This is the sort of film that evokes violent feelings. Once the parents have found their kidnapped baby, and there's a lot of hugging and kissing and sickening sentimentality, you long to see the family of reptilian birds doused with thousands of gallons of napalm, which is then ignited.As the creatures are consumed, we hear their screams of terror -- and then the silence that signifies death. When the fire ends, nothing is left but a pile of blackened bones -- not even Buffalo wings.An Important Scientist arrives and announces an expedition to the island these creatures came from. "It is obvious they serve no purpose, and all must be destroyed!"A loader truck arrives and shoves the remains into the bay. The humans quickly forget the creatures and any "lessons" about familial love they might have learned.

Daikyoju Gappa introduces us to another of those Japanese monsters who delight in wrecking the urban areas of Japan. A great country apparently to be in the construction business.He's not the most fearsome of monsters. Imagine Godzilla with wings and a chicken head and you have Gappa. Scientists from Japan on another expedition to a south sea island come back with the recently hatched Gappa as the natives call him. They also don't take it away from them, but the scientists know better.Quite frankly the monster looks so ridiculous I can't imagine it scaring anybody above the age of 4. Still these Japanese monster films do have a goofy enjoyment factor in them no matter how bad they are.And they made tons of money back in the day.

Nikkatsu Studio was one of the six largest movie studio in Japan at the time this movie was made, but due to the proliferation of TV sets, Japanese movie industry was in a steady economic decline. Kaijyu or giant monster movies were about the only franchise that were still making good money, and Nikkatsu made an attempt to jump in to this genre with this movie.A Japanese expedition to the south pacific island unwittingly stumble onto a newly hatched baby triphibian reptile which the natives call "Gappa", and brings it back to Japan. A greedy publishing magnate, and an amusement park promoter notices a good thing when he sees one and decides to display the baby at his park. This didn't sit well with the parents of the baby reptile, and they show up in Japan to claim their kid. Rest is stereotypical giant monster mayhem.This movie as far as I know is the only movie that features a complete family of giant monsters or "Kaijyu" ever to be shown together. It's also a first Triphibian monster that can walk, breathe underwater, and fly. The story is bit derivative where I can see little pieces off of Gorgo, Mothra, Godzilla, King Kong etc. and not very original, but the special effects in this movie is surprisingly good for a studio's first attempt. Gappa is not just an mindless monster, but actually seems to have intelligence behind their actions. This lowers the tension of the monster's character as an engine of destruction, and the movie carries on with bit of a bore, but the overall production is good, and ranks as an average giant monster movie. You get to see a very young Yoko Yamamoto playing the star in this movie. She's still acting after nearly 50 years since this movie was made, and amazingly, still beautiful in her roles.

Okay, first of all, the "Prehistoric planet" of the English title is Earth. "Monster from a Prehistoric Planet" is, in fact, yet another Tokyo rampage style big monster film with lots of buildings being crushed, planes shooting rockets, and hysterical Japanese people running around aimlessly for hours on end. It's also, in my humble opinion, not only a lot of fun but good in it's own way, despite the fact that it definitely fits the MST3K style interest.Really, the movie is about familial piety in traditional Japanese society. The nervous explorers take the child Gappa away from the pious traditional family, and as a result they send Tokyo into flames. Their boss, who is shown refusing his daughter the opportunity to have a mother, never learns his mistake because he's blinded by greed. The woman explorer sums up the movie by stating, "I should be like other women and stay at home." Yes, it's sexist, ridiculous, and absolutely bizarre. But considering it holds on to those values while glorying in the imagery of men in rubber suits crushing models of cities, it seems more like the camp of this movie is a result of it coming from a perspective that has changed in society, both East and West. At any rate, it's not really that much worse than Godzilla.On the other hand, yes, mostly the reason why I like this movie is because I couldn't stop laughing during its entire play-length. Some of the most absurd situations are shown in this movie, one of the most bizarre being the, "This sound is hurtful to HUMAN ears..." dialog. A little girl running around a corner saying, "Wow, it's really big!" A comedic relief foolish person who constantly trips over everything. A "cannibal" parade on what is so obviously a sound-stage. The fact that the heroes decide that when rockets don't work, they should try again, this time with, you guessed it, rockets. It's all very laughable, but charming in its b-movie way.At any rate, I enjoy it.--PolarisDiB