Gamera-
Return of the Giant Monsters/The Magic Serpent 
(1967/1966)
(Retromedia DVD)
(2004)
review by Big McLargehuge

I was surprised I remember so much of The Magic Serpent seeing as I haven’t seen it since I was, oh, I don’t know, six (that’s 30 years ago kids… man I’m old…).

Retromedia should get some early accolades for just getting these two films into DVD format and managing to get a half decent print of each film to work from. Though there are some blurry bits here and there, and some artifacting, the overall presentation is certainly at least as good as it was when these were originally shown on television right before reruns of S.W.A.T..

Return of the Giant Monsters was the third Gamera film to come from the fertile mind of Noriyuki Yuasa and Nisan Takahashi and pits the titular terrapin against a giant blood eating bat lizard monster thing named Gaos. This is the first of the really kid oriented Gamera films and only suffers a little from the plot gymnastics required to keep making the kid Toshio the center of the action. Eichio, perhaps the luckiest kid in Monsterdom (for 1967) gets to ride on Gamera’s back a couple of time AND manages to show the entire Japanese defense forces how to defeat Gaos. Amazingly, Eichio is about 9 years old, and when weighed against the other child actors in the subsequent Gamera films is like the DeNiro of the kaiju film set.

When a series of underwater volcanic eruption in the Fuji range wake Gaos from peaceful post-cretaceous slumber it’s up to Gamera, with some help from the Japanese defense forces, to beat the winged beast back to the stone age. But Gaos isn’t one to go quietly and, with the power of his sonic beam, manages to fight Gamera to a standstill on more than one occasion. Gaos has a weakness though and if the JDF and Gamera can work together, sort of, to keep Gaos up and around past dawn then they stand a chance of defeating him.

This, overall, isn’t a bad film and is easily one of the better entries in the Showa Gamera series. I realize that isn’t saying much considering, but it’s way better than Gamera vs. Zigra and Gamera vs. Viras… Anyway, the effects are almost on par with the corresponding Toho offerings and the storytelling harkens back to the earliest days of giant monster film making. The sub plot about a village fighting for survival against relentless progress is also a welcome addition to the film and manages to give the human characters an unusual amount of depth for this sort of film.

It is entirely possible to draw parallels to Toho’s “Rodan” in that most of the action takes place around a smaller isolated society and the characters are less scientists and more often working men and women. Also, Gaos sort of looks like Rodan… Gamera looks good, I believe they had a new suit for this one (the same suit we would see in ALL subsequent films) and it manages to show a little more movement than in the previous outings. The Gaos suit doesn’t fare so well and suffer from a whole lot of “lookitthezipperitis”.

Yuasa keeps most of the action occurring at night (as Gaos can’t be out during the day) which helps conceal the general cheapness of the film. The same sort of trick employed by Toho in the original Godzilla King of the Monsters, and here, like there, it works well enough. Japan actually manages to have a moderately sized HO scale army in this one too, an element that would never again occur in a Gamera title. The climactic battle atop the rotating restaurant and surrounding hills is very well filmed as well and adds a nice denouement to an already fun 82 minutes.

All that said, this film is a hoot to watch with a couple of little kids as they immediately relate to Eichio and love the giant monster smashing. Shosuke Kaneko would go on to sort of remake this as the first of the Heisei Gamera titles, Gamera Guardian of the Universe.

The Magic Serpent is much less a giant monster film than it is a whacked out ninja/samurai film. Although the monsters, a dragon and a fire breathing frog, borrow their sound effects from Godzilla and Rodan, the vast majority of the film follows a dethroned prince on a quest to avenge his father’s death. Once Lord Ogata’s castle is overrun by ninja’s there is no place to go but out in the boat for greener pastures. Unfortinately for Ogata, the ninjas are in league with a local sorcerer who conjures (or becomes… it’s not very clear) a dragon who rears up and wastes the fleeing nobles. Well, all except Ikazuki, who is rescued at the last second by a giant bird (on loan from Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster) and whisked away to an old Ninja master. This Ninja Master spends the next fifteen years or so teaching all his special tricks to Ikazuki. Once the prince is located though the Ninja are again dispatched to finish off the last remaining link to the Ogata throne.

The rest of the film follows Ikazuki and his girlfriend (also a friend of the Old Ninja Master) Sonate as they dodge dozens of ninja attacks on the way back to Ogata castle where the final showdown will take place.

There is plenty of magic, cross cutting, bad special effects, and silly plot devices to keep even the most jaded Japanophile happily chewing popcorn throughout The Magic Serpent.

The film suffers less from its own goofiness than it does from the awful pan-and-scanning done by American International Television. Obviously this one was shot on, and made good use of, widescreen. Therefore, in the P/S version there are ample scenes were no one is actually on screen as they are outside the TV aspect ratio. The visual clipping also impairs the fight scenes from making any real sense.

That said though it’s still an enjoyable romp through cheap monster and magic film making. Toei would go one to make about one hundred million billion zillion similar films and by the 1980’s were the recognized studio-of-note for cheap Samurai thrills, a situation explored in hilarious and touching detail within Kinji Fukasaku’s excellent “The Fall Guy”.

Both films are presented in typical TV aspect ratio, some of the prints is scratched, blurry, and blotchy, but it’s better than not having these at all. Retromedia mentions their struggles in attaining a decent print at the beginning of the DVD to “ensure the best sound and video quality” etc… but don’t believe it. I am sure the newly reinvigorated Daiei has a widescreen print of Gamera vs. Gaos laying around somewhere. As for The Magic Serpent, hell, as far as I know Retromedia could have struck their DVD from the only print in the universe.

Both films are offered with chapter stops.

And hey, for the total $7 I paid for these films I got better than my money’s worth.