Gappa the Triphibian Monster (1967)
Production: Nikkatsu Corporation
Director: Haruyasu Noguchi
Released by: Media Blasters
By Scikaiju

Introduction

Growing up I always looked forward to Saturday and not just for the cartoons. Like a lot of areas we had a Saturday matinee movie TV show which showed various movies, kung fu, sci-fi, horror and of course the giant monster movies. With the usual Godzilla and Gamera flicks they would LAO show movies with lesser known monsters, like Gappa.

The Story

We start out with a ship at sea. A magazine publisher has sent them out to find strange and exotic animals for a new tropical themed amusement park he is developing. After dismissing a team member's claim of seeing a monster in the sea a volcanic eruption on a nearby island and the spotting of a stone idol make them changecourse. They then find out the island is inhabited and that the head scientist has been there before. The Chieften proclaims that his return has made Gappa happy and caused the the ground to stop shaking. During the celebration two of the reporting crew sneak off with a local boy in search of the stone idol.

After locating the idol, another earthquake reveals a cave behind the it. Inside they find a prehistoric lake and what they believe to be a million years old egg. The ground shakes again and the egg hatches. Over the protest of the cheiften they take the newborn back to Japan with them. While the publisher is trying to figure out what exactly a Gappa is two creatures enter the cave by the lake. They see the remains of the egg and then proceec to bust out of it. Although the islanders try to flee the boy seems to be the only survivor and is picked up by an American submarine.

Back in Japan the publisher plans to sneak the baby past customs and makes the other promise they won't tell anybody about their find. He has a new magazine issue out in a month and he wants to scoop everybody else. While the scientist examines the baby a couple of mysterious sighting makes a the reporters think they made a mistake. It isn't long before the adult Gappas make land and start searching for their baby. The military attacks and eventually the Gappas take refuge in a nearby lake. After much discussion they are able to drive them out of the lake but they fly off.

One of the reporters realized that giving the baby back will stop all of this, a claim backed by the island boy. Slowly she is able to convince the others and they make plans to reunite the Gappas. Airlifting the baby to a nearby air strip, they use a recording of it's crys to attract the adults. The family is reunited and after a quick flying lesson, fly off into the sunset.

Review

Released in 1967 by Nikkatau corporation to cash in on TOHO's Godzilla success,Gappa is an interesting take on the monster movie genre. It's one of the few movies in which the monster has a reason to trash Tokyo as it searches for its missing child.

The movie itself is pretty well done. I like how human they made the Gappas, particularly when they are reunited at the end. You really start to feel for them at that point. The monster themselves are relatively peaceful, at one point jumping over larger objects in their way. Only when they perceive that they are under attack is when the major property damage starts. In fact you can tell when they get angry when their eyes change from white to red. Of course when under attack they can breath blue fire (gee, I wonder where they got that from).

The monsters themselves are well designed, like giant reptiles with a beak and wings made of scales instead of feathers. These creatures can fly, even though the wings don't flap, and survive under water. You can also tell the difference between the male and female Gappa. The male is taller with a high bone crest on top of his head while the female crest if shorter. The baby Gappa's crest is just a bump to show it's age. A nice touch in my opinion.

The special effects were good for it's time and there were a couple of interesting ideas. In the beginning of the movie there is a scene were one of the crew is fishing and a pair of giant eyes start glowing under water. I'm assuming this means the monster woke up, like in the old Gamera movies were the eyes light up and the monster is awake. Now you can tell that there are different sizes of underwater light bulbs and they don't all come on at once, but it was a good effort and it gets the point across. The miniature work is decent enough and are about on par with TOHO's efforts at the time. There is also a scene where the Gappas are forced out of the lake and flood a nearby town. There is this far away shot of people running with the water super imposed over it that worked very nicely.

The human character are about what you expect. The scientist wants to use the baby for scientific research, while the publisher wants the baby to become rich. There's also the male reporter who want to become famous, the female camera reporter who eventually wants to let the baby go and a sound guy who appears to be the comedy relief. The writers try to give the human element as much screen time as the monster. I also like how they created a little tension between the scientist and publisher on what to do with the baby, which of course gets amped up when Mom and Dad show up. The "native " islanders are just extras painted to be a darker complexion. A common practice back then for many movie studios. Some how they squeezed a loose love story between the reporter and camera operator and of course there are the required little kids, the native island boy and the publisher's daughter. The girl is has a minimal amount of screen time and the boy knows more about Gappa than the adults but is ignored.

Now there are some strange scientific leaps that I attribute to the dubbed tape I have. At least I hope they're just in the dub. Like when they just accepted the egg stayed in suspended animation until the cave opened up. I Don't't care how good the scientist's explanation was. I also found it strange when the military is trying to fish out the adult Gappas out of the lake and say they tried everything from bombs to poison liquid?!? Anybody else get the feeling that some of the town's folk didn't die from drowning? Again I hope that's just from the dub.

Conclusion

If you are a fan of the old school kaiju flicks then you'll enjoy this one. The overall plot is decent and the monster action is pretty good. This is one of my favorites because it's not one of your typical monster movies.

Now if I can have a little fun, for those of you who look for the moral of the story, I can give you two. First, don't take a baby monster if it doesn't belong to you, you never know when Mom and Dad are going to show up. Second,if some monster is in your town and you want to keep damage to a minimal, don't tick 'em off!

Scikaiju