GAMERA THE GIANT MONSTER (1965)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological, sociological*


Though I enjoy the MST3K sendups of English-langugage Gamera films as much as anyone, I have to admit that there's some satisfaction in finally watching the series in Japanese with English subtitles. Admittedly, no particular prism of cultural values can ameliorate the inspired lunacy of a film-series built around a giant turtle who can breathe fire and zoom through the sky like a flying saucer.  Still, a subtitled translation can't help but preserve more of the cultural values present in the original films.

In most of its components, GAMERA THE GIANT MONSTER emulates the pattern of 1954's GOJIRA. Like Gojira, Gamera is a prehistoric beast that slumbers beneath the earth until it's awakened by an atomic blast.  The first Gamera film is a little fuzzy as to whether the titular creature spontaneously mutates thanks to exposure to radiation, but it's just as well the film didn't try to sell viewers on this idea. Not only would one have to believe that the colossal turtle gained the power to breathe fire, but also that somehow, it can pull its head and appendages into its shell and then emit rocket-like fire from the "holes," allowing the creature to simultaneously spin like a top and whirl through the heavens.  Like Gojira, in the monster's first appearance he battles no opponents save humankind, but when his series gets rolling, he never fails to engage in combat with another critter of similar dimensions.

Still, there are interesting differences. GOJIRA is suffused with anxiety and ambivalence about Japan's history in World War Two, with Gojira standing in simultaneously-- as my review explicates-- for both a traditional spirit of vengeance and an embodiment of alien forces, particularly those of the Atomic Age, bent on bringing Japan to its collective knees. In contrast, the GAMERA series engages at the level of domestic, rather than epic, conflict.  True, geopolitical tensions are invoked in Gamera's rebirth in the first film.  A Soviet plane carrying an atomic bomb trespasses into North American air space. The aircraft is shot down by American planes while far below on the icy tundra, a group of Japanese researchers watch the exchange. But the researchers don't exhibit any post-nuclear fears at the appearance of Gamera, and even when the giant turtle goes out of its way to swim all the way from the arctic to the shores of Japan, Gamera still doesn't carry any trace of Gojira's "atomic valence," so to speak.

Still, the earliest Gamera films have their own distinction: they show more interest in garnishing the marginal science-fictional structure of the narratives with references to myth and folklore.  While this particular Gamera has apparently never been un-earthed before, the researchers encounter some Eskimo people who preserve an ancestral tradition that such apocalyptic beasts have showed up in other times. This sounds like the script setting up the possibility that Eskimo tradition will provide some solution to the giant creature's rampages, but this potential soon fizzles out. In addition, the nominal "young male lead" at one point compares the "young female lead" with the Goddess of Good Luck. And then there's the film's principal viewpoint character, a grade-schooler named Toshio. This little boy, long before witnessing Gamera's advent to Japanese shores, worries his sister and her husband because he doesn't play well with others and displays an almost totemic obsession with -- what else?-- turtles.

To be sure, Gamera isn't as balls-out mean as Gojira. The first film places more emphasis on the fact that Gamera is motivated by hunger, for the great turtle feeds on heat, fire, and diverse other forms of energy. The monster doesn't attack anything but sources of food, such as refining plants, and barely even bothers to counter-attack against the gnat-like humans shooting at him. And of course, Gamera-- though not yet sentimentalized to earn the sappy title "friend of all children"-- does something that Gojira never would. When little Toshio takes a fall, Gamera extends a clawed hand, catches the kid, and allows him to run free. As presented in the first film, it almost seems to be a spontaneous impulse rather than an outpouring of kindness, for after that Gamera just goes back to feeding on oil-rigs. Nevertheless, when Japan's leading scientist comes up with a way of disposing of the monster, Gamera is treated with relative beneficence: being tricked into entering a space capsule that will take him to Mars, presumably with the idea of letting him live out his life there.