Tonight I attended the first session of a film festival called Godzilla and Friends. There were trailers for various Japanese monster films, door prizes, trivia about the movies, but the feature this evening was the newest Gamera film, from 2006.
Gamera the Brave was dubbed into English, and I must say the effects are better than the old days. It explored the origins of how Gamera, or, I should say, a Gamera, comes to be. Turns out there can be more than one!
A young boy living in a town devestated, but now revived, after the last monster battle 33 years ago, finds a small egg resting on a large red stone, or shell. It hatches a small turtle, and you can probably guess the rest, it grows, starts to fly, battles a really evil monster that shows up, and much, much more!
Has anyone else seen this film? It wouldn’t have got wide play in the US.
Tomorrow we see the classic King Kong vs. Godzilla, a new documentary on the history of Godzilla, with the filmakers to talk about it, a feature from 1964 called Atragon, more movie trailers, a Q&A seesion, plus something billed as a Godzilla surprise. That has to be special, probably a film.
It’s going to be a campy day. And I’ll love every cheesy minute. Tonight I won, in the free raffle, a 5 DVD set of ten campy old sci-fi films from the 50’s, and as a bonus each has one episode of the serial Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe.