[HorrorScience] Space Amoeba (1970)

Reading time: 4 minutes

Qualification

Gezora, Ganyme, Kamoebas: Kessen! Nankai no Daikaijū

Year

1970

Duration

83 minutes

Director

Ishiro Honda

Distribution

Akira Kubo, Atsuko Takahashi, Yukiko Kobayashi, Kenji Sahara, Yoshio Tsuchiya, Tetsu Nakamura, Sachio Sakai

Script

Ei Ogawa

Ishiro Honda, the man who directed the most classic Godzilla films, temporarily abandoned the saga of the radioactive monster after having made one of his worst films (Godzilla's Revenge). A year later he released this film whose Japanese title is Gezora, Ganyme, Kamoebas: Kessen! Nankai no Daikaijū which was changed to Yog, Monster from Space and Space Amoeba in its different Western versions, this last title being the most popular currently.

The story begins when the Helios 7 rocket (launched to investigate Jupiter) is attacked by a type of blue gaseous space organism, which causes it to return to Earth.

Kudo, a newspaper photographer, sees the remains of the Helios 7 fall into the sea, which makes him abandon his job to investigate the case in depth. Coincidentally, he is hired by a company that wants him to photograph Selgio Island, which is near the area where he believes the Helios 7 crashed, so Kudo accepts the job.

On his trip he will be accompanied by a girl from the company (Ayako), a biologist interested in the fauna and superstitions of the island (Kyouchi Miya) and a mysterious man who wants to study the natives of the island (Makoto Obata).

[HorrorScience] Space Amoeba (1970) — Will the legends of the natives be true?

Selgio Island is populated by natives with beliefs about giant monsters (a classic device in Honda films) and by some Japanese from a company that wants to build a hotel. Some of those Japanese decide to ignore the superstitions of the natives and After seeing a blue light coming from the sea, they are attacked by Gezora, a giant squid-like monster.

The survivor of the attack notifies the protagonists of the existence of the monster, which returns several times to kill him, and in the process destroy a nearby town. Kudo and Dr. Miya decide to dive into the sea to try to find a logical explanation for all this, finding the remains of the Helios 7 shortly before Gezora reappears to try to kill them.

After miraculously escaping, our protagonists see how the giant monster devastates another town. Luckily, on the island there is an abandoned Japanese powder magazine, thanks to which they manage to supply themselves with weapons to try to attack Gezora, causing him serious wounds with fire, which seems to be his weak point.

Meanwhile Obata decides to flee the island, but is attacked by a giant crab that the natives called Ganimes. After facing this new monster, Dr. Miya says he is surprised to see giant-sized creatures typical of the island's fauna without having any type of scientific support, which makes him suspicious of what happened to Helios 7 and what could have caused its return to Earth.

But our protagonists will have little time to think, as another giant turtle-shaped monster (called Kamoebas by the natives) also attacks the island.

While the survivors of the attack barricade themselves in a cave, Kamoebas and Ganimes return to attack the island, in a quite interesting climax, although too similar to what has been seen in other Honda films.

This film is one of those that, despite not having great quality in any of its sections, is entertaining to watch, the story is full of inconsistencies and forced coincidences, the monsters have very ridiculous costumes (although their level of ridiculousness does not reach the monster of The Giant Claw), although some of its scenes are great and the special effects go from being very successful to looking totally artificial within the same scene (as can be seen in Gezora's attacks on the town) when experimenting with different types of effects for the same purpose.

Three curiosities about this film:

Despite being an independent film from the Godzilla saga, the monsters of Space Amoeba They were included in their universe, as proven by some references to them in the Godzilla saga.
On the poster (and the DVD covers) the three monsters appear fighting each other, a situation that never happens in the film.
Gezora, Kamoeba and Ganimes appeared in episode 57 of Keroro Gunso (Sergeant Keroro).