17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Frankenstein Monsters: Sanda Vs. Gaira, June 12, 2006
This review is from: The War of the Gargantuas (DVD)
As a youngster, this film disturbed me. When the evil green gargantua Gaira grabs the woman from the airport office buidling and proceeds to chomp her down then spit out her clothes, it's the thing nightmares are made of. In the USA, the title was changed from "Frankenstein Monsters: Sanda Vs. Gaira" to "The War Of The Gargantuas". It was originally released in Japan in 1966 and for us Yanks, 1970. The Japanese version is a sequel to an earlier film titled "Frankenstein Vs. Baragon" (US title: "Frankenstein Conquers The World"). The dubbed US version of "Gargantua" erases all connection to the earlier film and in both versions, American actor Russ Tamblyn puts in a rather lethargic performance. The US version has extra snippets of violence not used in the Japanese version. This includes Gaira spitting out the airport worker's clothing. In the US version, you actually see her shredded dress hit the ground. This sequel is an improvement over the first but why would use the name "Frankenstein" for these movies? Silly. I have read some of the reviews in here and some people are not recalling certain scenes correctly. The rotten singer who pukes out a horrible song titled "The Words Get Stuck In My Throat" is not on a cruise ship but rather atop a building performing in a penthouse restaurant. When she is finished making a fool of herself with this awful tune, Gaira sneaks up from behind and grabs her but does not get the chance to chew her up. The moment someone turns the lights on, he drops her back onto the stage and runs as he is sensitive to light. Gaira is the aquatic offshoot of Sanda, the brown and good gargantua. It seems that Sanda, after supposedly dying in the first film actually survived. The theory is that sometime between the two films, he may have scraped a bit of his flesh on a rock near or in a body of fresh water. That piece of skin could have found it's way to the ocean and gave birth to Gaira. When the military finally corners Gaira and do their best to electrocute him to death (deservedly), Sanda sees this from his mountain lair and comes running to Gaira's rescue. Gaira's humongous appetite for human flesh and blood is unknown to the people-friendly Sanda. However, things change when he sees chewed up clothing laying in front of a napping Gaira. Sanda is infuriated and slams Mr. Greenie with a tree and so begins "the war of the gargantuas". This film is actually one of the better releases from the Toho company.
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
FranKongZilla, March 30, 2006
This review is from: The War of the Gargantuas (DVD)
I can hear the voiceover for the trailer of this DVD release: "From the director that brought you the original 1954 GODZILLA, 1962's KING KONG VERSUS GODZILLA, and 1968's DESTROY ALL MONSTERS comes...FURANKENSHUTAIN!
Franken - what!?
Sadly, Director Ishiro Honda died in 1993 so we won't be able to ask him how (or if) he ever got rights to use the Frankenstein franchise name for a series of two movies that don't really look or feel anything like the Frankenstein that we over here in the US know and love. Ultimately, the two movies in the US were titled "Frankenstein Conquers the World" (1965) and "War of the Gargantuas" (1966), but in Japan it had that kooky Furankenshutain name...roughly translated to Frankenstein.
The only resemblance to Frankenstein is that the Gargantuas are indeed fuh-uh-uhg-ly, but they look much more like the King Kong that Honda created for the 1962 battle against Godzilla and later in 1967 for King Kong Escapes.
I remember vividly from my last viewing of War of the Gargantuas in my pre-teen years that this is a shocking G-rated film. There was a good Gargantua (the brown one) and a bad one (the green one and the fugliest of them all). And they were Godzilla-sized...not Frankenstein-sized. The green Gargantua bloodily, bone-crunchingly munches on people whole and spits out their bloody clothes. I'd like to see THAT try to get a G-rating today.
In the movie everyone thinks that there's only one murderous Gargantua. Then the brown one shows up at the scene of a crime and tries to stop the green one. The green one wants blood and refuses to live and let live, and the two Gargantuas fiercely battle through the rest of the movie.
Devo must have been a fan of this flick, because they did a remake of a featured song in War of the Gargantuas called "The Words Get Stuck in My Throat." At least I think that Devo's version was a tribute to the movie? Too bad a Gargantua didn't eat Devo back in the 70s.
Anyway, I'm sure that my subconscious, pre-teen mind is telling me that this flick is better (and more shocking) than it really was. But I'm glad to see that it's finally being released.
Worth a look.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Nice Toho flick, December 12, 2005
A Kid's Review
I enjoyed this film a lot. It's about two decendents of Frankenstein (named Sanda and Gaira) who fight each other...to the death! Reccomended.
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