Truly Dreadful Film

This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

With this Gamera flick, it is the end of the more conventional and serious movies and the beginning of pure camp, cheese and childish films in the series. Here, we have two Boy Scouts who are captured by invading evil space aliens, who control Gamera to have him destroy Tokyo. The boys then attempt to reverse the controls on Gamera and find a way to defeat the aliens and their monster leader, giant squid Viras.There is really nothing spectacular or unique about the story and plot, which are very basic and simple - aliens invade earth, aliens kidnap children, aliens control Gamera to destroy cities, kids try to escape and foil aliens' scheme. The two lead kid characters consume a majority of the movie while the other adult actors are just window dressing; none of the characters stand out. And, the acting is mostly atrocious, especially in the part where one of the girl scoutmasters nonchalantly point to the sky after she spots a monster/spaceship.The special effects were below average; the suit for Gamera looks like a cardboard cut-out with moving eyes and the suit for Viras looks like Styrofoam. The aliens' spaceship looks like a bumblebee and the zombies inside the ship look like clay models.It appears the filmmakers didn't put too much effort in making this a riveting monster movie, rather, they just winged it and treated like it was a fun monster episode of a children's variety show.Watch at your own risk and if you want to watch the sequels that follow, be warned that the series only gets campier and cheesier.Grade D

Fourth Gamera film started the marked decline of quality in the series in this ridiculous entry that brings in the old plot device that plagued the later Godzilla sequels, that is alien invaders who plan on conquering the Earth by capturing Gamera and controlling it with an implant that forces it to attack Japan. Two Boy scouts on an outing befriend Gamera and somehow free him from the aliens' control, but then they unleash a giant squid-like monster called Viras to take over the attack. Can Gamera thwart their plans and save the Earth? Being partially set underwater can't save it, as this is far too childish to be believed.

The veering of the Gamera series towards the younger generation began with the fourth film, "Gamera vs. Viras" released a speedy three years after the original hit Japanese theaters in 1965. Even though the previous movie, the gleefully entertaining "Gamera vs. Gyaos" was also geared mostly toward children, it still had an element of terror and dread in it. That is gone here and "Gamera vs. Viras" is an unsuccessfully endeavor. However, that it is hardly due to the fact that it is being directed at little children and those who are still able to find the child deep within themselves (a la moi). The problem with this picture is, despite its wonderful beginning and wonderful ending, most of the middle is just shameless, lazy jigsaw-construction of its predecessors. In other words, it's mostly just stock footage reels.The opening is very promising. A spaceship venturing for a conquest of Earth is interrupted by Gamera, now fully evolved into the friend of all children. Before the vessel is destroyed, it sends a signal back to its home world and a second one is dispatched. Upon the new one's arrival, the aliens use their technology to determine Gamera's weaknesses and take two boy scouts (Toru Takatsuka & Carl Craig) hostage. Now implicating a mind-control device, they use Gamera to destroy civilization. The thin plot becomes thinner before it ultimately leads up to the titular conflict between the giant terrapin and a slimy extra-terrestrial cephalopod.The movie is so wonderful at first. Both Gamera and the two boys are very entertaining. The latter are portrayed as witty, audacious, and thoughtful individuals...despite the occasional prank or two. And a scene involving them inside of a submersible racing Gamera underwater brought a smile to my face. But the movie starts crippling itself at the moment where the aliens start searching Gamera's past. It's stock footage from the previous movies, each reel lasting roughly five minutes. The aliens quote that their process takes fifteen minutes and it literally does. There's hardly any narration or trimming of the stock footage; it's just reused. (Frighteningly enough, for the U.S. version, the stock footage reel was increased to a mind-numbing twenty-five minutes!) When this ends, there is some relief, but then it becomes just more reused footage from the previous movies. Sequence upon sequence. And most jarring of all is when they decide to once again show Gamera attacking Tokyo as he did in the original film "Gamera the Giant Monster." Now if you will recall, that movie was black-and-white. This one is in color. Eyes squinting yet? Colorization was not around at the time this picture was made and yes, they still integrate colorless footage into a color movie! Just a slight bluish tint, that's all. And sadly, this drags on and on seemingly without end and wore me out. All of a sudden, even the whim and charm of Mr. Takatsuka and Mr. Craig, both of whom are very good in the film, seems unimportant.Now the movie does pick up a little when the final battle does arrive. And it's satiatingly lengthy, but even with that, by the time it was all over, "Gamera vs. Viras" had exhausted me and left me feeling a thirst for a lot more. The stock footage it so abundant that if there had been more, it could have been a "Best of Gamera" show instead of a continuation to the series. And as far as I am concerned, a low budget should not be an excuse for ham-handed filmmaking. There are some good things here, including a leading performance by that wonderful actor Kojiro Hongo (who was in the previous two Gamera movies and would later play a small part in Shusuke Kaneko's marvelous "Gamera: Guardian of the Universe" almost thirty years later) but there are also a lot of bad things here too.

I picked up this movie not too long ago with decent expectations. All I can say is that 60s Gamera was not 60s Godzilla. This movie came out the same year as "Destroy All monsters", and anybody who knows kaiju knows that's not even a debate. To say this film lacks the character, charm, art, graceful music and over all atmosphere of Honda's work is an understatement. Now, this film had many a problem that even for a giant monster fan were just hard to sit through.The camp is pretty horrendous, and the human characters are completely dismal. Same old annoying kids, in a world where youngsters are held hostage by aliens who then let them wander their ship which has a machine that can produce ANYTHING they desire. As far as idiotic plots, they could almost take the cake with this one. All along accompanied by a score I just do not care for.oh and did I mention that if you haven't seen "Gamera vs. Barugon" or "Gamera vs. Gyaos" you get to see like almost ten minute-each flashbacks of each of those films? These flashbacks go on for quite a bit of time, I suppose to give the appearance that this is a feature run-time flick. When I first saw it, I was surprised. About more than half of this movie's action sequences are stock-footage. For Godzilla's sake, don't use stock footage from a black-and-white movie in the full-on color one; someone's bound to notice you know? However, after 90% of the film being completely pointless and redundant, there is pretty entertaining fight at the end. Too bad it was too little too late. Viras is a squid-like alien kaiju, who I suppose to some extent would provide inspiration for Irys in the 1999 film "Gamera 3: Awakening of Irys", but it's a much simpler concept design. I tracked this film down pretty much for the adventure of watching all the Gamera movies, but by no means is this one of the best, not by far. "Gamera vs. Barugon" and "Gamera vs. Gyaos" are far better made, hell even "Gamera vs. Guiron" improves on this one. Watch if you dare!