Gamera – Ultimate Collection Volume 1 & 2: Blu-ray Review
Your favorite giant turtle returns to Earth leaving no fire-spitting scene behind. Beautifully captured to their lavish original cuts, viewers can experience four-times the thrills of this legend sci-fi classic like they have never seen before!
This was quite the treat to check out so I decided to dedicate a whole weekend to Gamera and his battles. It was awesome to see these classic monster movies again but this time on Blu-ray. The films themselves were revolutionary for their time and even to this day are very entertaining. Seeing the way they did their early practical effects was actually amazing to see and just the way they could create the illusion that Gamera was this gigantic monster turtle. Some people may watch these films and think they are cheesy but if you think about it, they really are an essentially part of cinematic history and if you go into it with that mindset then you’ll be able to enjoy these films a whole lot more. Between these two blu-rays you get a total of 8 films that give you a hell of a lot of monster movie goodness and that will give you an awesome Gamera fix for a while. The films in Volume 1 include Gamera: The Giant Monster (’65), Gamera Vs. Barugon (’66), Gamera Vs. Gyaos (’67), Gamera Vs. Viras (’68) and Volume 2 includes Gamera Vs. Guiron (’69), Gamera Vs. Jiger (’70), Gamera Vs. Zigra (’71) and lastly Gamera: Super Monster (’80). The one odd (and entertaining) thing about the films were that as you watch them you’ll notice that they tend to get weirder and weirder as the years go by. By the time I watched “Gamera: Super Monster” I wasn’t even sure what I was watching anymore but I will say that even the cheesiness of it still kept me watching (and laughing). The videotransfer of these releases are pretty damn good considering the age of the films. There is a bit of grain still present as well as some strange scanlines that show up here and there but other than that I’m pretty impressed. If you are a fan of Daikaiju (Japanese for Giant Monster) then this is an excellent set of movies to have especially if you’re looking forward to the new Godzilla film and is definitely a great addition to anyone’s collection.
