Gamera turned 50 years young this month! To celebrate, I had to review his debut flick Gamera, or Giant Monster Gamera, or Gammera the Invincible, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Gamera.  It’s the movie so nice MST3k riffed it twice!

Gamera’s first feature is the only one to cast him as the villain, the only one in black and white, and the only one that doesn’t have the Gamster taking on an opposing monster.  It’s the poster child for early installment weirdness, even more so than the straight-laced Gamera vs. Barugon.  Even though O.G. Gamera is a city-smashing, crowd-roasting terror, that somehow doesn’t stop him from being crowned “The Friend of Children” which means this movie is populated with some seriously fucked-up human characters.  It’s great!

We’ll talk about all that, plus how this movie started out as a failed attempt at a rat-attack horror movie.  Load up on freeze bombs, eat some fire, sign off on Plan Z, and get ready to slam-era with Gamera!

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