GAMERA 3: REVENGE OF IRIS (1999)

GAMERA 3: REVENGE OF IRIS (1999)

Tagline: I Will Not Forgive Gamera

(Kaiju, Everything is on fire, Sci-fi) [PG-13]

Note – No rating was given to this movie. I decided on a PG-13 because we get both human and kaiju blood as well as some profanity. Yes, that is actually the tagline. 

Every creature, however unappealing, fights to the last to survive. Humanity as well.

In this one, a schoolgirl Ayana (played by Ai Maeda who is still acting to this day) is egged on to avoid bullying from her classmates into fetching a large egg in a cave. Apparently, the cave houses demons. We don’t really get a demon, but we do get a kaiju that is named Iris (after Ayana's cat) and that damn thing kills everything it sees. It literally sucks the life out of them. Ayana wants the monster she had now bonded with to kill Gamera. It turns out when Gamera arrived in town in GAMERA GUARDIAN OF THE UNIVERSE he failed to guard her parents who were killed in a collapsed building damaged by Gamera. This sets up a revenge plot that could cause the end of humanity. On top of all that Gyaos has returned to wreak havoc once again, so Gamera has to deal with that crap too. 

The Good – Iris’s suit is out of control epic looking and the production team pulled out all the stops to give it crazy tentacles and wings and all kinds of stuff. Iris however doesn’t have a mouth, so that was a bit of an odd choice. Iris also looks more like a robot warrior than any of the kaiju in this series. We get some really good performances and models that are wonderfully detailed. The fights are decent and there is just a ton of destruction which is always something you expect in a kaiju movie. The storyline for the most part is weird but makes sense. 

The Rough – This movie doesn’t have some of the cool camera angles we got in director Shûsuke Kaneko's first Gamera effort. We also get some weird cult-like spiritual stuff thrown in which even for this movie feels out of place and unnecessary. I never mind spiritual stuff being in kaiju flicks, it’s pretty much par for the course, but one character, in particular, is so out of place and creepy that it distracts from what is going on every time he talks. There are also some editing issues in this movie. About halfway through the Japanese defense force is planning to take out Gamera and in one scene an official is shown leaning over a map and looking in one direction. He stays completely still staring at nothing, in particular, the entire shot while everyone around him is doing something. It’s pretty brief, but it just looks wonky as hell. 

What isn’t wonky is the great design work and pure effort put into this movie. I didn’t like it as much as either of the first 2 installments in this incarnation, but it’s definitely a 5 out of 7 for me. As cool as Iris looks it doesn’t fix the film's overly complex plotline (what I gave you was the nutshell without all the extra filling) and endless scientific babble that ends up taking up too much of the script. This ended up being the final installment in a trilogy, but it actually ends with a cliffhanger, so for me, it’s a bit disappointing that we didn’t get to see what happens next after the last two films were wrapped up with a nice little bow.

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF DAIEI STUDIOS AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. 

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