Gamera: The Guardian of the Universe

'How do you explain a life form which flies, spinning like a flying saucer?' Obviously, it's a 10,000-year-old, manmade giant turtle, Gamera, originally the final desperate creation of the people of Atlantis before that civilisation was destroyed by its prior invention, Gyaos, 'the shadow of evil'. Gyaos would be those giant, fanged birds currently storming Tokyo, then, which grow more powerful as they feed on people. But how do you explain why the Japanese political establishment now want to protect Gyaos and shoot down the resurrected turtle? More to the point, why do these beasts all look and sound like plastic toys stomping around a miniature balsa-wood set? The product of an earlier age, Shusuke Kaneko's film relies on special effects and a script that are clearly the products of human beings, rather than computers. And while it's hardly original, the cheap, zippy comicbook sensibility leaves the film cheerfully free of bombast.