I also watched Gamera vs. Barugon. Despite being made the year after Gamera, this movie was in color. Gamera was black and white.
This movie should have been titled “Barugon with a little Gamera at the end.” Gamera returns from his one-way trip to Mars when his rocket is hit by a meteor and he is released. Gamera spins his way back to Earth. Meanwhile, a greedy ex-soldier tells his buddies about a giant opal he hid in a cave on an island around New Guinea. His buddies all pony up money to sail down there and retrieve the gemstone. The natives tell them that the cave is dangerous, but they would have had to cut the vs. Barugon out of the title if they listened to them.
The opal is actually an egg. After being accidentally exposed to radiation from a lamp that is used to kill athlete’s foot (seriously, I’m not making this up!), the egg hatches and Barugon is born. He grows fast, too. When the ship gets back to Japan, sans most of the greedy opal party (killed by one of the even more greedy fellows in the group), Barugon destroys the ship and begins rampaging about the land.
A native girl comes back to Japan with one of the party members that was rescued from the cave-in caused by the super greedy dude to retrieve the egg, but is too late. Fortunately, she brought the giant diamond that Barugon-type creatures can’t resist. She then reveals Barugon’s weakness—water. Barugon hates water, and is paralyzed when it rains. They try to use the irresistible diamond to lure Barugon into a lake, but it doesn’t work. Then the scientists realize that they needed to irradiate the diamond just like what happened to Barugon’s egg. Then it seems to work, but the greedy guy returns, steals the diamond (he has a thing for gemstones I guess), and is eaten by Barugon.
Having completely failed to destroy Barugon, Gamera shows up and kicks Barugon’s lizard-y hide. Gamera did have an earlier appearance, but Barugon’s shoots ice out of his tongue, which froze Gamera until this point.
I rate this movie 1 empty seat: Gamera’s. Even though he had top billing, his part in the movie was quite small.
Ooh, I can’t believe I forgot to mention Barugon’s super special power. No, not the ice shooting from his tongue, this is even better! Barugon shoots rainbows from his back, and they blow up whatever they hit. How cool is that?
This one’s a right stinker. If you don’t watch carefully, you can’t even tell it’s been dubbed. The movie is actually from Spain. The Pod People somehow is one of the “classic” MST3K episodes. Perhaps because it’s one of the commercially available ones. I don’t know.
Whatever the reason, this movie suffers from poor dialog, extreme continuity problems, bad acting, and generally lacks the cohesiveness that any normal movie might have. First, it’s a story about three poachers in the woods, and one of them runs across a glowing red cave full of alien eggs. He dutifully busts up most of them, and is then murdered by what I must assume is the mommy alien. Then it’s about a “rock” band recording a song you can’t ever understand despite the fact that it’s in English. They go on a weekend camping trip. Then we cut over to a boy and his family that live out in the woods. The boy steals one of the good eggs and it hatches in his room. He names the alien Trumpy because of his long snout. Trumpy is telekinetic and understands the boy Tommy within the first few hours of being born, somehow.
Robbed of its egg, what I must assume is the mother alien goes on a rampage killing people she finds in the forest. Everyone assumes it’s Trumpy when they discover Tommy’s been hiding him in the house. Tommy takes Trumpy out in the woods to leave him like an unwanted pet, the mother attacks, gets killed, and they leave Trumpy to fend for himself without any help. The end.
I rate this movie 7 empty seats, one for each star in the constellation-type thing that appeared on the forehead of each victim killed by Trumpy’s mommy.
It stinks!
I went on a MST3K spree yesterday and saw several episodes. The second of which was the 1965 Japanese classic Gamera. This was the MST3K-edited version of the US-edited version, so I can’t imagine how much was left out, but it doesn’t really matter. None of these movies are that great.
While in the arctic, a Japanese ship with an expedition are talking to Eskimos about a legendary turtle when strange jets fly overhead. The US launches fighters to run them off, but they fire on them. The US fighters return fire, one of the strange jets crashes and explodes, detonating its on-board atomic arsenal. This atomic blast creates Gamera, who is a giant mutant turtle. He flies by shooting fire out his leg-holes, and spins like a top. It’s really quite amusing.
Obviously, since this is a Japanese monster movie, Gamera heads to Japan to destroy its cities. Gamera saves a little boy (who was only endangered because of Gamera, but that’s moot), who champions Gamera’s cause. Since the military and scientists can’t figure out how to kill Gamera (everything seems to just make him stronger), they get him into a rocket and shoot him at Mars.
I rate this movie at about 53 empty seats, one for each crewman on the ship that Gamera immediately destroyed when he was freed/born/whatever from the ice by the atomic blast.