera flies off, and Eiichi is suddenly the centre of attention for the local reporters.

Later, the JSDF convenes an emergency meeting to discuss the threat Gyaos poses and how they can neutralise it. Eiichi is invited, presumably because he’s seen Gyaos closer up than anyone else. A scientist, Dr Aoki, theorises that Gyaos’ ray is a high-frequency sonic beam, generated by a bifurcated spine and windpipe like a tuning fork. The JSDF officers speculate that Gyaos could be attacked from behind because of his inflexible back. They launch a squadron of fighter planes, but Gyaos shoots several of them down and they’re forced to abort. In a slightly peculiar fantasy moment, we cross-fade from Eiichi at JSDF HQ urging Gamera to recover quickly to a shot of Gamera underwater, his forelimb healing.

That night, Gyaos emerges from his cave and eats all the cows in the local cattle farms; the villagers blame the road workers for bringing bad luck. Privately, the villagers debate whether to sell their land while there’s still the chance to sell it. Meanwhile, the despondent, idle road workers move out, except for Tsutsumi and his two deputies. Eiichi, who’s been keeping a scrapbook, deduces that Gyaos is nocturnal. On this basis, the JSDF sets up bright lights around the village and fires experimental extra-bright flares into the sky, with the co-operation of the three construction workers who’ve stuck around. It doesn’t work – Gyaos still shows up. The JSDF attacks, but Gyaos creates hurricane-force winds by flapping his wings and destroys their tanks, then takes to the air and heads south. He terrorizes Nagoya with a lot of low flying, takes the top off a train and eats the passengers. There’s also a fun shot of a car being cut in half by his sonic beam. As he moves off to the north-east, Gamera shows up and tries to ram him but is outmanoeuvred. Gyaos fires a yellow powder out from his underbelly that extinguishes Gamera's rocket jets. (What even is that?! It’s never explained.) Gamera plummets into Ise Bay, but is able to launch himself back out and latch his teeth onto Gyaos’ foot. The sun begins to rise and Gyaos’ head begins to glow red – in obvious distress, he fires his beam through his own toes so that he can escape. The fight reportedly causes a tsunami.

The next morning, Gyaos' severed toes are found floating in the bay. They’re taken to a lab for study, by which time they’ve shrunk to a third of their original size. Meanwhile in his cave, Gyaos regrows his toes. The scientists determine that ultraviolet light is harmful to Gyaos and prolonged exposure might kill him. The JSDF devises a new plan to lure Gyaos out by night and hold him in place until sunrise. Because Gyaos apparently has a taste for human blood, they will synthesise an artificial substitute and put an enormous bowl full of the stuff on top of the Hotel Hi-Land near the JSDF HQ. The bowl will be resting on a turntable – when Gyaos lands there, the turntable will spin and the dizzying effect will prevent him from flying away.

Dr Aoki’s team work all day to develop the artificial blood. Meanwhile, the villagers approach Tsutsumi to offer to sell their land but are told the construction work has been halted and the expressway will be rerouted. The trap is finally set and Gyaos is lured out that night by aircraft spraying a mist of the artificial blood. As planned, he’s drawn to the bowl of artificial blood and lands on the turntable, and is pinned in place when it starts spinning. Unfortunately, the motor overloads with only a couple of minutes to go, causing a fire at the local electric substation. The turntable grinds to a halt. As Gyaos regains his balance, he smashes the hotel, sprays his yellow vapor over the fire and flies safely back to his cave.

The villagers angrily confront their local councillor, Kanamura, at his home, complaining that he made them hold out too long on selling their land and demanding that he compensate them. Kanamura happens to be Eiichi’s grandfather. When Eiichi hears all the shouting, he pelts the villagers with his toys and tells them to go away and leave his grandfather alone. He consoles himself by drawing a picture of Gamera, and suggests to his sister that Gamera would sort out the Gyaos problem if they simply called him in by setting the nearby forest on fire. Kanamura overhears this and takes the suggestion to the JSDF, who agree to it. The mountainside is quickly deforested and the logs are doused in gasoline.

JSDF fighters buzz Gyaos’ cave to get his attention shortly before dawn, then set the wood on fire by launching missiles at it. Gyaos is able to put the fire out with his weird yellow powder, but Gamera arrives all the same. The resulting fight ends when Gamera lobs a rock into Gyaos’ mouth to stop him firing his sonic beam, sinks his teeth into his neck and drags him to the top of Mt Fuji. As the sun rises, Gamera drops Gyaos into the volcanic caldera and flies away.

The film ends with a montage of scenes from the three Gamera movies to date, accompanied by a cheery song performed by some kids. (This is not the infamous “Gamera March”, although it could be seen as testing the water for it.)

It’s hard to find insightful things to say about the Shōwa era Gamera movies when, increasingly, their sole purpose is “cash in on the kaiju eiga that have gone before”. (Then again, the same could be said of some of the Godzilla movies covered so far and others still to come.)

Let’s instead ask the question, when’s a good time to get off the Shōwa Gamera train? At what point do these films become too much of a slog to watch? Opinions vary, but I’d say Gamera vs Gyaos is the last truly enjoyable instalment in this series. The filmmakers have clearly decided who their target audience is going to be from now on – move aside, Tsutsumi, Eiichi is indisputably the star character here, a little smartarse who outmanoeuvres a slippery journalist, puts the greedy villagers in their place and holds court in the JSDF’s planning room. But there’s still room around him for at least some of the adult characters to have a bit of dignity and drama. And although Gyaos suffers from the rigidness and cartoonish appearance that will be a hallmark of Gamera’s foes in the rest of the series, he's a lot of fun and his attack on Nagoya is a sustained highlight of the film. He was evidently a hit at the time, since Gamera vs Guiron featured the cameo appearance of a “Space Gyaos” and a reimagined Gyaos would be a core element of the Heisei era Gamera films.

After this point, the series will fall into a predictable formula: two kids, one Japanese and one American, outwit the adults around them and team up with Gamera to defeat a hostile kaiju and save the day. Gamera, rebranded as “the friend of all children”, will turn up and fight purely to defend Earth and humanity, not because he happened to be in the area absorbing energy from a volcano or a power station. The abrasive “Gamera March” will feature prominently on the soundtrack. The kids will tend to be both boys, the sole exception being Gamera vs Zigra. The guest kaiju will tend to be an alien invader, apart from Jiger who’s a “demon beast” unleashed by the removal of an ancient statue from a fictional island.

With a reduced budget for each movie – slashed in half after Gamera vs Gyaos – the series will resort to two methods to cut costs even further. The first and most obvious is the increasing reuse of footage from earlier movies. Gamera vs Gyaos reuses some old footage, as do a number of Godzilla films, but in a way that’s skilful enough that you might not notice unless you already knew to look for it. That’s not true of the later Shōwa Gameras, particularly when monochrome shots from Gamera the Giant Monster (1965) are jarringly dropped into a colour movie or when the script contrives some way to redeploy the lengthy scene of Gamera destroying a dam from Gamera vs Barugon (1966).

The other money-saving measure is for director Yuasa Noriaki to use contemporary events or attractions as a source of cheap crowd scenes or location footage. Gamera vs Viras will benefit from a collaboration with the 4th Nippon Scout Jamboree, under which Yuasa seemingly gains a ready-made background cast of scouts and campground set in return for shooting a short promotional film for the scouts. Gamera vs Jiger will take full advantage, in its setting and plot details, of the preparations being made for Ōsaka to host Expo ’70, the 1970 World’s Fair. Gamera vs Zigra looks very much like a publicity exercise for the then recently opened Kamogawa Sea World.

Why continue to produce these films, with their requirements for new kaiju costumes and effects sequences, if money was so tight? The fact that they had a willing overseas distributor might have been an incentive to keep going, even if it was only American International Television (AIT), the TV department of AIP. The inclusion of an American child co-star in each one, the junior equivalent of Toho casting Nick Adams and Russ Tamblyn in the mid-60s, looks like a ploy to keep the US distributor sweet. But it wasn’t enough to keep Daiei afloat. They’d been suffering cashflow problems despite their rapid turnover of non-kaiju films, and they’d been hit hard by the rise of television and the decline in box office sales during the 1960s. In 1970 they formed a shared domestic distribution company with Nikkatsu, another ailing film production company, in a last-ditch effort to cut costs. Nikkatsu bailed out in late 1971, and by the end of that year Daiei had declared bankruptcy. (Nikkatsu, incidentally, deferred their bankruptcy until the late 1980s by moving into exploitation movies.)

Daiei’s long-running series of films about Zatoichi, the blind itinerant masseur and master swordsman, continued for a while over at Toho Studios, but only because the lead actor had been part-funding the films through his own production company and was consequently able to take the franchise away with him. Everything else went into mothballs until Tokuma Shoten, a publishing company who’d acquired Daiei’s assets, set up a new company called Daiei Film in 1974. Daiei Film’s production output, small and infrequent, would include four Gamera films, one best forgotten and three with a much better reputation.