Shout! Factory has acquired the North American license for this series of Japanese monster movies from Kadokawa Pictures (formerly Daiei Motion Picture Company, Ltd.). Shout! Factory will be using Kadokawa's new HD transfers used for their Japanese Blu-ray releases although there are currently no plans for an American Blu-ray release for these movies at this time. For now the DVDs will be released as singles (starting with 1965's "Gamera: the Giant Monster" on May 18th, 2010) with perhaps a box set of all the films at a later date. Unfortunately there are also currently no plans to release the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes that featured most of these movies. This deal does not include the 1990's Gamera trilogy released by ADV years ago or the 2006 movie "Gamera, the Brave" which is currently available from Media Blasters' Tokyo Shock label. The classic Gamera movies (a.k.a. the Showa Era series, 1965 - 1980) have been available on DVD in the USA since roughly 2003; however, these releases have all been bargain basement "public domain" DVDs of the first American versions released directly to American television by American International Pictures back in the 1960's (not the Sandy Frank Productions versions from the 1980's made popular on Mystery Science Theater 3000). Not only did these DVDs use murky 16mm prints that were 4:3 ratio pan & scan (not surprising since most of these movies were sold directly to US TV in the '60s), but the movies were also minorly re-edited in varying ways to try and ensure their public domain status (much like how someone on YouTube edits a video of something that's copyrighted in order to keep it from being removed). Shout! Factory's focus will be on the original Japanese versions in full widescreen presentation with English subtitles. They are exploring their options on which English language versions they may be able to present though focus is more towards the A.I.P. dubs rather than the Sandy Frank dubs. Unfortunately for the first movie they were not able to secure the American theatrical version, "Gammera, the Invincible," since UCLA, the holders of the only known decent 35mm print, made it exceedingly difficult for Shout! Factory to acquire. If they include an English dub for the first movie it will have to be the '80s Sandy Frank dub. Bonus features will include a 12 page booklet, trailers, a photo gallery, and an audio commentary. The second movie, 1966's "Gamera vs. Barugon" is tentatively aimed for July. Clink on the link for further details and an interview with Cliff MacMillan, producer of the upcoming DVDs. Showa Gamera Films Coming to DVD from Shout! Factory SciFi Japan
THIS! i got some of the original on DVD in a set i got from Best Buy a few years back and the quality is so bad they make G1 Wheelie look good so i would be all over these
The first review is in! Here it is! Gamera, The Giant Monster DVD (Shout! Factory, 2010) wtf-film.com
it's sad that these aren't getting a blu-ray release... unrelated topic: have classic media's godzilla released been put on hold?
Yet ANOTHER review! Looks like, from all these reviews, this is shaping up to be quite a nice release! AV Maniacs, DVD Maniacs, DVD News, DVD Reviews, Movies
