MONSTER FROM A PREHISTORIC PLANET a/k/a GAPPA (1967)

Thankfully, this was not Roger Corman's third attack on the Russian sci-fi movie, PLANETA BUR'. (If you don't know what that means, go to Google and look up Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet and Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women.) No, this thing was Japanese-made and seemingly of no interest to Corman.

A scientific expedition lands on a South Pacific island, whose natives worship a mysterious god named Gappa. An earthquake opens up an underground cavern, where the scientists find a strange-looking baby reptile. The natives implore them to leave the hatchling where they found it, but instead the scientists bring it to Japan to live in a zoo. It isn't long before Mommy and Daddy Gappa start ripping apart Japan in search of their missing kid.

After a slow first half, the action sequences are non-stop to the point of relentlessness. It's amusing to watch Mommy Gappa knock buildings over as an octopus dangles from her mouth. (Presumably, it's to feed her kid when she finds him.)

The film is every bit as cheesy as you would expect. There's a greedy businessman, a precocious kid (two, in fact), unfunny comic relief, tin-ear dialogue, shitty dubbing, a poorly handled romantic sub-plot, a remarkably well-lit cave, a volcano that looks like a fifth-grader's science project, a submarine sequence that must have been shot in a bathtub, and monsters who were just different enough from Godzilla that Tojo couldn't sue. It was all done before, and the filmmakers knew it. This was simply Nikkatsu Studios' attempt to cash in on Japan's monster-movie craze. Looks like it didn't happen, though, as Nikkatsu never made another monster movie. So if you want to see the Gappa clan, this is your only option.

The “prehistoric planet” of the title is Earth, about two or three million years ago.