Thursday, October 29, 2009

Attack of the Monsters (AIP-TV, 1969)

or as it's known by a few other names, "Gamera vs Guiron" and "Gamera vs Guillon". I have a confession to make, this was my first ever Gamera movie, and I also wrote the liner notes for Neptune Media's VHS tape for the English dubbed "Gamera vs. Guillon". so take that into consideration.
Gamera flies after two boys who are kidnapped by a flying saucer from the planet Terra. It's located on the far side of the sun, so we on Earth never see it or know it exists.
here is a one of the monsters on the planet, Space Gyaos. he's not really from space, but he's white, as opposed to "our" Gyaos who is not. say what you will about the Gamera monsters being rather unrealistic, but they look otherworldly and cool, far more than the 90s updates do. even if Gyaos is the overused monster that he is.


one of these days I will figure out how to position the pictures correctly. and it appears I don't even have a picture of Guiron, the titular foe of the movie. I think I'll just post another one with him in it, as this is getting picture heavy as it is. here we see the alien villainesses, before preparing to eat the boys' brains to learn everything about Earth.

and next to it is the Neptune Media title. it was bad timing for them to release the VHS versions of the three Gamera movies they had, since DVD had just started to hit it big, making the VHS versions more expensive and less desirable- you had to spend almost $45 to get the dubbed and subbed version of each movie. I'd like to post my liner notes here sometime. I wonder if I have that Gamera article they came from.

this is the AIP title. somehow, the movie is believed to be PD (public domain) with this title, and there are a ton of cheapo versions of it around. in fact, the first four or five Gamera movies are easily found online.

I'm not sure what happened with Neptune Media. the rumors are the owner is in Iraq, serving in the military. he has the rights to the first four Gamera movies, but only was able to release three (the first movie, this one and "Gamera vs Zigra" almost the worst of the lot). here's hoping he gets done with his tour and can look into giving us some nice DVDs of these movies, as they look pretty great letterboxed.

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