I've seen this movie so many times but I think first back in the mid-70s as "Attack of the Monsters" and then more recently on a cheap DVD I have where it's titled "Destroy All Planets". I've not yet seen the Japanese version titled "Gamera vs. Guiron" that I now own on Mill Creek's Blu-Ray set so we shall see if there is much of a difference.

Gamera is a big monster turtle. He started out as a baddie in his early flicks but soon became a protector of children. These 60's and 70's giant monster movies (Gamera and Godzilla included) worked pretty hard to lure children into the theaters as their adult audiences sank. This is noticeable in the Gozilla flicks but is without question what the makers of Gamera movies were after.

This is a terrible movie. The acting is horrid, the plot is simplistic and disjointed, and the effects, even for a 60's movie, aren't very good.

The giant monster costumes are cheap and stiff and the child actors are painful to watch. But defying all odds, this thing is fun.

The monster action is the most enjoyable. It's utterly ridiculous but I ate it up. And for a kids' movie, it's really violent. In one fight between a winged giant (Gyaos) and Guiron (who has a knife blade for a head), the flying beast loses its right leg. Since it can't walk anymore it takes to the air. When it swoops down to attack Guiron, Guiron jumps into the sky and slices off one of its wings. Gyaos then crashes to the ground and rolls around in pain while its severed wing spasms nearby. Then Guiron lumbers over and cuts off its other wing. The carnage continues with Guiron chopping off its head! Then ignoring all sense of remaining sympathy for what must have been traumatized children everywhere, Guiron saws Gyaos's remaining torso into slices!

Later, a couple of alien women feed two boys some donuts laced with knockout drops, shaves one of the boy's head bald, and slowly lowers a spinning Dremel to his freshly shorn dome. She is interrupted before boy blood is shed, but still that had to be scarier than Hell to the wee ones in the theaters back in the day.