MST3K Episode K05: Gamera (Tyrant's Take)
My take:
Once again, we get to watch as Gamera kicks butt and takes names. We also get to witness the inexplicable trend in Japanese monster movies of young children obtaining access to top secret government military installations and science experiments merely by meeting the star monster at some point in the movie. Does anyone care about child endangerment laws at all in these movies? Half the time the parents (or adoptive parents as is the case in this particular film) themselves are even present to watch their kid in continual danger. I don't know about anyone else's Mom, but mine would have been rushing me to the nearest bomb shelter or across the Canadian border if a giant turtle was stomping all over the US of A. There's also the trend of everyone in the movie somehow knowing the kid in question, just for his/her having, again, contact with the monster. I guess, logically, that's how they can just waltz onto military bases with no security clearance. I can see it now....
Guard #1: Who goes there?
Token Japanese Monster Movie Main Character Child (TJMMMCC for short): Oh hi! It's me, Kevin! I've been saved on ten different occasions by ten different giant monsters!
Guard #2: Oh that's right.
TJMMMCC: Just thought I'd pop by to see how the top secret government plan to blow up Mothra's egg sack is going. Speaking of, how's the wife? She have that baby yet?
Guard #1: Oh she's great. Any day now. Yeah, you get in there, scamp. They'll be starting any time now. Oh, and here. Here's some rubber gloves, They should protect you from the ungodly amounts of radiation near that nuclear reactor over there.
The picture resolution for the movie itself is not bad, considering it's black and white which minimizes the multiple recording distortion. The sound also seemed slightly better than K04's, and we could hear every line Joel had fairly clearly. Speaking of, he's a funny man on his own. There was about as much dead space in terms of riffing as in Gamera Vs Barugon, but when you consider that Joel didn't have the bots with him on this ep, it means he was doing 3xs the riffing to compensate. There's an amusing bit involving Crow being frozen and turned into a Christmas tree, which reminded me that I've actually got this very episode somewhere on VHS (but in way worse condition) that I got from a friend in college. The distortion was so bad on mine that I only ever watched it once, so this recording by comparison is far better despite the occasional tracking issues the original tape was evidently having.
Favorite line: "Ah, the ocean. Where all life began....." (this is a running gag throughout the ep).
Rating: 4.5 out 10 (for best stilted Japanese to English translation EVER)