K06-Gamera vs. Gaos

Film Year:  1967
Genre:  Kaiju, Fantasy
Director:  Noriaki Yuasa
Starring:  Kojiro Hongo, Kichijiro Uses, Naoyuki Ape
MST Season:  KTMA

The Movie

*I HAVE SURVIVED WATCHING THIS MOVIE UNRIFFED*

Yay.  More Gamera.

This week a giant bat/reptile thing is unleashed and begins eating people.  Unfortunately Gemera butts in before he can eat our new Kenny, Itchy (no Scratchy?).  Can Gamera stop the rampage of this bloodthirsty beast?

I don’t care.  Just eat me now and get it over with.

Of the three seen on the show so far, this is the most painful yet.  The first two Gamera films at least took themselves seriously.  With this one the series degrades into child pandering.  The monster scenes become self-aware to the point that all that’s missing is Gamera turning to the audience and winking.

I guess this movie is noteworthy for introducing Gamera’s most prominent foe, Gayos (Sandy Frank spells it Gaos), who would later appear in Gamera vs. Guiron, Super Monster Gamera (via stock footage), Gamera:  Guardian of the Universe, Gamera:  Revenge of Iris, and Gamera the Brave.  He’s actually the only monster Gamera has fought more than once.  I always preferred Guiron myself, though.

Note:  The version of the film seen in this KTMA episode features a lengthy barrage of the film's monster footage at the beginning and then clips from the first three Gamera movies at the very end.  This must have been VHS era instant satisfaction, so kids could get to the monster battles without sitting through any human drama.  I daresay it's the more entertaining edit of the movie.

The Episode

Anybody who attempts a series rewatch in production order will find a hurdle early.  Of course we all know KTMA's improvised style was very sparse compared to what the series would eventually become, but watching five Gamera movies in a row I something I feel is a bit of a slog, even if one did so through the third season versions of these episodes (I've tried this and barely survived).  Doing the same during KTMA is almost unfathomable, but the series clustered these movies one after another making it almost unavoidable.  It's one of the reasons why I chose to do this blog in random order rather than production order, so I can let episodes breath outside of the context of their seasons and be judged on their own merits.  Episodes like the KTMA Gamera vs. Gaos benefit from this, because it has been quite a while since I've seen a Gamera episode, so I'm not sick of the giant turtle.

The riffing in this episode is better than the previous production episode, the original Gamera, by quite a bit.  One gets the sense of knowing they screwed the pooch a tad by letting Joel do an episode by himself, so Josh is in the theater with the Servo puppet and...well, he never shuts up.  There are points where Joel begins a riff and Servo just blurts a line right over him (sometimes they even seem t be making the same joke).  There are some good lines, Josh has Joel laughing hard at several points in the theater, and I was laughing at several points as well.  The hurtful thing is that yes, this is the third Gamera movie in a row and by this point they've become monotonous.  Gamera vs. Gaos is the worst yet (and arguably the worst movie featured on the show at this point) which will bleed through the KTMA style.  I'm not sure if I should take that into consideration of the episode's quality or not.

The highlight of the host segments is Servo gets a voice change.  In a mildly amusing segment Joel tinkers with him and Servo begins talking in the voice Josh would finally adopt for the character.  Taking inspiration for radio DJ's, Josh does a deeper announcer type of voice and dubs himself "Tom Servo," a name that would stick with the bot for the rest of the series.  Josh seems to be a tad too in love with this idea because throughout the episode he ends a lot of his lines with declaration of "I'm Tom Servo!"  Other segments include phone calls (one complains about the Gamera films, and another is a boy inviting Joel and the Bots to his birthday), and a re-establishment that Crow is still frozen (Trace is still unavailable for filming).  We also get the first nod to the Mads outside of the theme song, as Joel identifies them as Dr. Clayton Forrester and Dr. Lawrence Erhardt.  We wouldn't actually see the duo in action until next week.

This is also a bit of an unofficial Christmas special for the series, as it's the last episode of the KTMA run aired before Christmas, Crow is frozen to replicate a Christmas tree, and Joel says "Merry Christmas!" at the end of the episode.  Though other than that it has nothing really to do with the holiday.  I found myself enjoying the episode overall, but I find in retrospect it was more of a segmented enjoyment.  The riffs were fair, but my attention wandered because the movie is a bit rough.  But in the end I might have to say this is a solid episode for this run of the series.

Good