Gamera: Super Monster (1980) d. Yuasa, Noriaki (Japan)
The original Showa series ground to a halt with this cheapjack revival of the heroic flying flamethrower on the half-shell, one in which 95% of the monster action comes courtesy of footage swiped from the previous seven features. By the late ’70s, Gamera’s home studio of Daiei was bankruptcy bound; in a last ditch effort to keep home fires burning, screenwriter Nisan Takahashi conjured a rickety story that focuses on a trio of Space Women (Mach Fumiake, Yaeko Kojima, Yoko Komatsu) charged with saving the Earth from an ill-mannered band of marauding aliens looking to set up camp - heavy on the camp.
