GAMERA VS. BARUGON (1966) – or GREAT MONSTER DUEL: GAMERA VS. BARUGON according to the subtitles on the Arrow blu-ray – is the second Gamera movie, and the first one in color. That makes it extra cool when they recap part 1 at the beginning, because the flashbacks are in black and white. They remind us that mankind’s “Z Plan” sealed the giant turtle Gamera into a rocket and shot him to Mars.

Or so we thought last time! What we didn’t know then was that a meteorite would hit the rocket (in full color), Gamera would escape and fly right back in that cool way he does, spinning like a flying saucer, blue flames spewing from his shell holes. It reminds me of FRIDAY THE 13TH 3D, how they show the ending of part 2 in 2D but suddenly Jason comes back to life and gets back up in three dimensions.

Gamera (suit actor Teruo Aragaki reprising his iconic role) is powered by electricity, so he heads straight for a dam. He’s really just trying to snack, but he breaks the thing on his way out and he’s like “Sorry, gotta go, I sense a volcano erupting below the equator and I like eating lava also.” We don’t even see the flood or the volcano so there are multiple disasters going on on the sidelines of this movie.

Instead we go to the world of tiny humans, where there’s a clandestine meeting going on. This guy Ichiro Hirata (Shô Natsuki, MANHUNT) is putting together a crew to go to a remote part of New Guinea to retrieve a valuable opal he found during the war and hid in a cave right before he was locked in a POW camp. Ichiro can’t walk well so he sends his brother Keisuke (Kojiro Hongo, KARATE FOR LIFE), a commercial pilot hoping to use the money to start a travel company. Along with him are Kawajiri (Yûzô Hayakawa, WRATH OF DAIMAJIN) and Onodera (Kōji Fujiyama, LONE WOLF AND CUB: WHITE HEAVEN IN HELL, SISTER STREET FIGHTER: HANGING BY A THREAD), who’s either a Yakuza or dresses like one. Using forged papers, they spend 25 days disguised as regular seamen to get to the island. That’s dedication! Then they have two weeks to find it, with the cover story that they’re searching for the remains of a friend who died during the war.

In an indigenous village they meet two Japanese speakers, Dr. Matsushita (Ichirô Sugai, THE PORNOGRAPHERS), who came there to treat disease and found it so peaceful he never left, and bilingual local Karen (Kyoko Enami, THE FALL OF AKO CASTLE), who warns them not to even go near the cave they’re looking for. She calls it the Valley of Rainbows and says their ancestors warned of an evil spirit there. Carved that on a rock, even.

Important historical note: The comic strip hero The Phantom is popular in Papua New Guinea. It’s thought that soldiers introduced him to the area during WWII. So in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, when tribal violence flared up, the Ghost Who Walks became a popular subject to paint on traditional wooden war shields like the ones the village warriors carry in the movie. There have been whole gallery shows of Phantom shields. Unfortunately nobody here has one. That would be one of the few ways to improve this movie.

Obviously they ignore her and find the opal, but Onodera betrays them, lets Kawajiri die from a poisonous scorpion, ditches Keisuke and gets back to the ship with a box of pig bones he’s pretending is the remains he was looking for, and the opal he was actually looking for. Oh, and also a serious case of athlete’s foot, which the doctor tries to treat with an infra-red light, which gets left on by accident, burns through his jacket pocket, hits the opal and… oh shit, that’s not a jewel, that’s a monster egg, and now it’s glowing! And undulating. And hatching. A slimy blue lizard with glowing eyes pokes his head out.

At the port the ship is on fire and Onodera thinks he the opal fell in the water. Also he tells Ichiro his brother fell off a cliff and died. Just then there’s a bright purple light under the water, and splashes, and a giant lizard with a long horn on his nose appears and starts smashing buildings. Barugon (as Karen later tells us he’s called) is cool because he walks on all fours, rare for a kaiju. His front legs seem straight, and back legs are bent, so you can sometimes picture the guy inside there, crawling around.

Barugon’s back scales glow white and he has a long, bulbous tongue that he can stick out and smash against buildings like a bettering ram. It releases a vapor that creates a 20 below zero temperature for a 200-yard radius. Celsius, I assume, but either way it’s bad.

Here’s how poorly the opal plot goes. Ichiro and Onodera don’t make the connection that the monster was the opal, and still plan to hire a diver to search for it in the water, even while the city is being evacuated due to monster attack. But Onodera accidentally blurts out that he had to kill two people for that opal, so Ichiro thinks he killed his brother and starts beating him with a crutch.

This is an enjoyable kaiju movie, and here’s where it takes it up a notch. While Barugon naps, the army sets up missile launchers outside of the range of his tongue. No problem – when he wakes up he just projects a rainbow from his back that hits the launchers and blows them all up. Like you or I would do. Gamera immediately flies in and starts banging against the rainbow, creating sparks. As the radio says, “His attraction to flames and energy has drawn him back here to Osaka and to the strange destructive rainbows emerging from the new monster’s back.” But Barugon freezes Gamera pretty quick.

Keisuke makes it back to Japan, bringing Karen with him. He feels tremendous guilt about unleashing this monster and somehow gets Karen an audience with military brass to explain Barugon’s weaknesses. I like this idea, also used with Mothra in the Godzilla universe, that a monster is reborn repeatedly, and the natives always consider it to be the same being, with the same name. So this monster that just hatched yesterday is Barugon, and Karen already knows all about how he works. Since “Barugon is drawn to light. Especially the light of diamonds” she brought a 5,000 karat diamond to lure him into the water. Of course fucking Onodera hears that on the news and wants to steal the diamond. That guy is so predictable. He gets what he wants (he grabs the diamond) and we get what we want (Barugon grabs him with his tongue and eats him).

Now the diamond plan is moot so they build a giant mirror to reflect Barugon’s rainbow back at him. The ol’ I’m rubber, you’re glue method. They call it Operation Rear View Mirror. Taste the rainbow, motherfucker.

That doesn’t work either but meanwhile Gamera becomes unfrozen and comes after Barugon again. This is a fun movie, I like the story and the monsters, it’s not necessarily one of the top ones but what does make it special is that it looks really good. The fights take place at night and the lighting looks more real and dramatic than in many of this type. Gamera’s fire breathing effects look incredible, and there’s also a short but well done underwater sequence. Sometimes they get thrown around and have that weightless attached-to-wires quality that’s always amusing, but for the most part this looks more real than what people associate with the Gamera series.

Unfortunately this movie makes me question my allegiance to Gamera. Here he is going around guzzling up energy left and right, meanwhile Barugon is admittedly pretty materialistic, he loves his bling, but he’s this creature taken away from his home by war profiteers, and he fights back by using a fucking rainbow to attack the military industrial complex… how can I root against that? Shit, I’d vote for him. Gamera looks extra cool here, but he’s got no leg to stand on morally. Maybe he’ll change.

After the success of the first GAMERA, the studio, Daiei, considered the sequel a high priority, gave it a bigger budget and tried to make it a serious movie for adults. It would be the only film in the original Gamera series not directed by Noriaki Yuasa, who was demoted to special effects director, usurped by Shigeo Tanaka, who in 1942 had directed THE BATTLE OF HONG KONG, lost anti-British propaganda that was the only movie shot in Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation.

Cinematographer Michio Takahashi must’ve come with Tanaka; they had already done 25 movies together. His claim to fame is being the cinematographer for the Japan portion of Alain Resnais’ HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR. One of the main connections between Gamera and the French New Wave.

Lead actor Hongo was so unhappy being in a monster movie that he tried to fake an illness to get out of it, but he must’ve learned to live with it because he later appeared in three more Gameras, a Yokai Monsters and a Daimajin.

Note that the year before Ishiro Honda had directed FRANKENSTEIN VS. BARAGON. Barugon doesn’t look exactly like Baragon, but not entirely different, either. They both have a horn on their head and walk on all fours at times.

GAMERA VS. BARUGON was released on a double bill with the classic DAIMAJIN, but still didn’t do well, and allegedly bored kids because it took too long to get to the monsters. In the U.S. it skipped theaters, but American International Television put a shortened and dubbed version on TV under the title WAR OF THE MONSTERS. Don’t worry – even if they considered it a disappointment, they kept making them every year for a while. And eventually I’m going to watch all of them.

* * *
Other Japanese films of 1966: THE SWORD OF DOOM, TOKYO DRIFTER, ZATOICHI’S VENGEANCE, THE WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS, ZATOICHI’S PILGRIMAGE, FIGHTING ELEGY, SAMURAI WOLF, RETURN OF DAIMAJIN, EBIRAH HORROR OF THE DEEP.

Meanwhile, in America: BATMAN, BILLY THE KID VS. DRACULA, DR. GOLDFOOT AND THE GIRL BOMBS, EL DORADO, ENDLESS SUMMER, FANTASTIC VOYAGE, THE GHOST AND MR. CHICKEN, THE MAN CALLED FLINTSTONE, MUNSTER, GO HOME!, NEVADA SMITH, OUR MAN FLINT, RETURN OF THE SEVEN, THE SHOOTING, WHAT’S UP, TIGER LILY?