Review of Gamera vs. Guiron

This is one of the most unintentionally funny films that I have had the pleasure of watching. Gamera fights a monster that has a big knife for a snout, while two strange little boys cheer for him. The dubbing is atrocious, but supposedly played with a straight face; at one point, about ten seconds of mouth movement is dubbed with, probably, two or three seconds of English dialogue placed somewhere in the middle! Making things even funnier is the voices of the two boys; one of them sounds like a woman, and the other keeps saying the word "groovy" a lot, to hilarious effect. The opening sequence is incomprehensible and could have been, like the rest of the movie, scripted by a 1st grader (some nonsense about galactic space and nebulas, and a "star" being in trouble, whatever that means). The production values make the Godzilla films look like an Akira Kurosawa movie; the scene with the Gaos and Guiron is the best (possible spoiler up ahead, although I don't think anyone cares), with the cheap-looking beam bouncing off of Guiron's scalpel head and cutting off the leg of the Gaos. The knife guy then proceeds to slice the big bird up into little steaks; when he cuts off his head, it magically goes flying through the air! Regarding that scene, it looks really fake, but it is startling considering that it was a big time children's series in Japan when it came out. Add this to "groovy" aliens and a great scene with a meteor, and you have a perfect film for watching when you feel like a good laugh.