Weird Wednesdays: Gamera Super Monster

This screening was part of the Alamo Drafthouse’s Weird Wednesday series.

Mach Fumiake is huge—figuratively and literally. She’s an intimidating physical presence. A full head-height taller than most of her co-stars; with her slicked back hair and new wave suits, in 1980s Japan she might as well have been a visitor from outer space. 

She’s the first among the first wave of truly famous Japanese women wrestlers, and like many of her contemporaries, Mach’s flair for stunts and fight choreography is just a sample of the talent she brings to the table. Mach Fumiake is a talented singer and actor, a woman ahead of her time. The producers of Noriaki Yuasa’s Gamera: Super Monster (1980) clearly also saw this. Fumiake’s charisma is undeniable, and she’s the main reason to watch Gamera: Super Monster.

The plot’s not necessarily new territory if you’re familiar with the Gamera franchise. If you watched the series on Mystery Science Theater 3000, or if you have any familiarity with the kaiju genre, it’s a formula so simple you may have replicated it in your own backyard: Giant monsters, portrayed by people in elaborate costumes, tromping around on miniature model cities. Cut back to some human performers in real world locations acting suitably horrified at the untold destruction they’re witnessing just out of frame and boom, we have a kaiju. 

The plot of Gamera: Super Monster is as basic as it gets. We open on a black starfield as a large triangular starship passes directly overhead, filling the screen. The ship is occupied by Zanon, an evil being we never see and only hear through radio conversations. He wants to enslave Earth for Reasons and he’s just getting started. The only thing standing in his way is… the aforementioned Mach Fumiake, playing Kilara, and a pair of her fellow space women.

Zanon sends his own agent, Giruge (Kieko Kudo) to disguise herself in order to find Earth’s three resident space women and destroy them. Simple, right?

Wrong. All four women look exactly like Earth women. The only way an independent observer can reckon that these ladies are aliens in disguise is when they summon superhero costumes, teleport or alter their size at will. Things that, last I checked, Earth women could not do. (Am I wrong about that? Earth women, get at me.)

But these women have a problem: they have public identities and day jobs. If they use their special abilities or let the mask slip in any way, they will be targeted and vaporized by a blaster fire from Zanon’s orbiting battlecruiser. Relatable.

Enter Koichi Maeda as Keiichi, our lone human main character. Keiichi is a boy who loves turtles, giant monsters and composing songs about Gamera, the giant monster turtle. In a call-back to the first Gamera movie, Gamera, the Giant Monster (1965), he picks up a turtle at Kilara’s pet shop and is forced by his parents to release it back into the wild. It’s unclear if the pet shop turtle is any direct relation of Gamera, but it establishes that the boy has a connection to turtles and possibly to Gamera himself, and that’s good enough for Kilara, who convinces him to call Gamera to drive away Zanon. Zanon then escalates in true super villain style by micromanaging Giruge in her hunt for the space women, while simultaneously summoning all six opponent monsters from previous Gamera movies. This is, of course, a cost-cutting measure to reuse previous monster fight footage and satisfy some contractual obligations. 

If Gamera is just a cheaper copy of Godzilla, the Gamera series has managed to distinguish itself by establishing early and often that Gamera is a defender of the Earth and friend to all children. Y’know, in spite of the fact that Gamera seems to do just as much damage and inflicts as many casualties as any monster he fights.

Gamera films are at once more visceral and more whimsical than other kaiju stories. In combat, Gamera will often get sliced, punctured or dismembered. (Don’t worry kids, Gamera can regenerate.) Green blood splashed across his body, Gamera then turns and ruthlessly gores or dismembers his foes. He is equally likely to play his foes’ scales like a xylophone or do a gymnastic routine on some nearby industrial building. In the next turn, Gamera will drive a multi-megaton warhead into an enemy’s skull and explode it with his fire breath. Then he clearly laughs to himself as his antagonist explodes in a fountain of fire, gore and body parts. Gamera is kind of a psycho.

If this is your first Gamera, Super Monster is as satisfying as any other entry point you could choose. While it’s clearly full of penny-pinching decisions, cramming highlights from all the previous fights into one presentation is efficient storytelling and provides a great overview into the world of Gamera: a universe where aliens and giant monsters are commonplace, yet it all hinges on one target audience-aged child to make a difference. 

Of course the magic trick to the kaiju formula lies in making the real-world actors and the giant monster effect scenes feel like one integrated whole. This is where Gamera: Super Monster stumbles a bit. It’s a little unclear at times how much of this story is “real” and how much of it is Keichii’s dream. This is because to pad for time there are sequences where Keiichi dreams of Gamera interacting with Galaxy Express 999 or Space Battleship Yamamoto, two well-known anime series happening at the time.

There’s a read of this movie that’s all Keichii’s dream, which would explain away a number of plot holes. I think that’s an overly generous interpretation. I believe the producers knew that the target demographic for this movie would be unconcerned with such inconsistencies. Also, All Monsters Attack already tried the dream twist in 1969 and it cut out any dramatic momentum for a story about giant monster fights. 

Gamera: Super Monster may be a flawed product from conception to execution, but its limitations lead to some wacky choices and some positive messages. It’s a movie targeted at young boys where eighty percent of the main cast are women. Mach Fumiake always comes across as warm and approachable to Keichii which makes her even more badass.