Gamera was one of the first, and biggest, initiations of Godzilla, back in the 1960's. He was a giant turtle that flew by means unknown with flames coming out of his arm and leg holes. He wrecked havoc all around Japan and fought large monsters bent on harming humanity, children in particular. As the Godzilla franchise was revived in the 1990's, so too was Gamera's onscreen adventures, beginning with Gamera: Guardian of the Universe. The legend of Gamera was reworked to make him a genetic construction of an ancient race, used to fight off another creature, Gyaos, (large flying birds of a sort). In the sequel, he fought Legion and in this final leg of the trilogy, he fights with another creature, Iris.

Iris is an ancient demon that is released from a temple by a dopey girl who seeks revenge on Gamera. The creature feeds off the young girl's hatred of Gamera, who killed her parents while fighting another monster, and grows to the same proportion as Gamera. The plot of the show centered around the revenge theme while Gamera was fighting a new batch of Gyaos monsters. In the end, we learn a number of little tidbits of information about this revised Gamera legend (no spoils here), that explain away many of the complaints about the how and whys of giant monsters (Kaiju).

Okay, I'm a fan of this kind of movie so how could I not like it? It had all the elements of a great giant monster movie-large creatures fighting one another, way better than average special effects, and laughably weak dubbing. The plot was actually better than average too-showing an ecological message that was the basis for the original Godzilla movie. The extras, while not as great as the very best Hollywood packages, were a lot better than what I expected which made this a keeper all the way. In all, I have to suggest this one, for fans of Gamera and similar monsters, as worthy of a Highly Recommended status.

Picture: The picture was presented in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio although I don't believe it was anamorphic, it looked much better than the original shows from the 1960's. Much of the movie used dark scenes and the accuracy of the fleshtones wasn't always perfect, nor was the sharpness of the focus just right in all scenes, but it was solid for the subject matter. I saw some compression artifacts but again, not enough to worry about.

Sound: The sound was presented with a choice of either English or Japanese 5.1 Dolby Digital. The Japanese track had English subtitles that were different than the dub track. Personally, the original Japanese track was better-in terms of dialogue and music as well as the special effects.

Extras: The extras included the third part of the interview with the special effects director, the Japanese press conference, trailers and TV spots, a behind the scenes feature in Japan, some promotional events, outtakes with silly English dubbing, an audio commentary with the English language director and some of the voice actors, and some trailers as well as a paper insert for the dvd case. The commentary was a spoof and at times quite funny although nothing of real merit to learning about the show (they pretended to be Gamera, Iris, and others) but many of the Japanese extras were informative.

Final Thoughts: You get exactly what you'd expect in a rubber suited monster movie and more. There was enough thought put into this one to allow a thinker to run with many of the ideas, enough action to please the kids, and enough special effects to make anyone looking for a roller coaster ride their fun too. I suspect seeing the entire trilogy would help fill in some of the blanks but this was good as a standalone too. Check it out!