Review: GAMERA VS. GYAOS (1967)

My son and I are about a third of the way through the big list (HERE) of kaiju movies to watch before the new Godzilla film next year.

Today's movie is Gamera vs. Gyaos (1967).

I'll go first:

The Gamera franchise continues by introducing its most enduring foe: the vampiric, Rodan-esque Gyaos.   

This movie continues the Gamera formula.  Monster appears, brief encounter with Gamera, Gamera gets wounded and goes off to recover before coming back to end it.  Sprinkle liberally with annoying kids, and viola.  (Yes, Gamera vs. Barugon had this formula, too, but no kids.)
Also, we have construction workers and farmers being involved at every stage of the military's operation to fight Gyaos.  Kids making crucial suggestions.  Goofy characters. 

Gyaos has the potential to get dark, what with the monster's taste for human blood.  But it never goes there.  Instead, we get Itchy the kid and some unfunny construction workers ... I was going to call them the Two Stooges, but that would be insulting to my beloved Stooges (yes, even Joe Besser). 

Like the first Gamera film, the ending is rather batshit insane (ha, "bat").  Let's have a giant fountain of artificial blood on a platform that can rotate a monster that weighs hundreds of tons until it's dizzy.   

Keeping track of monster blood ... Gamera's is still mint green.  Barugon was purple.  Gyaos is bright pink.  It spurts quite liberally for a kids flick. 

There are some fun moments, like when Gyaos' beam splits the helicopter in half and one guy jumps out, inexplicably.  That reminds me ... Gyaos' internal arrangement is like a giant tuning fork?  And his sonic blast comes out as a visible beam?  Okee-dokee.  Oh, and I can't neglect to mention Gyaos' armpit smoke.  I'm not kidding. 

Gamera vs. Gyaos ... not that bad; not that good.  2.5 out of five atomic breath blasts.

My son's turn:

Well, it didn't make sense with cars and hellies  splitting in half and they made gamera, through out the whole series , gets hurt, heals for 1/3 of the movie, fights the enemy, and wins. It's too predictable. 

Gyaos gets gross a few times with his yellow arm pit spray and his foot that grows again when it got torn off. (and then a rock hit it and it was supposed to be funny.  It wasn't.) 

so, rating wise, i'll say 2.008 out of 5 Atomic Breaths of Awesomeness!

I couldn't find a good "best of" compilation of jokes from its appearance on Mystery Science Theater 3000, so here's the whole thing:



Here's the trailer:



Next up: Gappa. James: WWWWHHHHAAAAAAAATTTTTT!!!!!!!!...LOL!