DOOM'D Review: Gammera The Invincible (1966)

Gammera the Invincible, where have you been all my life? You all need to see this. And I’ll tell you why:

Gammera starts out with the American military. I was expecting a full-on Japanese Godzilla type movie but there is actually quite a bit of America in this movie. (at least in the version I watched, there are 2 versions of this movie, 1 with American scenes, 1 without) Anyway, there are four Russian airplanes headed towards them in the Arctic Circle, each of them armed with a nuclear bomb. The Americans shoot one of them down in and it promptly detonates the nuke, cracking the ice and unleashing….GAMMERA!

A 200 foot tall walking turtle. That breathes FIRE! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

But wait, there’s more!

So Gam Gam is pretty pissed off. You just don’t wake up someone like that, you know? So he trots along and destroys everything he comes across. He fucks up a cargo ship, he stomps on a few people, lights things on fire, and then he smells something funky over in Tokyo and decides that it needs to be flatter.

Don’t worry, the American and Japanese governments are working together to kill Gammera. They got a plan. They’re gonna slow it down with a freeze ray and then blow it to hell. So that happens and when the bombs detonate, Gammera is tossed over onto his back and he’s fucked harder than Lindsey Lohan over summer break.

Yeah! America has won! Gammera is dead! Hooray!

Oh shit, what’s he doing? His head and legs are retracting into his body. What the ... ? Fire! Fire is shooting out from every hole in his shell, he’s spinning up into the air, HOLY FUCKING FUCK IT CAN FLY!! HAHAHAHAHA!!

Upside down and spinning round and round and round. I'm impressed.

Gammera is a 200 foot tall walking fire breathing FLYING TURTLE! It does NOT get more bad ass than that.

So the world is then predominantly fucked. Gammera starts fucking shit up in Japan...again. He knocks buildings over, being generally pleased with himself. But for some reason or another, there is a boy that is infatuated with him. He is to Gammera what all 13 year old girls are to the Bieber. He might even be telepathically linked to him somehow. But whatever, the kids an idiot.

The government then trys to kill Gammera with fire. But Gammera eats fire so that fails. When this happens there is also a long train filled with fuel headed towards Gammera and he picks it up like it’s a set of nunchucks. God, that was awesome. And that stupid fucking kid was on the train trying to give Gammera a hug (or something). But they save the kid just in time.

NEW PLAN. They are going to lure Gammera to a giant paddock, encapsulate him in a giant sphere, and launch his ass to Mars. (Sounds perfectly reasonable) Since there is very little running time left in the movie, this all happens swiftly and effortlessly and the world is safe from yet another giant monster.

Where the fuck did all these things come from? The ice ray? The giant ship to Mars? Even if the ship had already existed for a surprise trip, how the fuck did they get it retrofitted to encapsulate a 200 foot tall monster?

The answers don’t matter. I shouldn’t even be asking them. You know why? Because Gammera is AWESOME that’s why.

I know I spoiled most of the movie but it’s still a gem to watch. It doesn’t matter that you know what’s going to happen, it’s a giant flying fire breathing TURTLE! You can’t go wrong.

I can’t wait to watch the NUMEROUS sequels that follow.

You can find Gammera the Invincible pretty much everywhere. You can buy the DVD on Amazon, you can find this in pretty much every Sci-Fi 50 Pack in existence, I watched it on a free movie channel that came with my Roku Player, I'm sure you can download it somewhere for free, OR you can just stick around here for awhile and watch it right now:

You won't regret it.