What struck me while I was watching Gappa the Triphibian Monsters (AKA Monster From a Prehistoric Planet, but let’s face it, the other title is way better) was how old it felt—and I mean that beyond just being a movie that’s already over fifty years old, and also one whose footage looks worse for wear (being in the public domain often means no one’s gonna be doing any high-quality preservation.) Maybe it’s just because the plot of it reminded me a lot of Mothra and the British monster movie Gorgo, both from earlier in the decade, but I imagine that even in 1967 this must have felt like a bit of a throwback to before kaiju movies were getting increasingly out there. This was the only monster movie made by the studio Nikkatsu, jumping into the Monster Boom while it was still ongoing, which might explain it—a studio only dipping their toes into this format either go all out or stay pretty by the books, and this definitely falls into the latter.
We have a very well-worn plot here that you’ve probably heard before: an expedition of both journalists and scientists paid for by a wealthy magazine publishing magnate (the magazine is called “Playmate”, and it’s not made entirely clear what kind of magazine it is, especially with a title like that) is sent to retrieve rare animals from the south seas to populate a resort the publisher is planning to build in Japan. After encountering some unusual waves on the sea, they come to an island that has a giant statue on one of its beaches and a volcano that is clearly getting ready to erupt, and then meet the local populace, who celebrate their arrival because whenever Japanese visitors show up, the mysterious “Gappa” is pleased. Of course, some members of the crew can’t leave well enough alone and venture into a forbidden cave, discovering the remains of a giant prehistoric animal and an egg that immediately hatches into a human-sized reptilian creature (that ends up growing exponentially.) Despite pleas from the natives, the team takes the baby animal back to Japan, which immediately angers its significantly larger parents, who go looking for it (one of them emerges from the ocean carrying a giant octopus in its mouth, which is a completely extraneous detail I still feel is worth mentioning.) Destruction and military intervention ensues, until someone finally figures the obvious solution to all their problems.
Oh, and the monsters are “triphibian” because they can swim, fly, and walk around on land. Very clever. They also shoot energy beams from their mouths, but I’m not sure that’s worth adding another “phibian” to the title.
All of the Wikipedia articles about Gappa make mention of its similarity to Gorgo, but really, that movie was just a riff on King Kong anyway with one additional element (I.E. A parent monster coming to rescue its child), so both movies aren’t just treading on familiar ground, but straight-up referencing the urtext of the entire giant monster genre. Gappa is actually far more like Kong by heavily involving a fictional Pacific island and its population into the plot, which is also fairly common among sixties kaiju movies, including Mothra. Watching these movies (and the “Fury of the South Sea” episode of Ultra Q) that so heavily use the South Pacific and its people has always made me wonder about the actual historical relationship between them and Japan, and how these mainstream pieces of entertainment represent it. I can’t imagine most of them are considered particularly sensitive, though at least the natives in this movie aren’t violent savages or anything (some of the actors do have make-up that is more or less blackface, especially the little kid who appears throughout the film.) Gappa seems to throw out a lot of ideas about the relationship between these people and modern Japanese society, though none are particularly developed—the resort attempting to recreate a tropical paradise by taking stuff from the actual islands its based on (some of the natives are even offered a chance to go live at the resort), how the natives view the Japanese people as useful, and their refusal to leave even though the volcano is apparently about to blow. Interestingly, although our protagonists think Gappa is the natives’ god, they are corrected on that—these monsters aren’t worshiped, the people there just sort of live with them, which is different from the ways these things usually go. Also important is how the actions of the Japanese explorers ultimately leads to the island being decimated by the Gappas, with one boy as the only one left (he is picked up by an American submarine, so this is one of those Japanese monster movies with some minor American characters thrown in, possibly for international appeal), which nobody in the movie seems to care much about. The audience gets to watch it, though, so the price of imperialism is very evident to us.
Another light theme in this movie is the single-minded pursuit of personal success at all costs, which is shown to be entirely masculine in nature. The three leading male characters—the reporter, the head scientist, and the publisher—are using the baby Gappa for their own personal gain, whether it be to get magazine readers or to advance their research. They butt heads over their different goals, but ultimately they all have no concern with how they’re treating the creature, nor about any of the other consequences of their actions. This is pointed out multiple times by the female lead (and love interest of at least two of them, although she eventually leans towards the reporter), and even the reporter admits to it at one point—and just to make it clearer that this is an issue of adult male arrogance, it’s heavily implied that children have some sort of connection to the baby Gappa, as both the island boy and the publisher’s young daughter sympathize with it (it’s worth noting that this movie has a lot of characters in it.) Gradually, each of the three men have to take responsibility for what they’ve caused (“there’s more to life than ambition” the scientist says, in a dub voice that sounds like a Robert Stack impression), although the publisher has to dragged to that conclusion kicking and screaming.
(Just to be clear, though, as much as this movie is critical of its male characters, it also ends with the leading lady telling everyone that she has decided to quit her job because she’s an “ordinary woman” who should “get married to an office worker” and stay at home with kids, a proclamation that baffles everyone, especially me.)
This is also segues into a family theme as well—the publisher’s daughter is vocal about how she wants to spend more time with her father (and also for him to remarry so she can have a mother), and his jerk behaviour creates a riff between them. Meanwhile, the parent Gappas (I appreciate that they bothered to differentiate the two by giving one a larger head crest) are very clearly more devoted to their child than he is, and watching the tender final scene where the monster family is brought together and teach the baby how to fly brings the publisher and his daughter back together. We can all learn a little from these triphibians, even though they also blew up several harbour front communities and a castle.
Maybe the reason Gappa feels older is because of all these ideas, which feel like old-fashioned values—be considerate of others, family is important, don’t take triphibians that aren’t yours, etc. It seems to really be really laying into the view that kaiju films should be wholesome family entertainment. That mindset fits the plot and filmmaking as well—there’s nothing experimental or complex about Gappa and it does feel like the kind of monster movie that would be made by people who are kinda cashing in on the genre during its peak (stay conventional, don’t do anything too weird.) On the other hand, though, that it has any real moral values or themes at all is kind of surprising given how empty most cash-ins tend to be, and it is overall a competently made monster movie for kids, the kind that would keep their attention on the television on a lazy weekend afternoon.
REVIEW ALL MONSTERS 