Gamera 2 - Attack of (the) Legion

How Shusuke Kaneko went from making the greatest kaiju movies since the invention of latex to the abyss of boredom that are the Death Note films is one of the more disturbing mysteries of my movie watching experience.
Gamera 2 is just wonderful and surprisingly exciting: Evil Plant/Insect Monsters from Outer Space attack. The flying turtle and the Japanese Defense Forces fight them. Who will survive?
And survival actually is uncertain in Kaneko's kaiju. Unlike in older kaiju (let's ignore the Daimajin series as an historical aberration) there is a visible and obvious body count that plays an important part in Kaneko's strategy of taking the story and its social dimensions as realistic and straight as possible. He even goes as far as making the pseudo-scientific babble much more real world scientific than usual. This kaiju is a real Science Fiction film.
And, as always, there are moments that remind me of other movies, especially the great giant ant attack of the Fifties, Them.
The philosophical streak and obsession with real world detail in the script even brings to mind Nigel Kneale, if he had ever made a kaiju.
But no kaiju can be good without strong monster battles. Not surprisingly, Kaneko knows exactly how to film them. Seldom do giant monsters feel as big as here and seldom are their fights so visceral and bloody.

If there is any appearance of respectability to destroy left for me, now is the time to do it: I can see quite an obvious way for a religious interpretation of the movie where Gamera is Jesus (both dying and being resurrected) and Legion (yes, the film uses that bible passage to name it) the devil, slugging it out until the devil is destroyed by the bright light of god filtered through Gamera. Fortunately for atheists like me, one does not have to read Gamera 2 that way.

Darlings of the Day:
"The pod is in flower."
"A flower? What color?"
"I didn't ask. We're going to blow it up."

"We were beaten the moment it flowered."