OK, by this point Gamera had been demoted from a terrifying symbol of man's inability to withstand the forces of Nature to "Friend to all children", which is what happens when Godzilla's already taken the "King Of Monster Island" slot and producers are desperate to crank out yet another sequel in the franchise. I'm OK with that, since Gamera was never more than "B" list anyway.
Even the hallucinatory plot,which involves children being kidnapped by a flying saucer, twin alien sisters who eat brains (!) and the young Richard Burton learning the price of loving a monster too well, doesn't annoy me too much. It's obviously for the kiddies, so why not have a "space Gaos" and a monster with a pocketknife for a forehead and Gamera swinging like a gymnast from a pole? What does irritate me about this movie is that the version I saw (I understand there are others) contains the worst English dubbing IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND. I'm serious. Normally,one makes allowances for Japanese "ESL" trained actors trying to emote in a foreign language, but this is ridiculous. Every line sounds as if the dubbing actors are reading the English lines phonetically (like an "Abba" song), with no idea of what they are actually saying. The voice work here made "Time Of The Apes" (previous champion of the "Inappropriate Vocal Emphasis" title) sound like a Pixar film.
I kept trying to focus on the silliness of the proceedings, so I could find a few (if any) of the film's redeeming features. But the dubbing kept making me bleed from the ears, and so I had to blank out huge portions of it, until I noticed the closing music credits, followed by blessed, blessed silence.
I won't watch this one again without audio protection - like a boiler factor in the background, drowning out the voices. Sheesh!
Even the hallucinatory plot,which involves children being kidnapped by a flying saucer, twin alien sisters who eat brains (!) and the young Richard Burton learning the price of loving a monster too well, doesn't annoy me too much. It's obviously for the kiddies, so why not have a "space Gaos" and a monster with a pocketknife for a forehead and Gamera swinging like a gymnast from a pole? What does irritate me about this movie is that the version I saw (I understand there are others) contains the worst English dubbing IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND. I'm serious. Normally,one makes allowances for Japanese "ESL" trained actors trying to emote in a foreign language, but this is ridiculous. Every line sounds as if the dubbing actors are reading the English lines phonetically (like an "Abba" song), with no idea of what they are actually saying. The voice work here made "Time Of The Apes" (previous champion of the "Inappropriate Vocal Emphasis" title) sound like a Pixar film.
I kept trying to focus on the silliness of the proceedings, so I could find a few (if any) of the film's redeeming features. But the dubbing kept making me bleed from the ears, and so I had to blank out huge portions of it, until I noticed the closing music credits, followed by blessed, blessed silence.
I won't watch this one again without audio protection - like a boiler factor in the background, drowning out the voices. Sheesh!