At last, The Human Instrumentality Podcast’s coverage of the Heisei Gamera trilogy comes to its oh-so-edgy conclusion with 1999’s Gamera III: Revenge of Iris. In this film, director Shusuke Kaneko returns to his horror film roots for one of the darkest kaiju films in existence. This time the titular terrapin (now fully in his grimdark phase) meets his match in the vampiric Iris — the kaiju with a psychic link to Ayana Hirasaka, a troubled teen whose parents he squashed in the first film. If Gamera II was the giant monster New Testament, then Gamera III is the genre’s Book of Revelation, so expect plenty of morbid spectacles, but no happy endings.
While discussing the film, Ian and Joseph gleefully unpack Ayana’s story and the intimate small-town setting that is the ironic focus of the unusually apocalyptic film. Of course, talking about Ayana means discussing the tentacle-filled innuendo that is her kaiju counterpart — then again, the hentai-ness of it all does add something to this already unique film. Listeners who’ve been waiting for a live-action Evangelion take note: this might be as close as we ever get.