Gamera Vs. Barugon 2010 Horror Movie Review

Gamera vs. Barugon was the sequel to Gamera. This entry, plus Gamera, & Gamera vs. Gaos are considered to be the big 3 of the series. In this film, Gamera escapes from his imprisonment in Outer Space & flies back to Japan, destroys a dam and goes into seclusion. Meanwhile a group of 3 men go to an island to find a missing opal in a get rich quick scheme. To make the long story short, the “opal” turns out to be the egg of which Barugon is born. He grows into monstrous proportions & begins to level Japan. Barugon is a pretty unique creature (as were most in the Gamera Showa series) - a quadruped with a long tongue which freezes things, a rainbow ray from his back and a bad case of overbite. Barugon & Gamera battle each other to the death more than once in this monsterfest. What happens next - watch it and see!

What makes this movie superior to later releases is that this movie has pretty good character development, betrayal & lessons in morality. Obviously get rich quick schemes do not work :)

At this point in the Gamera series, Gamera wasn’t really a good guy sort to speak. The fighting with Barugon to me is more of a fight for dominance, just who is the Alpha monster. Gamera wouldn’t become ‘good’ or the friend of children until later in the series.

This movie like most of the Gamera series had 2 distinct English language versions. One is the AIP dubbing, & while the other is what I call the Sandy Frank dubbing which was released on VHS from Celebrity Kids Video. This dubbing contained the water credits & wound up on MST3K TWICE.

The episodes are KTMA Episode K04 + Episode # 304.

As for this DVD release, I am led to believe that this will contain only the Japanese language version which is great to see & hear it how it was intended. Personally Id love to see an English dubbed version which then I would unload the Alpha DVD of this movie(under the title War of the Monsters)

I expect this DVD to have a lot of great supplements including a commentary by August Ragone (who is the Executive Producer for the entire Shout Factory Gamera releases)

I also anticipate a fantastic widescreen transfer as well.

Thanks again to Shout Factory who has really taken a huge step with the Gamera releases, the Roger Corman releases and the MST3K releases.