The third movie we’ll riff next season is…
That’s right – MST3K is riffing another Gamera movie!
And not just any Gamera movie: “Gamera vs. Jiger” is by far the most ambitious and outrageous Gamera I’ve ever seen in my long life of movie riffing.
For starters, the setting is not only a tropical island which has its own kaiju god named Jiger – a brownish greyish triceratops that shoots poisonous quills from her face – but also at the 1970 World’s Fair in Suita, Osaka Prefecture, Japan, which is going on at the same time!
So yeah, you’re gonna get some fights on the land, sea, sky, and at the World’s Fair, all featuring the flying turtle taking on Jiger … but then, one of Jiger’s darts causes Gamera to fall asleep and turn gray, after which he ends up submerged in the ocean with his mouth hanging open. Then, two ambitious kids drive a mini-sub into Gamera’s mouth, and fight a baby Jiger that’s living inside Gamera like a virus. And then more things happen, but I kinda lose track at that point.
Anyway, it’s all pretty amazeballs, and to tell you the truth, we never thought we’d be able to get the rights we needed to riff this movie… so I’m thrilled that we’re finally going to have the chance. And you know, I’m also betting this will end up being the “premiere episode” that opens Season 13 and launches the Gizmoplex… hopefully by the end of this year!
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It also marks the return of everyone’s favorite Asiatic Milhouse Van Houten lookalike Kon “Cornjob” Omura. Only this time he’s sporting some unfortunate facial hair.
already Season 13 is starting to feel like classic MST3K
can’t wait!
Anybody got a good turtle meat recipe?
When I was a wee lad, my grandpa and I would trap snapping turtles and my grandma would make them in to turtle soup. It was really neat.
Feels very season three-ish. Like turning back the clock 10 seasons. I sure hope this is one of the ones Joel is in the theatre for. That would be perfect.
Excellent.
I think this was the only one of two that the boys didn’t do back in the day. This should be SO much fun. Thanks, Joel!!
For sure. But really Gamera and MST3K go together like peanut butter and chocolate. Ever since the KTMA days they’ve been inseparable.
There is Gamera Vs Viras AND the oft forgotten Gamera: Super Monster, which is basically a really, really weird clip show of a movie. But it does feature a statuesque woman (sorry, I don’t have her name off the top of my head) that would fit in perfectly power strutting
right beside Grace Jones and Brigitte Nielsen.
My name is Cornjob. And I approve of this message.
Is there a place you can suggest movies to Joel? My vote would be for Roger Corman’s Let’s-Slap-A-Movie-Together-In-Four-Days-Using-Sets-From-A-Previous-Movie classic, THE TERROR.
This is great news! I was hoping for another Gamera movie :) I totally remember this movie from when I was a kid. The whole submarine ride was amazing.
Sorry I didn’t get to it sooner, but here’s the This Day in MSTory data for Gamera vs Jiger.
Gamera vs Jiger (Japanese premiere 3/21/70)
Noriaki Yuasa (1933-6/14/04) director, director of special effects; 302 director; 304 director of special effects; 308 director, director of special effects; 312 director; 316 director
Kon Omura (born 11/1/31) Dad; 312 Officer Kondo
Franz Gruber (born 2/10/30) Dr. Williams
Ryo Hayami (born 11/14/49) Keisuke Sawada
Corinne Orr (born 1/6/36) unspecified English dub roles; 213 unspecified English dub roles
Chico Lourant (3/30/29-7/20/15) African ambassador
Masaichi Nagata (1/21/06-10/24/85) executive producer; 302 producer; 304 producer; 312 executive producer
Shunsuke Kikuchi (11/1/31-4/24/21) composer; 312 composer; 316 composer
Takayama Ryosaku (3/11/17-7/27/82) monster design; 302 monster design; 312 monster design; 316 monster design
Brett Morrison (5/5/12-9/25/78) rerelease director
Corinne Orr is also credited with providing the dub voices for Kenny and Nora in Gamera, but that appears to be for the original Stateside theatrical release rather than the Sandy Frank dub.
Corinne Orr! Trixie from Speed Racer :) I think some of the Speed Racer voices show up in various dubs of Gamera movies and other movies like Prince of Space.
Wikipedia lists this film in the category “Films about abortion.” One doesn’t often see giant-monster movies thus categorized.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films_about_abortion
In the latter, three female super-heroes ( https://aliens.fandom.com/wiki/The_Spacewomen ) and the Kenny du jour revive Gamera, and kilometers of stock footage again set him against Barugon, Gaos, Viras, Guiron, Jiger, AND Zigra.
Great suggestion. What’s driving me nuts on the MST3K pages on Facebook are all the people getting indignant that they’re not doing stuff like FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 3 or HARD TICKET TO HAWAII. First off, there’s not a chance in hell Joel would ever allow movies like that on the show. Gore, extreme violence and nudity are a no-go. And 70s grindhouse? Come on, guys. Seriously? While I’d love for them to do PIECES, it’s never gonna happen. That one’s too extreme even for Rifftrax, which has done slashers like LAST SLUMBER PARTY and TERROR AT TENKILLER.
That’d be a LOT of Jack Nicholson jokes…
I’m sure that he’s on Facebook, Twitter, all the usual suspects. Of course, I’m also sure that he receives hundreds of suggestions per day. :-|
Physical-snail-mailing him an actual DVD or *weirder* a genuine VHS might stand a better chance of getting his attention. Probably only a few dozen people go that far. Per day. :-)
Also good are the sequels: TERROR AT TENKILLER (The Terror goes on a wacky lake vacation) and THE HERO AND THE TERROR (The Terror and Chuck Norris in a fun and heartwarming buddy film)
From IMDB’s “Hard Ticket to Hawaii” entry:
“Two drug enforcement agents are killed on a private Hawaiian island. Donna and Taryn, two operatives for The Agency, accidentally intercept a delivery of diamonds intended for drug lord Seth Romero, who takes exception and tries to get them back. Soon other Agency operatives get involved, and a full-scale fight to the finish ensues, complicated here and there by an escaped snake made deadly by Toxic Waste!”
Sounds pretty much like a spy movie to me. I mean, sure, they’d need to edit out and/or work around the nudity, but they’ve done that before.
It would never happen now, because it’s one of of those old, ’50s-era b/w masterpieces, but I would love to see the new MST3K take a shot at From Hell It Came: on some faux Pacific island, our hero gets a curse put on him by an evil medicine man, and after he gets stabbed to death he comes back as a lumbering (sic), malevolent tree that kills all before it as he seeks his revenge. In a nice touch, the knife that killed him is still sticking out of the tree bark. Best line: as the medicine man is confronted by the late hero’s friend, the simpering femme fatale who set up the murder comes out of the woods and announces “I picked the poison berries for you!” Mary Jo wrote in the ACEG that they were considering From Hell It Came for S7, but it didn’t make the cut. When the Gizmoplex becomes a reality, maybe they could find the time to go retro and riff a chestnut like this.
I caught From Hell It Came one night on TCM. The “monster” was so awful, I had to DVR it to show my wife. I feared that she wouldn’t believe me!
My then-wife and I caught it on a local late-night creature-feature show in Boston in the ’80s. “I picked the poison berries for you” became an oft-repeated line in our household, always said with nose and lips pinched to create the proper vocal effect. In the Golden Turkey awards book, they quote the headline of a contemporary review in some newspaper: “… and To Hell It Can Go!”