Gamera Super Monster1980

09/100 Behold, the movie that begins with introducing our villain, a ripoff Star Destroyer, by putting the storyboard on screen while the bored narration I've come to associate with movies of this level plays and ends with three grown women kidnapping a young boy. And this was what Daiei deemed the movie sent forth to revive the Gamera franchise. Unluckily for me, this movie manages to retain this level of quality throughout. The plot is the same old alien invasion story, here just rehashed without adding anything new for me to enjoy. The effects are nothing but a showcase of just how much debt Daiei was in at the time, but thankfully we don't get to see the effects they could currently afford for long for reasons I'll get into later. The characters are also bad. The kid here is better than last time, but now he's got delusions he can sing. As if my ears needed more torture. The "spacewomen" on either side are also stupid, and half their screentime is just them transforming, barely dodging a laser and then deciding "Nah, let's just go back to doing nothing." The evil spacewoman isn't that kid of stupid, but she's the entirely different kind, where she keeps suggesting doing the same thing over and over again and expects different results. As for the monsters, I can't even enjoy them because the reason we don't see much of the 80s is because instead, all the monsters are stock footage, even Gamera. The fight scenes are still there, and for some of them, the pacing is improved from removing the kids reacting, but I just can't enjoy it because it reminds me I could be watching a film where these battles are used well in the narrative and built up to. There are things to like about this film. The scene where the spacewomen fight each other was pretty alright, probably because it was the one new fight scene. The scene where one of the spacewomen breaks character because the boy's singing is so bad and the camera zooms in on her face is pretty funny. But 90% of this film's runtime is spent on either being annoying, being tedious or stock footage. Absolutely terrible, doesn't deserve a Matt Frank poster. No wonder Gamera killed himself at the end. Watch literally any other Gamera movie.