I suppose with the new Godzilla movie doing so well in the theaters, we are seeing re-issues of old Japanese Monster Movies…or Kaiju for you nerds. Several Godzilla titles have just been released on Blu-ray and I heard a re-issue of Destroy All Monsters is hitting stores as well.
So I came across this Gamera DVD collection. I was intrigued
that it had the entire movie series (11 films) with the exception of Gamera the Brave. Most of the titles I
already owned on VHS or DVD. Of course these were all the American dubbed and
chopped up versions, basically the versions that were shown regularly on TV in
the 80s.
Initially I figured this collection was the same run of the
mill versions. To my delight, these were all the original Japanese versions
with subtitles. In this original format the movies flow so much better. With
that being said, a highlight of this Legacy collection is the uncut version of
Gamera vs. Guiron. The infamous scene of Guiron chopping Gyaos to pieces is included!
RetrOmedia and Alpha Video released some of the earlier
films with a terrible transfer. Also they all were under their American
titles…(Destroy All Planets, War of the
Monsters, Return of the Giant Monsters, etc.). Luckily the Legacy
collection is unrelated to these previous versions. These movies on the Legacy
Collection do not look re-mastered, but they do look pretty damn good.
Especially the premier movie of the series, Gamera:
The Giant Monster. The black & white images look great. My old VHS version
released in 1987 by King Features Entertainment is terrible. So the $7.99 I
spent on this set was worth it for that movie alone.
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