This year marks the big 60-year Anniversary of our favorite turtle from Daiei, Gamera! After a mysterious trailer launched earlier this year touting a “Gamera 60th Anniversary Project,” it’s been revealed through an exclusive website just what that all entails, with visitors getting direct news posts and updates pertaining to the milestone. First on the list of confirmed festivities will be 4K UHD releases of three Gamera films – Gamera, The Giant Monster (1965), Gamera vs. Barugon (1966), and Gamera vs. Gyaos (1967). This marks the first three entries in the classic Showa era of Gamera films, which were released from 1965 up until 1980 with Gamera: Super Monster.
Additionally, it has been confirmed that Shin Godzilla Co-director Shinji Higuchi, who just made a big splash at San Diego Comic-Con talking about his own 4K restoration of Shin Godzilla, will oversee these restorations alongside Shunichi Ogura. Higuchi-san was famously the Special Effects Director for the 1990’s Heisei Gamera Trilogy, bringing elevated effects considered some of the best the entire genre has to offer, whilst Ogura-san has served as Timing Technician for the Japanese film industry for over 30 years, with his work on the aforementioned Gamera Trilogy being of note. For those unaware, a Timing Technician is a role that is essentially a key craftsman adjusting the color tone for a film during production. Both have teamed up to tackle this monumental restoration of such classic films in the Kaiju genre, each giving their expertise and craft, as well as being veterans of the Gamera franchise themselves, to this massive undertaking.
Statement from Shinji Higuchi
“This film was made the year I was born, so it’s about 60 years old. Ideally, someone involved in the production should have supervised it, but as far as I could see, there was no one there. That’s a shame.
And now, with the help of Shunichi Ogura, a legendary timing man for our generation, and Yoshiaki Abe, a colorist at Imagica who is at the forefront of digital grading, I, the unworthy Higuchi, have humbly accepted this important role as a representative of fans.
Uncovering the texture of the monsters’ skin, which had been buried in the darkness and hidden by the grain, and unearthing the atmosphere of the scene that was recorded on the low-sensitivity negative film of the time, was a wonderful and satisfying task, as it felt like reliving the great achievements of my predecessors who created wonderful works through repeated trial and error.
It is particularly shocking to see the large number of double-roll composite shots, which were made by rewinding the original negative and exposing it twice without using an optical printer, as revealed by the timing data. I am deeply impressed by the efforts of my predecessors, who were making monster movies at a time when blue screen compositing was no longer an option.
Please watch with great interest as you witness the birth of Gamera as you have never seen it before.”
Statement from Shunichi Ogura
“When I heard about this project, I was delighted because I never imagined I’d be involved in the 4K restoration of “Showa Gamera,” a film I saw in the theater as a child. I was also involved in the “Heisei Gamera Trilogy” at the right time. What you saw in the theater was a print film (positive). This 4K restoration was done from the negative. Naturally, it will look different from the way it looked in the theater because it wasn’t printed through a positive. Negatives contain a wealth of information, such as the details in the bright and dark areas that couldn’t be expressed in a positive. I restored it in a way that preserves that information, while also striving to recreate the texture that was seen when I first saw it. Please look forward to it.”
The first three Gamera films, Gamera, The Giant Monster (1965), Gamera vs. Barugon (1966), and Gamera vs. Gyaos (1967), will be released on physical media in Japan starting Friday, November 21st, as well as have a television broadcast premiere on BS12, a nationwide free-to-air channel. The full plans for the broadcast schedule, including special documentaries and appearances, are available on Kadokawa’s Gamera 60th anniversary website.
Check out the video announcement below, and stay tuned for more amazing news on all things Gamera 60th Anniversary project!
