Shusuke Kaneko's GAMERA Trilogy is the high mark of "kaiju eiga", or Japanese monster movies. While lacking even the budget of Toho's rival Godzilla, they compensate with inventive special effects and smart scripts by frequent Mamoru Oshii collaborator Kazunori Ito (Ghost in the Shell, Avalon, Patlabor). In an added twist, the films stand apart from the rest of their genre by subverting various cliches and showing a strong feminist bent--the main characters of all three films are smart, capable women, a trait that is magnified to a surprising degree in the apocalyptic final film. This progressive streak is typical of Kaneko's work, making him one of the most humanist of Japanese mainstream directors.
The first film, GAMERA: GUARDIAN OF THE UNIVERSE, is a fun, knowing throwback to the giant monster movies of the sixties--all bright primary colors, environmental messages and mystical backstories. It's good, silly entertainment, with some impressive anime-inspired visuals during the monster sequences, a memorable score by Ko Otani and plucky, likeable characters. The sequel, GAMERA 2, eschews the light-hearted tone of its predecessor and proves itself to be a well-crafted, occasionally violent action film. Gamera's opponent this time around is an alien insect with a refreshingly well-developed and plausible modus operandi. GAMERA 3 is the real achievement of the trilogy, though: the dark, complex script by Ito (by this point, the films have amassed a quite involved little mythology), the strong female cast, superb special effects (no, really) and Ôtani's excellent score make this probably the best Japanese special effects film ever made. Fans of H.P. Lovecraft should also enjoy Iris itself--after collaborating on the anthology film NECRONOMICON, Kaneko and Ito here conjure up their answer to Cthulhu, complete with it's own cult followers and doomsday prophecies.
After a long year of waiting, Mill Creek has finally completed the trilogy by releasing Gamera 3 on blu-ray--and surprise, surprise, they screwed up, big time. (The trilogy pack consists of a nice slipcover and the two discs--the first disc being the same solid double feature disc released last year. As such, the rest of this review will focus on the new GAMERA 3 disc.)
First, the good: the transfer is excellent. Crisp, sharp and with a beautiful 'pop' in many of the climactic scenes of destruction. Grain is intact and looks nice, and while there is some noise and occasional banding, this is overall the best this film will probably ever look. The audio is likewise excellent, a nice DTS-HD Master Audio mix. As for extras, there are nearly three hours worth, representing the whole trilogy--though almost half of the extras are comprised of fly-on-the-wall on set featurettes for Gamera 2. All of these are ported over from the Japanese laserdisc releases, and while not as substantive as the extras that were on ADV's DVD releases, they are still an interesting look at how the trilogy was made.
Now the bad, and it is very bad indeed: the subtitles are atrocious, and that's putting it mildly. We are talking cheap, Hong Kong bootleg DVD bad. I kid you not--literally every other line is either mis-subtitled or not even subtitled at all. Roughly 35% of the dialogue is missing. Mill Creek had a *whole year* and they pull this crap? Unbelievable. Even the extras are badly subtitled--there is a seven second delay on all of them.
Due to the subtitle fiasco, I wouldn't recommend this release to people who haven't seen the film before, as they won't even be able to follow the plot as so much dialogue is missing. Pick up the double feature on its own, and for GAMERA 3 stick with the original ADV DVD--the picture on it wasn't great, but it was at least watchable AND had excellent English subtitles.
