Well, I already reviewed the other two films, I might as well round out the trilogy. Gamera 2: Advent of Legion, just like the first one, was a huge success. So after swimming in all of the cash he made like Scrooge Mcduck, Shusuke Kaneko was offered to make a third movie. Getting straight to work, he set out to try and finish the storyline he had been crafting for three years. After all the hype, fans finally got to see the conclusion to some of the greatest monster movies ever made, and people loved it.

Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris is nothing short of a masterpiece in giant monster cinema. It easily has some of the best action, story, and music I have ever had the pleasure of witnessing. Gamera’s ever changing design has so many spikes and edges just holding the movie case gives you paper cuts. While personally I still prefer his look in the previous film, it’s still hard to deny the sheer intimidation this depiction entails. However, it’s not the best looking monster in the film, instead, that honor goes to the seismic snapper’s adversary of the film, Iris. Iris just might be the best designed monster I’ve ever seen on screen. If eight year old me thought the Gyaos in the first film looked terrifying, I can only imagine what nightmares I would have had if I saw this as a kid. Its head has no facial features to speak of, always making you wonder what it’s planning at any given moment. Its body looks like it’s covered in human muscles, letting it tread the line between human and alien. 

I could gush about Iris’s design all day, but there are other things in this movie I want to talk about. The human characters in this film finally aren’t either bad, or boring. I would even go as far as to say they’re good, I still can’t remember any of their names, but that is better than most giant monster movies. The story is a nice spin on the typical creature feature, with a few twists and turns sprinkled throughout. The only flaw I can give to the movie is the fact that it is the last in the nineties Gamera series, leaving the saga on a cliffhanger. 

This movie is a masterpiece in monster movie cinema. I believe that anyone reading this should go out and not only watch this film, but every other in this trilogy. They should be talked about in the same conversations as King Kong and Godzilla, as titans of the genre. It has to say something that the only flaw in this movie is that they didn’t make any more. It is for this reason, I give this film five rocket powered snapping turtles out of five.