Gehara: The Dark and Long Hair Monster

aka Chohatsu Daikaiju Gehara aka Long-Haired Giant Monster: Gehara

2009
Directed by Kiyotaki Taguchi

Gehara is a made for TV short that is the brainchild of cult entertainer Jun Miura, who wrote the screenplay. Special effects guru Shinji Higuchi supervised production on the short film, and it was directed by Kiyotaka Taguchi (who also did the independent kaiju film G.) It aired on Japan’s NHK network in February 24th, 2009. It hit the internet thanks to a Japanese YouTube-like site, and thus TarsTarkas.NET was able to watch it.

Hideo Akihara (Ken Osawa) – Hideo Akihara is a slacker who finds new purpose in life investigating the new monster Gehara. Ken Osawa was in Samurai Fiction Momoko Akihara (Mina Fujii) – Hideo’s sister who doesn’t have much to do, though it looks like she would have a bigger role in the sequel. Tsuruko Akihara (Mitsuko Oka) – Matriarch of the Akihara clan and also doesn’t do much doing to the short nature of the film. Professor Mikami (Shiro Sano) – Professor who explains technical details of the monster attack to Hideo and others. Shiro Sano was also in kaiju films Godzilla 2000, Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, and Godzilla Final Wars) Gehara (???) – Gehara is very hairy. He is not only a giant monster, but a long haired ghost, thus killing two birds with one stone. Evolution may have killed its monster with Head & Shoulders, but here it would only prevent Gehara from getting dandruff!