King Kong Escapes (1967)

King Kong Escapes was a Japanese US co-production between Rankin-Bass and Japan’s Toho studio. Made in 1967 it was directed by Ishirô Honda but was inspired as much by The King Kong Show animated TV series of the time (which I've never seen) as by Japanese monster movies or the original King Kong movie.

At the North Pole the mad scientist Dr Who (Eisei Amamoto) has built a giant robot ape. He needs the robot ape to dig deposits of Element X out of a cavern. Dr Who is in the employ of an unnamed country which it’s reasonable to assume is meant to be China (Red China hysteria was huge in 1967).

He is taking his orders from the beautiful but deadly superspy Madame X (Mie Hama).

Meanwhile a super-advanced United Nations submarine skippered by Commander Carl Nelson (Rhodes Reason) has to take refuge in an inlet in a tiny island. The island is of course the island on which the legendary King Kong was supposed to live and by one of those amazing coincidences which abound in this movie Commander Nelson (a character clearly heavily based on Admiral Nelson in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea) and his executive officer Lieutenant Commander Jiro Nomura (Akira Takarada) are totally obsessed by the subject of King Kong. They believe he really existed. They’re Kong experts.

Nelson and Nomura, accompanied by the ship’s nurse Lieutenant Susan Watson (Linda Miller), land on the island. They discover that Kong not only was real, he’s still around. The island is also swarming with dinosaurs.

Given that we know that Kong has an eye for a pretty girl we’re not surprised that he takes a shine to Susan. I can’t say that I blame him. She’s cute and blonde and adorable. But of course Kong has lousy luck with women. Whenever he thinks he’s found Miss Right something always goes wrong.

Kong has more urgent things to worry about. Dr Who’s robot ape has broken down so he decides to kidnap Kong. A real giant ape should even more useful than a robot one. Kong will be easy to control. He’ll be hypnotised. What could go wrong?

So far the action has taken place on Kong’s island and at the North Pole so the good people of Tokyo are probably breathing a sigh of relief that at least their city is not going to get stomped this time. But they’re wrong!

Doctor Who is perhaps not the brightest of mad scientists. His schemes always seem to contain some fatal flaws. He loses control of Kong. He thinks he can threaten Commander Nelson into helping him regain control of the recalcitrant ape. The key of course is Susan. Cute blondes can persuade giant apes to do anything.

Meanwhile Madame X seems to be cooking up schemes of her own.

There’s no point in complaining that this movie is very silly. It’s fairly obvious that it’s supposed to be silly. We’re not supposed to take it the least bit seriously.

The special effects are not very convincing but they’re fun and fun matters more than realism. The submarine miniature is cool. And there’s a flying sub. It’s not as cool as the one in the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea TV series and it’s more of a miniature hovercraft sub but it’s kinda cool as well.

We get a reasonable amount of mayhem with both Kong and the robot ape slugging it out, not just for dominance but for possession of the luscious Susan.

Mie Hama has huge amounts of fun as the sexy but evil lady spy Madame X. Linda Miller is just bursting with cuteness as Susan, Kong’s love interest. The two male heroes are perfectly adequate.

Eisei Amamoto as Dr Who manages to seem evil, crazy and incompetent all at the same time and his performance is most enjoyable.

King Kong Escapes is lightweight good-natured goofy fun and if you’re content with that then it’s definitely recommended.

King Kong Escapes looks lovely on Blu-Ray. The disc is barebones.

Genocide (1968)

In the late 1960s Japan’s Shochiku studio made a short-lived and rather tentative attempt to break into the booming market for science fiction, horror and monster movies. Four of these movies are included in Criterion’s Eclipse Series 37 DVD boxed set When Horror Came to Shochiku. While it’s a cool name for a boxed set it’s a tad misleading since these movies are certainly not typical late 60s horror films. They all combine horror and science fiction in weird and wonderful ways.

Genocide begins with a swarm of insects causing an American B-52 bomber to crash into the sea near Kojima Island, just off the coast of Japan. The three crew members survive and reach the island. The B-52 was carrying a H-bomb.

The crash was witnessed by Joji (Yûsuke Kawazu), a young Japanese guy who collects insects for a scientist. At least his gorgeous young wife Yukari (Emi Shindô) thinks he’s collecting insects. Actually he’s canoodling with a blonde named Annabelle (Kathy Horan).

The Americans really want to find their H-bomb. They do find the three crew members but two are dead and the third, Charly, has lost his memory (we later find out he’s lost his mind as well).

Joji is now under suspicion of murder. Yukari knows about the blonde and she’s not happy about it but she still loves Joji. She appeals to Dr Nagumo (Keisuke Sonoi) for help. Nagumo is the scientist for whom Joji collects bugs. Nagumo is keen to help.

So far it all makes sense, doesn’t it? Well it won’t make sense for long. Dr Nagumo is already disturbed by reports from around the globe of strange insect behaviour.

Dr Nagumo is more worried after he’s visited the cave in which the American airmen took shelter. He’s also worried about Charly’s condition. Charly has been seriously spooked by something. He is now terrified of bugs.

The bugs are definitely behaving oddly but there are humans on the island who are up to mysterious and possibly wicked things as well. At this stage we have no idea what they might be up to or which of the people on the island might be involved.

There are quite a few people acting strangely. There’s the creepy guy at the hotel. Maybe he just wants to get into Yukari’s pants but maybe he has another agenda as well. We know that Joji has been covering up his torrid love affair with Annabelle. He could be covering up other things. Dr Nagumo seems like a nice guy but we can’t discount the possibility he might turn out to be a mad scientist. We’re a bit suspicious of Annabelle. And the Americans get rather evasive when they’re asked about that H-bomb.

Up to this point the movie’s craziness level is in low gear but it will soon be kicked into overdrive. The motivations of the various characters are totally nuts. The nature of the mysterious happenings on the island turns out to be bizarre.

And then we get a full-blown psychedelic freak-out sequence.

The acting isn’t very good but it’s appropriate to the demented subject matter and I rather enjoyed Kathy Horan doing the dangerous blonde thing as Annabelle.

The special effects (and especially the miniatures work) are definitely iffy. That doesn’t matter in such an insane movie. It just adds to the fun. And some of the effects with the insects do work.

The plot is gloriously silly but you have to admire its boldness. Who says movies have to make sense?

Genocide is a wild crazy ride. The pacing is excellent. The craziness doesn’t let up. Thankfully there’s no comic relief. There’s an anti-war message but it doesn’t become tedious. There’s delightfully off-the-wall pseudo-science. It combines horror, science fiction and spy film elements. Genocide is just pure enjoyment. Highly recommended if you love insane psychotronic movies.

The DVD transfer is very good. So far I’ve watched three of the movies in the boxed set. The X from Outer Space (1967) and The Living Skeleton (1968) are both goofy fun while Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell (1968) is delightfully deranged.

Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell (1968)

Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell (Kyuketsuki Gokemidoro), released in 1968, is one of a handful of movies that marked a short-lived and tentative attempt by Japan’s Shochiku studio to tap into the burgeoning science fiction/horror/monster movies market. 

Four of these movies are included in Criterion’s Eclipse Series 37 DVD boxed set When Horror Came to Shochiku.

Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell has very definite claims to being both science fiction and horror. It features both flying saucers and vampires.

It opens with a commercial airliner in trouble. There’s been a bomb threat. There’s a crazed gunman aboard. The sky has turned blood-red. Birds are committing suicide by deliberately flying into the airplane. They’re being shadowed by a UFO. And all this before the opening titles!

The plane crashes in a remote desolate area. There are quite a few survivors but how long they can hold out without any food or water is an open question. There’s also still the problem that there may be one or more murderous crazies among the survivors.

Not surprisingly the survivors do not cope very well.

Then the airliner’s pretty stewardess sees something so weird and terrifying that she can’t even describe it. We, the audience, saw it too and we can understand why she freaked out.

The passengers and crew are being stalked by someone (or something) but while they know they’re up against something sinister they have no idea what it is.

You won’t be surprised to hear that it’s not long before one of the passengers meets an unpleasant end. There’s more terror to come. While they really do face a deadly threat their own fears make things much worse.

The basic plot holds few surprises. What makes this movie interesting is that the survivors are such a weird bunch of people and the interactions between them get a bit bizarre. There’s an obsessed space biologist who is convinced that aliens really exist. There’s a psychiatrist and he’s really enjoying himself - he’s fascinated by the spectacle of people being unable to cope with stress and turning on each other and destroying each other. He’s a rather disturbing guy.

And then there’s a very creepy trio. There’s Mr Mano, a corrupt politician, and there’s crooked defence contractor Mr Tokuyasu and his wife Noriko. Tokuyasu is trying to bribe Mano into awarding his company a huge defence contract. He’s prepared to do anything to get that contract, including offering Noriko’s sexual favours to Mano. Mr Mano makes enthusiastic use of this offer, right there on the plane.

There’s also the pilot. There’s the stewardess, Miss Asakura. And finally there’s a pretty blonde American woman whose husband has just been killed in Vietnam.

Some of the visual effects are a bit crude but some are genuinely striking and creepy, with a definite late 60s psychedelic vibe. Some of the makeup effects work, some don’t. The blood-red sky really does look sinister and unsettling.

This is very much a late 60s movie, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. The bad part is some clumsy political messaging. The attempt to link the Vietnam War with the alien invasion theme is a bit cringe-inducing. The stuff about political corruption is exaggerated to the point of parody.

I did mention vampires, and there are vampires. Of a sort. I suspect the vampire angle may have been included in the hope of making the movie easier to sell in international markets.

There are a couple of moments that are vaguely similar in tone to American sci-fi and horror movies of that era such as Night of the Living Dead (although Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell is much more interesting and imaginative). This is also a movie that at times plays out with a nightmare feel except that it’s real.

Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell manages to be genuinely weird, off-kilter and at times creepy. Recommended.

The 16:9 enhanced DVD transfer is excellent. The film was shot in colour and colour is used very effectively throughout.

The X from Outer Space (1967)

Criterion’s Eclipse Series 37 DVD boxed set When Horror Came to Shochiku includes four movies made by Shochiku studio in 1967-68 as part of the studio’s short-lived attempt to jump on the science fiction/horror/monster movie bandwagon. The X from Outer Space (1967), directed by Kazui Nihonmatsu, is very definitely a science fiction monster movie.

It begins with plans to send a nuclear-powered manned spacecraft (nicknamed the Astro-Boat) to Mars. Previous missions have ended in disaster. The crew of four naturally includes a beautiful blonde girl scientist, Lisa.

The voyage runs into the usual hazards, such as meteor storms. They make a stopover on the Moon, which leads to romantic complications. Lisa is in love with the spaceship’s commander, Captain Sano, but she has a rival on the Moon. A cute astronaut girl named Michiko.

After leaving the Moon the spaceship runs into real trouble - a UFO. The astronauts find weird stuff on the exterior of their ship. They bring the stuff inside and discover a kind of egg-shaped object. They decide to bring it back to Earth. 

You won't be surprised to learn that this turns out to be a really bad move on their part.

The egg contains a monster and pretty soon he’s a really big monster. He’s 200 feet tall. He’s not very friendly. He wants to stomp things. He wants to stomp cities. Being a monster he has his heart set on stomping Tokyo. After that he’ll see what else there is in Japan to stomp. The monster is given the name Guilali.

He is of course unstoppable. And of course he feeds on nuclear energy.

Tanks and fighter jets don’t bother him in the least.

The only hope is to come up with a scientific answer. Lisa may have the solution - a hitherto undiscovered substance which may destroy Guilali’s power. But it will have to be brought back from the Moon.

It’s now a race against time. Can the astronauts bring the anti-Guilali substance back to Earth before Tokyo gets stomped?

There’s nothing very original here. It’s your basic Japanese monster movie. The studio was clearly aiming at a young audience and the movie contains just about everything that kids were going to love.

The special effects and the miniatures work might be cheap and cheesy but they’re fun and cool. The monster is goofy but he’s fun and cool as well. OK, he does look a bit like a dinosaur with a chicken’s head but he does look like a monster. Disappointingly he doesn’t breathe fire but you can’t have everything.

The best thing about this movie is that there’s no message. The monster isn’t anyone’s fault. This is just a lighthearted monster movie romp.

Once the monster begins his rampage the movie’s pacing accelerates. Which is a good thing. We’re not given time to notice any technical flaws or to notice the cheapness of the effects. It’s just action scene after action scene.

The acting is fine by monster movie standards. There are likeable heroes. Lisa and Michiko are smart, brave and adorable. The elderly generals and politicians are suitably grave and portentous.

There is the romantic sub-plot alluded to earlier and and given that this is really a kids’ movie it’s kept at an innocent and rather sweet level.

As since it is obviously aimed at kids there’s no point in being hyper-critical about plot holes or any failures in logic, or any lack of scientific plausibility.

The X from Outer Space is silly and goofy but I think it’s fair to say that it was intended to be nothing more than lighthearted fun, and I think it succeeds on the intended level.

The transfer is lovely. Both the Japanese (with English subtitles) and English-dubbed audio options are provided. The only extra is brief liner notes (which take the movie much too seriously).

Atragon (1963)

Atragon is a 1963 Japanese science fiction movie directed by Ishirô Honda. Ishirô Honda is of course best known as the man who first brought Godzilla to the screen. He also directed the wonderful 1957 sci-fi epic The Mysterians. Atragon includes just about everything that I personally could hope for in a sci-fi movie.

An engineer is kidnapped and the witnesses, including a glamour photographer, tell the police a strange story of a man emerging from the sea. The police start to get really worried when other engineers start disappearing. The police inspector in charge of the case is even more worried when he encounters a strange guy who claims to be an agent of the Mu Empire. This guy really does disappear into the sea.

As everybody knows (or at least everybody in the movie knows) the Mu Empire vanished beneath the ocean 10,000 years ago.

The agent of the Mu Empire, Agent 23, is interested in a man named Kusumi (Ken Uehara). Kusumi had been a Vice-Admiral in the Imperial Navy. His protégé Captain Jinguji (Jun Tazaki) had been a genius designer who had designed an incredibly advanced submarine, the A400. It came too late to affect the outcome of the war and the last of the A400 boats, the A403, was lost with all hands (including Captain Jinguji) in the final days of the war.

Agent 23 is convinced that Captain Jinguji is still alive, and that he is working on a new submarine, the Atragon, which will be a mortal threat to the Mu Empire. The world’s most advanced submarine, the American Red Satan (!), has just been destroyed by the Mu Empire but the Atragon would be a much more formidable threat. The Empress Mu intends to extend the Mu Empire’s dominion over the whole planet.

The news that Captain Jinguji might be still alive is a shock to his daughter Makoto (Yôko Fujiyama). She was three years old when the war ended and has been raised by ex-Admiral Kusumi.

Captain Jinguji is alive and he has built a new super submarine. The problem is that Captain Jinguji is quite mad. He has not accepted that the war is over. He has established a secret base on an island from which he intends to re-establish the Japanese Empire.

There is of course a very obvious and conscious parallel being drawn between Captain Jinguji’s crazy plans and the equally crazy plans of the Empress Mu. In both cases it’s an attempt to revive the glories of the past. Admiral Kusumi on the other hand represents the new world and the new Japan. He has come to terms with the end of the Japanese Empire. He is a man of peace, although he also accepts that the Mu Empire will have to be destroyed.

So there’s lots of stuff about Japan trying to find its place in a new world, trying to move forward to a peaceful future, but with some elements in society still looking to the past. There’s a conflict between Japan’s official pacifism and the need to counter a real threat.

You tend to expect political subtexts in Japanese movies of the 60s and 70s. At least in this case it’s a more complex and subtle political subtext than usual.

The political aspects are also intertwined with some emotional conflicts. Admiral Kusumi and Captain Jinguji have tried to deal with the shock of Japan’s defeat in different ways and for Jinguji there’s the difficulty of trying to re-establish a relationship with a daughter who finds his actions and attitudes incomprehensible. There’s some surprising nuance in this movie.

This movie has super-submarines. It has secret agents. It has secret island military bases. It has monsters (yes, it has monsters). It has a threat to Civilisation As We Know It. It has a beautiful but evil queen. Best of all it’s a lost world/lost civilisation story, a genre of which I’m extremely fond. This movie ticks all my boxes. And it has not just a super-villain but an ambiguous villain-hero as well.

Of course you know there’s going to be a climactic battle between the Mu Empire and the forces of Earth, but in the meantime there’s the kidnapping of Makoto by agents of the Mu Empire to provide further suspense and excitement, and to provide the necessary Woman In Peril angle. It always helps if the woman in peril is young and pretty and Makoto qualifies on both counts.

The miniatures work is very impressive. The special effects are excellent. There are some cool sets.

The acting is also generally extremely good.

The Cheezy Movies DVD release only offers the English dubbed version but it’s in the correct aspect ratio (the film was shot in Tohoscope) and the anamorphic transfer is very good. There have been other DVD releases but this one seems to be the easiest to get hold of at present.

Atragon offers all the ingredients that made Toho’s science fiction and monster movies so much fun and adds some thematic subtlety. This is just a terrific movie and it’s highly recommended.

This is another great movie I discovered through Michael's Moviepalace.

King Kong vs Godzilla (1962)

King Kong vs Godzilla dates from 1962 and by this time the idea had taken root that one giant monster was not enough. Godzilla was a huge box-office drawcard but pitting him against other equally formidable monsters was obviously going to be the way to make sure audiences kept buying tickets. Having Godzilla battling King Kong must have seemed like a surefire winner. Toho Studio managed to secure the rights to use King Kong and King Kong vs Godzilla was the result.

Mysterious weather events in the Arctic are causing enough concern for the UN to send their latest submarine to investigate. They run into big trouble and then they see Godzilla emerging from inside a huge ice floe (in one of the movie’s most effective scenes).

It is a well-known scientific fact that dinosaurs, like salmon, always return to their birthplace and since Godzilla-like fossils have been discovered in Japan it is clear that Japan is where Godzilla will be heading.

Meanwhile a Japanese pharmaceutical company has despatched a scientist to a remote Pacific island to secure supplies of a new wonder drug called soma which is found only in berries that grow only on this one island. The company is also looking for a major publicity attraction so reports of a giant monster on the island make the island even more interesting to them - this monster could be a great sales gimmick.

The monster is of course King Kong. Capturing him is surprisingly easy - soma sends him to sleep. The giant ape is towed to Japan on a raft.

Now the Japanese have two giant monsters to contend with. This is especially tricky since each monster has different strengths and weaknesses. Dinosaurs hate electricity but as everyone knows electricity makes giant apes stronger. A barrier of high tension wires carrying a million volts should be able to keep Godzilla at bay but when King Kong reaches the barrier it not only fails to stop him, it makes him much more powerful. Tokyo is, once again, in deadly peril.

There seems to be only one solution. It is a well-established scientific fact that for millions of years dinosaurs and giant apes were natural enemies. If they can be brought together they might, with luck, destroy each other. Transporting King Kong to the scene of the epic battle presents a challenge but an ingenious employee of the aforementioned pharmaceutical company has the answer to that - he has invented a super-strong cable so all they need to do is to send the ape to sleep and then he can be easily transported by balloon! This provides a scene with the kind of inspired lunacy that makes Japanese monster movies so appealing.

The stage is set but which monster will prove to be the stronger, and will the battle of the monsters really save Tokyo from destruction? You’ll have to watch the movie to find out.

Ishirô Honda is once again in the director’s chair and there’s plenty of insanely silly but thoroughly enjoyable action. The monsters are everything one could hope for but it has to be said that King Kong tends to steal the picture. This ape has star quality. He’s also the best actor in the movie. The special effects are often terrible but they’re terrible in a fun way. Lots of toy trains get stomped! The effects might be crude but there are plenty of them. Kong is actually portrayed by a guy in a gorilla suit rather than with stop-motion. This will disappoint stop-motion fans but it works well enough.

The plot is totally mad and this film really goes overboard on the comic relief. It’s also breathtakingly (although very amusingly) politically incorrect.

The American version (which is the one I’m reviewing here) cut quite a few scenes and replaced them with dull talky scenes shot in Hollywood. I’m told the Japanese version is a lot better and I can well believe it.

The Region 4 DVD from Siren is a two-movie disc, pairing this one with the original Godzilla as the Godzilla Double Feature volume 1. It’s one of the worst DVD presentations I have ever come across. Even Alpha Video have never released anything quite this bad. The transfers are horrible, there’s massive print damage and both movies are (very badly) pan-and-scanned. It’s a disgraceful effort. Luckily it was a rental - I’d have hated to have paid to own this dismal DVD.

King Kong vs Godzilla tries to be a light-hearted romp of a monster movie and it succeeds reasonably well (and probably succeeded a lot better before American studio execs made their ham-fisted attempts to Americanise it). It’s worth a look but you would undoubtedly be well advised to seek out the Japanese version.

Godzilla: Invasion of the Astro-monster (1965)

Godzilla: Invasion of the Astro-monster is a 1965 entry in the long-running Japanese Godzilla movie series from Toho Studio. I’m not the biggest fan of these types of movies but this one is slightly unusual and on the whole it’s pretty good.

We start with the discovery of a mysterious new planet just beyond Jupiter. The World Space Authority sends spaceship P-1 to investigate. The crew comprises American astronaut Glen (Nick Adams) and Japanese astronaut Fuji (Akira Takarada). 

Rather unexpectedly Planet X (as it has become known) is inhabited, and the inhabitants are seemingly humanoid. The X-people have big problems. Or rather they have one big problem - Monster Zero. Monster Zero (recognised immediately by the earth astronauts as King Ghidorah) is ravaging their planet. 

They have a plan to deal with this. They want permission to travel to Earth and then to take Godzilla and Rodan (known to the X-people as Monster 01 and Monster 02) back to Planet X to destroy King Ghidorah. To sweeten the deal they offer Earth the secret of curing cancer.

Godzilla and Rodan are transported to Planet X (in giant bubbles towed by flying saucers) and immediately start beating up on King Ghidorah. The plan seems to be working out most satisfactorily.

In fact things are not at all what they seem to be, as Glen and Fuji soon come to suspect. Earth will soon be facing deadly dangers of its own from rampaging monsters.

Fuji’s sister Haruno (Keiko Sawai) is hoping to marry a geeky and not very successful inventor named Tetsuo (Akira Kubo). Tetsuo’s latest invention will later play an important plot role. The other romantic sub-plot also ties into the main plot.

This is as much a space opera as a monster movie. The monsters are really subsidiary to the main plot and they are not the major villains or the major threat.

Ishirô Honda had directed the very first Godzilla movie as well as a very large proportion of the monster movies that followed it and he’s once again at the helm for Godzilla: Invasion of the Astro-monster. This time he has a pretty good script (by Shin'ichi Sekizawa) to work with.

The special effects are a little uneven. Some are quite crude and the flying saucers are very disappointing. On the other hand the monster sequences are very well executed.

The miniatures work is quite impressive (apart from those flying saucers). The spaceship P-1 looks cool. The sets have the right 1960s vibe and the X-people costumes are restrained but look good. It goes without saying that Japanese towns will get stomped and by this time the crews at Toho had a lot of experience with that sort of thing and those scenes are effective.

The acting is perfectly adequate by monster movie standards.

There are several welcome things that make this an enjoyable monster movie - there’s very little comic relief, no cute children and amazingly no preachiness.

The Region 4 DVD from Madman offers a pleasingly handsome anamorphic transfer (the movie was naturally shot in the Tohoscope 2.35:1 aspect ratio). 

By 1965 a straightforward monster movie would have been just another rehash of previous  productions so the decision to make this primarily a space adventure with added monsters was a sound one and works extremely well. Godzilla: Invasion of the Astro-monster (also released under several other titles including Godzilla vs. Monster Zero) is great fun. Highly recommended.

Battle in Outer Space (1959)

Battle in Outer Space is not one of Ishirô Honda’s most highly regarded movies but it may be his most entertaining work. It really is extraordinarily good fun. This is pure space opera and it’s superbly done.

It’s a movie that hits the ground running, opening with the destruction of a Japanese space station by alien spaceships. We never really find out who these aliens are but we know they intend to conquer the Earth. 

The aliens have the advantage of a super-weapon - a freezing ray. Of course as we all know, if an object’s temperature decreases rapidly its gravity will also decrease rapidly(!) so when the freezing ray hits an object it flies into the air due to its negative gravity. This is the kind of science that makes me love science fiction movies.

The aliens have established an advanced base on the Moon. Fortunately Japan has two advanced spacecraft ready to go and sixteen astronauts from various countries set off to destroy that base. When they reach the Moon they transfer to two very cool moon vehicles. They locate the alien base and a battle ensues. The aliens have another secret weapon - mind control. They can turn people into willing slaves who then serve the aliens. This mind control however only seems to work on a handful of human subjects.

The battle on the Moon is just the beginning. A full-scale attack by the aliens is imminent but Earth scientists (led by the Japanese of course) have constructed rocket fighters to oppose the invasion. Another major battle follows.

You expect that sooner or later Tokyo will get stomped but oddly enough New York is the first target, with much devastation being caused by the alien anti-gravity rays. Tokyo’s turn will come later.

The plot is, as you may have gathered, rather on the thin side. This is not a problem as the movie relies on non-stop action and spectacle and on those counts it delivers the goods so magnificently that the viewer is unlikely to have time to worry about the plot. And too much emphasis on plot would have slowed down the action.

The special effects are variable in quality. There’s some very clumsy use of matte paintings early on. On the whole though the special effects are excellent. There’s some superb miniatures work. The spaceships and the moon rovers look terrific. The destruction caused by the anti-gravity beams is rendered quite cleverly. The buildings hit by the beam can’t just explode in a normal way - they have to explode upwards, and these effects look pretty good.

The sets and costumes look great. The problem of showing the appearance of the aliens, always a potential weakness in a movie of this type, is (very wisely) avoided altogether. The only times we see the aliens they are wearing spacesuits that hide their features completely. They are very small in stature and they don’t move quite like humans and this comes off quite well.

An irritating feature of many Japanese science fiction movies is preachiness. Thankfully Battle in Outer Space mostly avoids this pitfall. There is a message about an external threat causing all the nations of Earth to work together which betrays a rather naïve belief in internationalism but at least there’s no heavy-handed pacifist message. This is a full-scale alien invasion and humanity either fights back or dies.

This movie is bundled with Mothra and The H-Man in Sony’s Icons of Sci-Fi: Toho Collection boxed set. Each movie gets a disc to itself. Battle in Outer Space gets a lovely anamorphic transfer with nicely vibrant colours. Both a Japanese-language version with sub-titles and an English are included, plus a lively and informative (and very respectful) audio commentary by Steve Ryfle and Ed Godziszewski.

Battle in Outer Space is plain old-fashioned fun. Very highly recommended.

The H-Man (1958)

Made by Toho Studio in 1958, The H-Man is something of an oddity among Japanese monster movies. There’s a strong hint of film noir to it and it’s clearly aimed at a more adult audience than usual. Or rather it seems at times to be unsure exactly what kind of movie it wants to be.

It starts with a drug deal gone wrong. One of the dope peddlers is killed. That isn’t unusual in itself but what is unusual is that this criminal has disappeared completely leaving only his clothes behind. The police are acting on the assumption that for some bizarre reason hoodlum has fled from the scene naked. That doesn’t make any sense but there seems to be no other explanation. Until a young scientist named Dr Masada turn up at police headquarters with an alternative theory - that the mobster was the victim of a liquid monster unleashed by H-bomb testing in the Pacific. The police dismiss Dr Masada’s theory as the ravings of a madman.

Dr Masada bases his theory on the strange story told by a group of fisherman. They had discovered a freighter apparently abandoned by its crew. When they boarded the freighter to investigate two of the fishermen were liquified by a green slime monster. The surviving fishermen have severe radiation sickness.

The monster initially takes the form of liquid slime but then coalesces into a green monster man.

The girlfriend of the liquified mobster is night-club singer Chikako Arai (Yumi Shirakawa). She now has other gangsters pursuing her (they think her boyfriend double-crossed them) plus she has the police keeping tabs on her and also Dr Masada. Dr Masada’s interest in her seems to be a bit more than just professional. When a mobster trying to attack her gets slimed the scientist thinks he has enough evidence to convince the police but they remain sceptical until he demonstrates the radioactivity creating slime monster thing in his laboratory using a couple of unfortunate frogs.

It all leads up to a rather exciting climax in the sewers of Tokyo, with a gangster holding Chikako hostage while being pursued by the H-Man (as the slime monster man has become known).

There are some obvious similarities to The Blob. As always in Japanese movies the anti-nuclear message is far from subtle. The movie also suffers a little from trying to be both a yakuza movie and a monster movie.

Ishirô Honda directed many of the classic Japanese monster movies. This is a much darker movie than one expects from this genre and he manages the film noirish atmosphere quite well. The night-club scenes are done well although Yumi Shirakawa’s musical numbers are rather clumsily dubbed into English in the Japanese version.

The acting is perfectly adequate by monster movie standards.

The special effects are a mixed bag, some being extremely effective and genuinely chilling and some being rather less successful. The best scenes involve the slime creeping around the abandoned freighter and later on slithering through the sewers. The H-Man himself is less effective.

It’s an interesting movie insofar as it avoids the usual clichés of Tokyo getting stomped and cute but annoying children.

The H-Man is one of three movies in the Icons of Sci-Fi: Toho Collection. The DVD includes both the English dubbed version (which is slightly cut) and the Japanese version (which is uncut). It’s a reasonable anamorphic transfer which has the major plus of allowing viewers to see the movie in its correct Tohoscope aspect ratio.

The H-Man is not a complete success but it’s unusual enough in its blending of monster movie an film noir elements to make it worth seeing. Recommended.

The Mysterians (1957)

The Mysterians is a 1957 Japanese science fiction monster movie so you know what to expect. There’ll be a gigantic monster, unconvincing but immensely enjoyable special effects, Tokyo will get stomped and there’ll be lots of tedious lectures about how we’re going to destroy ourselves in a nuclear war.

This movie has all those ingredients but despite the lectures it’s mostly a great deal of fun. It was directed by Ishirô Honda, the director of the original Godzilla and therefore the grandfather of all Japanese monster movies.

The Mysterians is an alien invasion movie. A mysterious object is spotted in the skies by astronomers who immediately decide it has something to do with Planet 5, which no longer exists but now there’s a sort of planetoid or something where it used to be, a planetoid called Mysteroid. This is soon followed by the appearance of flying saucers, and then the inevitable giant monster. It’s actually a giant remote-controlled robot but it’s as effective in stomping Japanese towns as any giant dinosaur.

The Mysterians is slightly different from other Japanese monster movies in that the gigantic monster plays a relatively minor rôle. The threats posed by the aliens are more varied and therefore more interesting than the usual monster threat. 

The aliens, known as the Mysterians, seem at first to have rather ambiguous motives. They claim to be peace-loving and to hate the very idea of war although the fact that they have already wiped out an entire village, not to mention the other fact that their monster robot has already gone on a destructive rampage stomping everything and everyone in its path, leads the Japanese authorities to be (quite justifiably one would think) just a tiny bit suspicious of the peaceful intentions of the Mysterians.

The Mysterians inform the Japanese government that they don’t want to invade the whole Earth; they just want a tiny area of land, a mere three kilometres in radius. That might have been considered quite a reasonable request, but the Mysterians want something else as well. They want our women!

The Mysterians have irradiated their own world in a nuclear war (pause for a lecture about the evils of war) and now most of their offspring are abnormal. So they want to marry Earth  women. The idea that a species from another planet would be capable of interbreeding with humans is one of those remarkably silly ideas that the makers of science fiction movies and television series got fixated on for decades. But this is a Japanese monster movie so it’s hardly sensible to get bent out of shape about a bit of scientific silliness. Scientific silliness is exactly what you want in a movie of this type.

The threat to Japanese womanhood galvanises the Japanese government and an all-out attack is launched on the Mysterians. Unfortunately the Mysterians are operating from within a huge dome that seems impervious to all known weapons. The aliens have some pretty formidable weapons of their own, death rays that can blow fighter aircraft out of the skies and reduce Sherman tanks to a molten mess (the melting tanks are a major highlight of the movie for me).

The Japanese soon convince the other world governments that international co-operation will be needed to counter this threat. And soon a new secret weapon, a rather cool-looking rocket aircraft, is ready to be used against the invaders. Without any notable success. But scientists are also working on an electron gun for which they have high hopes.

This is one of those “scientists as heroes” science fiction movies although this is tempered by some tedious lectures about the dangers of the misuse of science so at times it veers in the direction of the “scientists as villains” sub-genre. But it’s a Japanese scientist who will prove the Mysterians’ undoing although not by using electron guns or rocket aircraft.

The special effects are often remarkably crude, although in a very entertainingly silly way. The Mysterians’ death ray is rendered in a way that will delight fans of bad special effects. The flying saucers are pretty dodgy as well. On the other hand the Mysterian space station  looks pretty cool and the giant robot is wonderfully silly. There’s enough action and enough explosions to keep things moving along sufficiently quickly for viewers not to worry too much about the silliness factor. The alien spacesuits are a major plus as well.

Ishirô Honda knows not to spend too much time on human interest angles or romantic subplots. His audience wants giant robots stomping Tokyo and death rays knocking fighter jets out of the sky and he makes sure he gives them what they want.

The movie was shot in colour and in TohoScope. 

The BFI’s UK DVD release appears to be region-free and although its barebones it’s an excellent 16x9 enhanced transfer. This is fortunate because the Region 1 DVD from Tokyo Shock is out of print and used copies are horrifically expensive. The BFI’s DVD on the other hand is in print and it’s ridiculously cheap and it looks great. 

The Mysterians has everything a fan of Japanese science fiction monster movies could ask for, all done with energy and style and with more imagination than usual. Highly recommended.