WORST WE CAN FIND - Christmas Advent Calendar - Day 1: Gamera Vs. Zigra

As some of you know, Applause Books released my book, The Worst We Can Find: MST3K, RiffTrax, and the History of Heckling at the Movies, earlier this year. The book covers the history of riffing movies since the early days of Cinema, the development of MST3K, and the current state of riffing.

In telling that story in the book, it left me with a lot of thoughts about the movies being riffed that didn’t make its way into the book.

Thus, with the holiday season upon us, I thought it would be a perfect chance to tells some additional details about these movies and the shows wrapped around them in the form of a Christmas Advent calendar, with one movie covered each day up through Christmas Day.

The main thing is that I hope you’ll enjoy these in the spirit of the season.  Oh, and don’t forget that The Worst We Can Find is available in bookstores and online in both physical form and e-book.  Check it out if you can, and have a great holiday, no matter how you celebrate!

GAMERA VS. ZIGRA (1971)

Program: Mystery Science Theater 3000

Air-Date: January 1, 1989

Plot: Gamera gets to sit out most of this movie. Come to think of it, he usually does in most of his movies. What a racket! Instead, most of the film is about Zigra, who is a spaceship/giant monster/alien that comes to conquer Earth. He first attacks a moonbase, triplicating a moon-buggy and capturing a women onboard who becomes his rather ineffectual minion on Earth. With the help of Zigra, she captures two men and their annoying toddlers to helps persuade the world of the powers of Zigra. The little pixies outsmart Zigra, however, even as rapidly clothes-changing woman chases them endlessly around Sea World and elsewhere; not the best look for a world-conqueror.

Oh, and then there Gamera. He loses an early battle to Zigra, who transform from a ship into Kaiju form (because … yeah) to fight the giant turtle. Thus, Gamera spends most of the movie sitting under the dock of the bay, watching Zigra destroy away. In true deus ex machina form, Gamera finally pops up again near the end of the film after being struck by lightning for another big fight with Zigra and wins, destroying Zigra in the process. Then everyone goes home and has a Coke, but in a safe ecological way.

  

Gamera Vs. Zigra - The Movie Poster and the MST3K DVD artwork.

Thoughts:  Say what you will about the Gamera movies, and it’s obvious the series started as a second-rate Godzilla series, but at least the tone in the early films was adult in nature. Sure, we had the turtle-obsessed Kenny in the first movie, but he’s a secondary character namely there to get in the way, unlike the ten-year-old, short-pants sages that we remember from most of these movies. Yet, after the kid-free Gamera vs. Barugon (1966), the series rapidly became not so much geared towards children, but rather childish, with Boy Scouts running amok in Gamera vs. Viras and the boys from Gamera vs. Guiron lucking into saving the world. By 1971 and Gamera vs. Zigra, you can see the films have become mostly travelogues and the age-group for the movie’s protagonists has rolled back even further. The one child that would be Kenny’s age spends much of her screen-time mopping around; perhaps wondering how her film career has led to this no doubt; while two unsupervised four-year-olds outsmart everyone. It's no wonder that Bridget and Mike would eventually turn up in a sketch during the third season Comedy Central showing of the movie to parody the weird relationship Gamera appears to have with these brats (“Gamera is my boyfriend,” Bridget as the little girl flying on Gamera out in space is badly overdubbed in saying). The advancing focus on kids happily in danger really does come off as irritating and creepy.

 

Joel and the bots may have had their own thoughts on the guts of Gamera, but so did Japanese advertising for the movie, as seen above.

Daiei, the studio that makes the very best, was staring at bankruptcy by 1971 and Gamera as a series was at a dead-end (Gamera would return in later films, first in a weird mish-mash of old clips and new superhero escapades in Gamera: Super Monster (1980), and then a trio of movies in the late 1990s, before another update in 2006).  Director Noriaki Yuasa, who had directed all the previous Gamera movies did this one as well, and it is nice to see a new Kaiju suit in the form of Zigra that is more effective than the one in the previous film with Jiger. Still, it’s all a bit silly when the monsters do fight (xylophone beating, anyone?) and then dangerously dull throughout the rest of the film. But if you love Sea World, congrats! – you’ll get to see a lot of that in the movie.  Really, really a lot.  Otherwise, the lack of characters, sets, and effects (due to a lack of money) work against the film. There’s a good reason in the KTMA showing of the film that Joel and the bots spend a lot of time complaining about how boring the movie is, even just ten minutes into it, and you'll see every moment of that in the KTMA version.

One does have to give them points for trying to discuss the ecology, which was a big subject at the time in the 1970s, and a major focus of the same-year’s Godzilla movie, Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster (also featured on MST3K … and hidden out there in the ether). That movie had more threatening consequences to the issues facing Mankind, with pollution causing the creation of Hedorah, the Smog Monster, while the Gamera movie simply talks about the subject in a very ham-fisted way, but at least the attempt is there (and fortunately, no mention of traffic accidents). Credit also must go to the brief scene with the restauranter and the Sea World employee arguing over who should receive a shipment of fish, patrons of the restaurant or the fish and mammals, allowing us to ask who should be giving food under dire circumstances (yes, it’s abandoned as quickly as it is brought up, but at least you can momentarily see the writer thinking beyond setting up monster duels in the script).

Theater ad from The Honolulu Advertiser, September 23, 1971.

The film was released to theaters in Japan, and contrary to what is listed on Wikipedia, the movie did see a brief release in Honolulu during 1971 (albeit as part of the normal exchange of Japanese movies that played in many Hawaiian theaters).  The movie was shown as a double-feature in both Japan and Hawaii with The Three-Eyed Birdman (also known as Suzunosuke Akado: The Birdman with Three Eyes). That movie is not as weird as it sounds, being one in a series of “traveling swordman” movies (and the seventh in a series), with our hero facing colorful villains each film, and in this case one who wears a headpiece made to look like a bird. Saying all this, with the limited release in Hawaii, America at large really did not get a look at Gamera vs. Zigra until 1987 when it first appeared on the USA Network (right before an episode of Night Flight).  

Favorite Riff: (group of concerned men looking at a dead dolphin on a table) “Meanwhile, over at the dolphin buffet ….”

Crow is about to ask for an oil can in the early moments of KTMA Episode Seven.

The Riffing: Of course, the movie was re-riffed by MST3K in Season Three of the CC version of the program (“I knowwwwww.”).  That’s a solid episode with some good riffs, but I picked the KTMA version that is out there in places YOU can TUBE as my Day One treat in the Advent Calendar for a couple of reasons.

First, it’s always good to start off the treats hidden within a calendar with something interesting and a surprise, but not necessarily the best thing to be found within. Save that for the end of the calendar and instead build up to that point. More importantly, this episode is a great way to see how the show was quickly evolving during its first year and it is set during the holiday season, as it aired as part of the New Year’s celebration on KTMA at Midnight January 1, 1989.

Before this episode, which was the seventh episode shown on KTMA, the show was still finding its legs when it came to the riffing and with the characters seen in-between segments of the movie, especially that of Servo and Crow. Trace Beaulieu as Crow and Josh Weinstein as Servo both came into the series doing voices for their respective characters that were cute at first, but hard on the throat and repetitive in their manner, making them difficult for the improvisational riffing in the theater used at the time and a barrier in timing for comedy during the sketches in-between.

The change in Servo was handled in the previous episode featuring Gamera Vs. Gaos, with a sketch showing Joel finetuning Servo’s voice into a new “Mighty Voice” during one of the segments. It was there that Weinstein added “Tom” to the character’s name, sensing that “Tom Servo” was a good name for a radio announcer, which he felt the new voice was similar. Crow, on the other hand, took a wider curve in development thanks to Trace needing a break from the series.

Keep in mind for KTMA that the guys were getting paid the equivalent of “gas money” for their efforts, besides things being much looser than in subsequent seasons, thus if there was another gig to take, you took it and no one would bat an eye (such an attitude would change swiftly once the series moved to The Comedy Channel the following year). This explains Servo disappearing midway through episode eighteen, The Million Eyes of Sumuru, to bake brownies for the Pinewood Derby, as Weinstein had to leave early, while Joel is left out in space in his BVD for the duration of episode seventeen (Time of the Apes) as Hodgson needed to go to L.A. to film a part in a pilot with Louie Anderson. The same held true for Trace, and as his needing to be gone coincided with the week before and of Christmas, MST3K produced a storyline in episode five (Gamera) where Crow is cryogenically frozen so he can be turned into a Christmas tree for the holiday season. When Trace returns for Gamera vs. Zigra, Crow was then thawed out and with that emergence from the deep freeze, his personality appears to have been altered, becoming more of the wisecracking slightly clueless robot more commonly associated with the show.

Elsewhere, this episode is also the first with Trace and Josh as Dr. Forrester and Dr. Erhardt appearing within the program and interacting with Joel and the bots, allowing us to get some insight into what is going on, although it is never quite clear as to why seen in later seasons. As this fleshing out of characters within the show occurs, the riffing also begins to tighten more from the original concept of a program featuring Joel and the bots occasionally commenting on the movies in both serious and humorous fashion into much more to the continuous riffing off the movie. This will  advance through the following episodes, with episode 14 (Mighty Jack) establishing a full watch of each movie and the construction of gags ahead of time before filming the episodes to make for a funnier program.

Gamera vs. Zigra from the KTMA era shows the pieces starting to fall into place. Add in the Christmas theme and the countdown into the new year (with Crow’s resolution being to get his own apartment) and it may not be the best Gamera movie done by the guys or even the best episode of the KTMA seasons, but it is clear that Best Brains were on their way to greatness.