The large-scale and continuous success of Toho Studio’s Godzilla franchise, started in 1954, had the competing Japanese film studios scrambling to create their own kaiju (monster) movie series.
Daiei Studio entered the game in 1965 by introducing the giant flying turtle Gamera with Gamera, the Giant Monster (Daikaiju Gamera).
An American jet fighter shoots down an unidentified aircraft over the Arctic. The aircraft had carried an atomic bomb and that bomb explodes, awakening pre-historic giant turtle Gamera from its million years of slumber.
Just like Godzilla, Gamera feeds on electric and nuclear power and thus heads to Japan, the nearest country offering plenty of that energy.
Gamera is not just any big turtle, though. Gamera has large teeth (actual turtles don’t), Gamera can fly. It can just take off as it is, with the head stretched out from under the armor, it can however also retreat all its extremities inside the armor and go in spinning mode, emitting bright electrical rays from the spots where its four legs are supposed to be. Traveling in that spinning mode, Gamera is ultra-fast and looking like an UFO.
Gamera arrives in Japan and heads for the nearest power plant. The Japanese Self Defense Forces are powerless when encountering the giant monster.
Gamera does what kaiju movie monsters do – laying waste to Tokyo. But not without saving the life of a turtle loving boy in the process.
Though defeated at the end of the movie, Gamera comes off as a rather sympathetic monster, a monster especially children could relate to.
While lagging far behind Toho’s Godzilla in terms of animation prowess, Gamera soon developed its own fan base, largely consisting of middle-school boys. A fan base Daiei was initially not comfortable with but which it soon embraced.
The second entry into the franchise, Gamera vs. Barugon (1966), introduced a second monster battling it out with Gamera, following the Godzilla tradition. No child actors were used in that film but soon after, child characters became central to the franchise. Gamera turned from a threating monster to a savior beloved by children.
Fast forward to the sixth entry into the franchise, Gamera vs. Jiger (Gamera tai Daimaju Jaiga) and we are right here in Osaka, in the final stages of preparations for the 1970 Osaka World Expo.
Gamera vs. Jiger (Japan 1970) ガメラ対大魔獣ジャイガー
Hiroshi Kitayama (Tsutomu Katakuwa) is a bright young middle-school student living in the city. His father is just about to finish his newest invention, a mini-submersible to be put on display at Expo ’70.
A family friend takes Hiroshi on a ride through the Expo grounds, showing him all the various country’s pavilions. At that point, the movie feels like an Expo advertisement, the various pavilions are even labeled with subtitles to make sure the viewer knows exactly which pavilion is which. The Osaka monorail gets a few seconds of screen time as does the Taiyo no To (Tower of the Sun), the symbol of the Expo created by artist Taro Okamoto and still standing proudly on the old Expo grounds in Suita City today.
Switching back to fiction, the Expo organizers feel that they need one more kick for their grand exhibition and that kick should be provided by a newly discovered ancient statue located on a South Pacific Island, Wester Island.
A military style expedition led by Dr. Williams (Franz Gruber) heads for the island. Once they start pulling out the mystic statue, known as the Devil’s Whistle, Gamera shows up and tries to prevent them from doing so.
Dr. Williams’ team shoots guns at Gamera and proceeds to take the statue to Osaka.
The statue, erected by local islanders thousands of years ago, was not just any old statue, though. It served a very specific purpose unknown to modern man. That purpose of the statue is only revealed much later in the movie.
The statue gone and a timely volcanic eruption later, Jiger wakes up from its millions of years of sleep. Jiger is the evil monster of the film and it vaguely looks like a cross between a boar and a crocodile. It can swim, it can fly, it shoots spears and is able to erase swathes of land with its radioactive energy.
After a fierce fight with Gamera, Jiger heads straight for Osaka, closely trailed by Gamera. Jiger destroys much of inner – city Osaka including Tsutenkaku Tower. It does not attack Osaka Castle, though.
Nor does it damage the Expo grounds. Osaka Expo gave Daiei permission to film on the grounds, promoting the exhibition. They prohibited any images of damage to the site however, even in animated form.
Enter Gamera. A giant monster fight takes place in Osaka’s Chuo Ward with Gamera losing. Jiger has a stinger in its tail, serving as its reproductive organ. Penetrating Gamera’s neck, Jiger plants an egg inside Gamera. The parasite egg paralyzes Gamera immediately.
Now, it’s up to the children to save Gamera. Stealing the mini-submersible made by Hiroshi’s father, Hiroshi and his friend Tommy (Kelly Burris), the son of Dr. Williams drive right into the body of Gamera. Their travel through the esophagus and into the lung of Gamera is clearly inspired by the 1966 Richard Fleischer movie Fantastic Voyage.
They do find the Jiger baby that already had developed inside Gamera and kill it via white noise emitted from a walkie-talkie.
Jiger’s biggest weakness had always been white noise. He can’t stand it. That’s why the old islanders erected the Devil’s Whistle statue in the first place – it emitted exactly that noise and thus kept Jiger away.
A large dose of electrical power re-animates Gamera while the Expo officials try to keep Jiger paralyzed beaming white noise at him.
Finally, a re-awakened Gamera flies in for the final fight…
It’s quite a hilarious scene. Gamera flying in over the Soviet pavilion, the pavilion proudly displaying the Soviet symbol of hammer and sickle. The Soviet show of strength met by a Japanese movie monster.
The movie makers certainly didn’t intend to make that a political statement but watching the movie today… it’s a scene that just makes you chuckle.
Table of Contents
Daiei Studio
Daiei, the studio producing the classic Gamera movies, was founded in 1942. It quickly became one of Japan’s major studios, producing films like Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950).
Daiei produced seven Gamera movies before the studio declared bankruptcy in 1971. Subsequently, the studio was acquired by Tokuma Shoten, a large publishing company.
Because the original Daiei had already contracts made out for another Gamera movie, the Tokuma-owned new Daiei produced the movie Gamera: Super Monster in 1980.
Though aiming at telling an original new story, Gamera: Super Monster consists to a large part of footage of older fights Gamera engaged in with other monsters throughout its history, including battles with Jiger in Osaka.
Under the ownership of Tokuma Shoten, Daiei released a few more Gamera films, directed by Shusuke Kaneko.
In 2002, Daiei Studio was acquired by publishing company Kadokawa. The studio is still active under the name Kadokawa Pictures. Kadokawa has also made some efforts to resurrect the Gamera franchise.
The Director: Noriaki Yuasa
Almost all of the classic Gamera films made by Daiei Studio before its bankruptcy in 1971 were directed by Noriaki Yuasa (1933 – 2004).
Yuasa was the son of a stage actor and became a child actor in young age. Upon finishing university, he decided for the production side of films and entered Daiei Studio in 1955 where he became the director of a musical comedy in 1964.
His next movie was set to be a horror movie by the title of Dai gunju Nezura (The Great Rat Pack), said to have been inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963).
All the miniature sets for the film had been built when the health authorities shot down the project: the film was supposed to involve a lot of live rats and the rats delivered were riddled with fleas.
Masaichi Nagata, the president of Daiei solved the problem by telling Yuasa and his crew to use the sets for a monster film instead, reportedly sketching out the first drafts of Gamera by himself. Later on, Nagata claimed that he was the original creator of Gamera.
In any case, Noriaki Yuasa and his team used the opportunity to develop the Gamera monster and to shoot Gamera, the Giant Monster by using those already existing miniature sets. The film was released in 1965.
Daiei was however not happy with Yuasa giving a child actor a major role and by Gamera being very child friendly in general.
Thus, for the production of the second entry into the franchise, Gamera vs. Barugon (1966), Yuasa was demoted to special effects director.
Daiei learned however quickly, that children loved Gamera and that young boys made up the majority of the audience. Yuasa was brought back as director.
Yuasa directed all the further Daiei Gamera films, including Gamera vs. Jiger. He also directed Gamera: Super Monster (1980).
The end of the original Daiei Studio however marked the end of his career as movie director. He later worked in TV.
The Actors
Besides of the two monsters, it’s three children who are the main heroes. Hiroshi Kitayama (Tsutomu Katakuwa), Tommy Williams (Kelly Burris) and Tommy’s little sister Susan (Katherine Murphy). They all seem to have acted only in this film.
Kelly Burris later stated in an interview that he was chosen for the role simply because he was the very rare young foreign boy in Tokyo who could speak fluent Japanese. He considered acting in a movie as very glamorous at first, getting picked up by a limousine early every morning and taken to Daiei Studio in Chofu City on the outskirts of Tokyo. For the duration of the shooting, he didn’t have to attend school. The shooting involving him stretched out to three months, however and he soon got tired of it all. Especially of those very early morning limo rides. He was glad when he finally could go to school again. School stared much later in the morning than those long shooting days at Daiei.
The most remarkable of the adult actors is Franz Gruber, playing Dr. Williams. Gruber was born into a German-American family in New York City in 1930. Upon his graduation from Columbia University in 1949, Gruber moved to Japan to write about Japanese culture for the New York Times.
From the late 1950s / early 1960s on, he became an actor playing foreign characters in a large number of Japanese kaiju (monster) movies. Gruber also appeared briefly in Seijun Suzuki’s classic Branded to Kill (1967). He ended his Japanese movie career by moving back to New York City in the mid-1970s. He later became a college teacher in Brooklyn.
Osaka Locations
The film was partly shot as live action film on location in Osaka, partly as suitmation film in a miniature studio set. Suitmation means that there were actors inside of the giant monster suits. An incredibly tough job as many of the suitmation actors later relayed in interviews.
The live action scenes include real shots of central Osaka and plenty of scenes playing out on the Expo ’70 grounds in Suita City. A large number of international Expo pavilions are depicted as is the Osaka Monorail and the Taiyo no To (Tower of the Sun).
The monster fights taking place in central Osaka were all filmed at Daiei Studio in Chofu City, Tokyo. There, Osaka Castle (unharmed in the movie), Tsutenkaku Tower (destroyed by Jiger) and the buildings of Osaka’s Chuo Ward as they existed at the time, were meticulously reconstructed.
Will Osaka be ready for another monster fight? Osaka Expo 2025 is just around the corner.
