Episode 302: Gamera
First aired: Comedy Central on 8 June 1991
Availability: iTunes, Amazon (Volume 21 Standard Edition/Deluxe Edition), Shout Factory (Volume 21 Collector's Edition), Best Brains (Volume 21 Collector's Edition)
"You seem tense. Let me break the ice." |
I saw this one a while back when MST3K was on the air. I seem to remember enjoying it, but I don't remember much about it.
Last year, when I decided to watch all of the MST3K episodes, I actually started with the season that aired on KTMA. And they did this movie. Remember Episode K05: Gamera? Sure you do. It was one of five straight Gamera films that Drs. Forrester and Erhardt sent up to Joel as part of the experiment.
As it turns out, nine of the 21 movies riffed in Season Zero were redone for Comedy Central. This is the first of those.
Oh, and of the nine, five were Gamera movies. Again, this is the first.
Dr. Forrester san coat and ponytail |
In the KTMA season, Joel did this movie by himself. This time, he brought reinforcements. It helped. That's not a slam on Joel; he did the solo effort on KTMA well, and the riffing in this episode is handled by three times the crew, isn't three times as good. Better, though.
As before, the thing that was the worst about this and other Gamera episodes are the Gamera movies. I don't care for the Giant Silly Japanese Monster movies, unless there's a hot Japanese she-villain. Doesn't make it better, just more tolerable.
Not a hot Japanese she-villain. She's one of the good guys. |
The giant prehistoric turtle is grumpy when he wakes up, so he decides to tear the hell out of Japan. Gamera kills everybody he can find, except a little Japanese boy named Kenny, who wears short-shorts.
The rest of the movie is the Japanese military trying to kill Gamera, and Gamera breathing fire on Japan and flying around -- and I do mean around; he rotates like a UFO with flames coming out of the leg holes in his shell.
The military and scientists finally figure out how to lure him to a rocket, which shoots him to Mars. The End.
A few things I did enjoy about the movie:
Some of the characters looked like other famous people.
The American general looks like Joe DeRita and sounds like Buddy Hackett. | Colonel Sanders helps defeat Gamera |
Servo sings to Tibby | Gamera (Michael J. Nelson) visits |
Joel lost his temper with Crow a couple of times.
Joel rips off Crow's arm. | Twice! |
A good effort. The full crew riffing made this better than the KTMA version.
Oh, and we'll see Gamera again. Just not five episodes in a row.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please choose a Profile in "Comment as" or sign your name to Anonymous comments. Comment policy