SuperMegaMonkey
John Averick: ChronosCat: ChronosCat: ChronosCat: ChronosCat: |
1959-01-01 23:26:30 Battle In Outer SpaceAlternate Titles: The Great Space War
I discussed on the Mysterians entry why it was included in this project, and since this movie is a sequel to that one, it follows that this should be included as well. A more direct, if somewhat spurious reason is that the flying saucers in this movie are used in the NES Godzilla game. As a sequel to Mysterians, though, it's a weird one, almost as if they backed away from the idea of it being a sequel halfway through the production. The movie features characters (played by different actors) from the Mysterians, namely Dr. Adachi and Etsuko Shiraishi. And the evil aliens are operating from an outpost on the moon, as we saw in Mysterians. They use radio-waves to mind control humans after implanting a chip in their heads; the previous movie made a point to inform us that the Mysterians used radio-waves to control Moguera. The aliens in this movie are from planet Natal and there's no explanation about where that planet may be or why they've come all the way to Earth. No explanation is given for why the Natalians want to attack us except that they are "interplanetary bandits". The lack of an explanation, especially in contrast to the detailed origin from the previous movie, suggests to me that they were originally meant to be the Mysterians returning but at the last minute were given a different name and references to the previous movie were erased. Their flying saucers, to the degree that we could see them in the previous film, look like the same ships that are used here. Even their use of cold-based technology (see below; it's crazy!) recalls the temperatures they kept on their spaceships and their weakness to heat. However, in this movie, aliens are discussed as if the Earth had never encountered them before. It's also worth noting that the subtitles in our copy of this movie are pretty poor and deliver some very odd phrases. That's not uncommon, of course. But after watching the Japanese version, we jumped to the English version and skimmed through it to see if there were revisions. And there weren't; more to the point, the dubbed dialogue in the English is exactly the same as the subtitles in the Japanese version. And that's weird because what happens in the dubbed versions is they alter the script to match the mouth movements of the actors' mouths, and the dialogue is definitely sync'd to the mouth movements in the English version. So that means that the subtitles that we're getting in the Japanese version aren't direct translations of the Japanese dialogue; they are the transcription of the English dubbed version. That explains the sometimes confusing subtitles, and also why there are sometimes subtitles in scenes where no one is talking (because voice was overdubbed during that part in the English version) but it also raises the possibility that the original Japanese version could have had more explicit references to the Mysterians that we're not aware of. The movie begins in 1965, which is slightly in the future. Six years after the publication date of this movie and eight years after the end of Mysterians. We see a space station (the one from Mysterians?)... ...attacked by flying saucers, and then the flying saucers going to Earth, using technology to lift a train bridge into the air so that a train falls off a cliff, zapping a local train operator and affecting his mind in some way, and then reports of similar disasters all around the world. This gets Dr. Adachi (played this time from the Head Butterfly Hunter from Varan) summoned to the Space Research Center, where the details of the attack are laid out to an international group of scientists. They look like they just had a terrific argument and Dr. Adachi is checking out his watch to see how much longer this awkward car ride is going to last. First, all survivors are said to be frostbitten. And then from Adachi's assistant Ichiro Katsumiya, we get into what can only be called weird science: "As you know, the cause of gravity is the motion of atoms. And when the atoms of an object have no movement its gravity is correspondingly diminished. At the temperature known as absolute zero the atomic movement of an object is reduced to a state of rest and it becomes weightless. Owing to the centrifugal force of the revolving Earth itself the object thus affected would rise up into the air. "As you know"?? Who the hell knows this? Can i just point out that it's very cold in space but planets still exert plenty of gravitational force on other bodies in space? OMG, i just realized they prolly think there's no gravity in space because it's cold. Ow. I think i hurt my brain. During the conference, a Dr. Achmed gets a headache and walks out. He's next seen by Etsuko Shiraishi, who is apparently now working at the Research Center, but not in a role significant enough to be included in the conference. She and another female worker notice Achmed acting strangely, but her friend just shrugs it off. Etsuko, meanwhile, stares in horror as Achmed walks outside and opens his arms to the sky and disappears in a red light. Then her friend, Yuichi Iwomura (played by another Godzilla alum - Yoshio Tsuchiya) comes by, but he frustratingly refuses to turn his head towards the scene she is staring at until it's too late and Achmed is gone. He just had to turn his head the slightest bit towards the giant open wall, but no. Iwomura jokes to Katsumiya that his girlfriend Etsuko (what happened to her old boyfriend Atsumi from Mysterians?) is tired and tells him to cheer her up. Katsumiya just laughs and keeps working on his Heat Ray Gun. When you get to the scene where Etsuko and Katsumiya are having their moonlight tête-à-tête you'll understand why they both completely ignore her freak out here. She prolly often has her hand patted and is told she's becoming "overwrought". The Heat Ray Gun is then demonstrated to the conference attendees. It's said to be powered by plutonium, and a charged ray gun will shoot for 20,000 hours. It is strong enough to penetrate Beryllium-19, said to be the strongest metal on Earth. Beryllium-19 is also what the Research Centers new rocket ships are made of. The rockets are called SPIPS. While everyone is admiring the SPIPS, an alarm goes off, and we find that Achmed has returned to attempt to take or destroy the ray gun, but he's stopped by Iwomura long enough for the rest of the group to show up. Taking Etsuko hostage, Achmed warns them that the Natalians are going to colonize the planet. Katsumiya lowers a conveniently placed bucket that was hanging from the ceiling right onto Achmed's gun. The bucket was hanging right over a walkway with no signs or anything; seems dangerous. At the very least, they could have painted a yellow hatched box on the floor. Gawd. Once he's disarmed, Achmed finds a mob of diplomats and scientists charging him, mixed in with guards from the Research Center (and these are hands-on diplomats and scientists; they absolutely do not stand back and let the guards handle the chase). Achmed manages to give everyone the slip, though, and makes it back to the courtyard and raises his hands again. A flying saucer shows up and the crowd of pursuers all duck, because ducking in open space when there's a flying saucer over your head is going to help. A beam comes down and Achmed disappears. I thought he was beamed up to the ship, but the scientists are able to take a sample of the red dirt that was left behind and determine that Achmed was being mind controlled via a chip in his head, so i guess he was actually disintegrated. As mentioned above, Achmed was being controlled with radio-waves. With this new information, the conference begins anew. Someone states that humans have lived on this Earth for the past 500,000 years (which is about 300,000 years off) and we aren't about to give up now, so we must be prepared to resist "interplanetary bandits of outer space". Therefore two teams of scientists are chosen to pilot the two SPIP rockets to the moon for a reconnaissance mission. Dr. Adachi pilots one, and Dr. Richardson, a white guy that i believe was also in Mysterians (in a different role) leads the other. Iwomura, Katsumiya, and Etsuko are also included in the expedition amongst an international group of scientists (so far as we've seen, Etsuko's expertise lies in making photocopies. how did this skill secure her a seat on the rocket?). Note that i said "scientists". Despite the attack from the Natalians, this is not a military expedition. It's also not a stealth mission because they do absolutely nothing to hide their arrival on the moon. Where the Natalians are. The aliens who can control people and want to colonize Earth. A-yep. *thumbs up* It's also unclear if this is the first time that people are going to the moon in this movieverse. In real life we went to the moon in 1969 and by itself, with no aliens, it was an historic moment of great fanfare. The trip to the moon in this movie seems more incidental than anything. They got a parade and a send off. It was at least as fanfare-ful as when Dr. Yamane left on a ship for Odo after Godzilla walked through the fishing village in the first movie. Boat to Odo. Rocket to the moon. I dub those events equally historic and dangerous. Before the big journey, there's time for a little R&R on Earth. What follows is a moonlit conversation between Katsumiya and Etsuko so bizarre i really can't convey it to you properly and you'll just have to go watch the film, but i'll try. After noting that the sky is beautiful, Etsuko is reminded that there are creatures out there in space that want to attack us. Etsuko smiles contentedly and says "MMmmmm". (Translated in the subtitles as "I know"). She lays back happily and says "Yes, but it looks more beautiful when you imagine that there's a prince up there who's gong to come down and carry you away, forever" Katsumiya responds, "I think that we humans will gradually lose such feelings of beauty." This makes Etsuko cry, and she turns to him and says, "Isn't there one thing that will never change?". When Katsumiya is confused by this, she continues asking questions along those lines. C'mon! One thing, between us, maybe, that will always be the same no matter what happens in the world? Does she have to spell it out for you, bro? She means YOUR LOVE FOR EACH OTHER! Katsumiya finally responds, "I guess... you know..i wonder...!" To be fair, she was just fantasizing about a space prince. Etsuko collapses on Katsumiya's chest, crying, as he awkwardly pats her shoulder and lamely tells her that he was just kidding. I have no words. The awkward shoulder pat says it all. Despite the obvious fact that he wasn't kidding at all, Etsuko immediately shifts moods again and is now totally chipper. The poor dear must not be quite right ever since the kidnapping in Mysterians. This is just like in Silver Age comics. Did women really talk like this in the 1960s or did men just perceive it that way? Meanwhile, it turns out that Iwomura had been spying on them the whole time and he reveals himself and clearly finds all this emotional dysfunction very amusing. Despite that pleasant attitude, Katsumiya declines the opportunity to go cruising for girls with him (Etsuko actually seemed more into it), so Iwomura goes off by himself. And he's then hit by an alien beam, paralyzing him, and eventually telling him that we have "implanted our life in your brain and now you are our slave". Throughout all of this, Iwomura's car keeps moving forward. Good thing it was a long straight road. The next day we are ready for our trip to the moon. We've got our bathing caps on and everything. That pained expression on Katsumiya's face as Etsuko gazes I am surprised to see two rockets launched so close to each other. If anything went wrong with one of them, the explosion would surely destroy the other one as well. I'd actually expect the rockets to be launched from different sites entirely, but at least maybe a few hundred feet away. Luckily, everything goes fine. After the launch they unbuckle their seatbelts and one guy is lifted out of his chair with wires. The others remind him that there's no gravity on the rocket. Well, there must be *some* gravity, since the rest of you are all just standing around just fine! (We'll basically have a repeat of this scene a little later when they land on the moon.) On their way to the moon, with the rockets still flying way too close to each other... ...they pass the remains of the space station that got blown up at the beginning of the movie (we even see a little corpse)... ...and are met by some Natalian flying saucers, who are shepherding "space torpedoes", which look like rocks. The SPIPS heat rays blast the rocks into dust, but they get into trouble when the mind-controlled Iwomura disables the heat ray on the rocket that he's in. With that, they switch to evasive action, weirdly thrusting TOWARDS the other SPIP, but managing to avoid both the rocket and the torpedo. The flying saucers eventually turn around and head back to the moon. Look, "evasive action" means you avoid getting hit by things coming in your direction. Nobody specified that you only need to evade enemy aircraft. If your rocket gets hit when i lurch suddenly in your direction, it's your own fault for being so slow. It's said that Iwomura "seems to be in shock" but they take no steps to prevent him from engaging in any more sabotage and instead let him roam free during the delicate process of landing on the moon. Then they think to tie him up. And they just leave him behind on their rocket while they get out and get into their nifty lunar rovers. It's not like there's been any evidence before of someone else being mind-controlled or anything. GAH! There is something i will always love about sci fi movies that combine studio sets with matte paintings. I think they look really cool, even if obviously unreal. After bumping around on the ground in their rovers for a while, they're like fuck it and reveal that they actually have "air cushions" which allow them to fly. Awesome! The flying capabilities are very impressive, including vertical take-off and landing. (By the way, Min thinks the models used for the rovers may have later been re-purposed as the Mothra larvae, but i can't find any confirmation of that online.) Seeing a random cave, it's said that it "must be" an entrance to the enemy base. The scientists are weirdly under the impression that they are on a stealth mission, despite the fact that they've noted that they're being trailed by UFOs. And of course the Natalians are aware of them, and they cause the mind-controlled Iwomura to escape from his bonds and blow up the SPIP he was on. He starts working his way towards the second one. Far be it for me to question a Toho scientist, but c'mon. You got shot at! They know you're there! They can see you! Meanwhile, the scientists do locate the Natalian base. They decide to forget about reconnaissance and just blow the damn thing up (well, what choice did they have? despite all the work they put into being stealthy, the Natalians still managed to discover their presence on the moon), so they send Etsuko back to the rover to get the heat ray. On her way back, she's met by these guys... ...who leap about weirdly but ultimately aren't very threatening. They kind of remind us of Jawas wearing Scout Trooper helmets (Min says more like the RA-7 protocol droid). Katsumiya eventually shows up and disintegrates them all with a ray gun. I think George Lucas was influenced by more Toho than just The Hidden Fortress. It's unclear if those guys were actually Natalians (in which case i'm not so scared of them) or some kind of slave race or worker drones or something else. We never see any other aliens in the film, so it's possible they were supposed to be Natalians. They look to me like a kind of midget subspecies of Mysterians. A disembodied voice tells the scientists that they are aware of their presence (OMG! Really??), and tells them that if they stay, they will never return and become slaves. And it gives them a countdown of ten seconds. The countdown in the subtitles begins way earlier than the voice (one of several times in this movie where the countdown is out of sync or otherwise wrong compared to the spoken word), but the scientists respond with the heat ray well before either countdown finishes. A battle begins between the scientists and their heat ray gun, supplemented by their personal ray guns, and the Natalians, who attack with a laser from their base and with the flying saucers. Akira Ifukube's happy parade music plays during the battle. One of the lunar rovers gets in on the action as well, playing peekaboo by using its air cushions to float over the mountain tops, shoot, and then float back into cover. Eventually they blow up the base. This releases Iwomura from mind control before he can destroy the second SPIP. But he refuses to rejoin his companions, preferring to die a hero holding off the flying saucers while the SPIP launches back into space. Which seemed to me to be a totally unnecessary sacrifice because the flying saucers take Iwomura out almost right away and the SPIP still manages to launch unhindered. Pretty much after Godzilla Raids Again, Tsuchiya never gets to play another character who gets to the end of the movie happy. I thought honestly thought the movie was over at this point. But we actually have a ways to go. Back on Earth, there's a big push to unite the world against a common enemy. It's said that the people of all nations demand that all leaders work together. This repeats the theme of Mysterians and is a nice One World kind of message that clearly reflects the attitude of nations that were affected by, but not a direct part of, the Cold War between the US and Russia at this time. The international conference at the Space Research Center is reconvened, and the question of how big a lead in technology the Natalians have is raised. Here is Dr. Adachi's verbatim response: Well, theirs is quite advanced when compared to ours. At least from the time viewpoint. While their theoretical knowledge may not be very far ahead of ours it is clear that we should be ready to resist their attack in the best way we can. I suggest that the small scouting craft we now have undergoing trials should be converted into fighter ships to intercept the attacking saucers outside our atmosphere. At least from the time viewpoint?! I never compare things from the time viewpoint. It's too limiting. The united nations of the world start devoting their factories to building new spaceships. And soon another Natalian mothership is detected and the final Battle In Outer Space begins. It's times like these when i think to myself, ok, the special effects aren't great. Not even necessarily for the time period, with lots of reused footage, some obvious and visible blue-screening, lots of visible wires, etc. And there's no character development. But watching movies like these, it's obvious that Star Wars was part of a larger legacy; it didn't come out of nowhere. Major dogfighting in outer space here (and even a "Porkins"), Some of the Natalians make it past the US spaceships and get to Earth with more of their "space torpedo" rocks that they used before. They target our major cities. Here's New York right before it blows up: They also destroy the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Then in Tokyo, they hover over buildings Independence Day Style, releasing the anti-gravity freeze ray. Luckily, they are obsessively focused on pulling up the same CINERAMA over and over again, so i assume the majority of the rest of the city was spared. The mothership is destroyed with the unheralded use of devices that look a lot like the FAHPs from Mysterians. Which makes sense if this really is a sequel; the return of those guns is a cool callback. But the devices aren't really described at all in this movie. There are little men standing on the platform at the base of the FAHP. Little men! With the mothership and final flying saucers defeated, we wait a few tense moments for confirmation that it's really all over, and then there is mass celebration. Even that weird kid with a mustache that was kind of hanging around the Research Center is happy. And we'll never forget the memorable last words of the film, "Hey, i'm gonna go talk to the rocket guys, do you want to come with?" No Kaiju in this film and thematically a repeat of Mysterians, there's still a lot of cool moments here. As always, lots of great scenes of model cities and vehicles exploding. Nice to see the imagining of how the moon looked. And this movie, with Mysterians, brings sci fi elements to Toho's toolkit that will later be merged with the mainline Godzilla films. Min also wanted screen grabs of these guys, because they are Toho regulars: Half of the movie watching experience is me shouting "That's the Varan guy!" or "That's the military guy from Mysterians with the pouch who had that awkward conversation with his commanding officer...(fnord: *blink*)...*sigh* Malness?...from Ghidorah?". Interrupting a movie to identify an actor by naming something else they've been in (cause i have no clue what anyone's real name is) is my other super power. Well, it's more like Tourettes than a super power, but it's what i've got to work with. Due to the nature of the film, our usual drinking game is mostly not applicable. So we'll trim it down to the one that definitely applies:
Monsters Appearing: CommentsI'm pretty sure that footage of New York blowing up (including the cheap souvenir Statue of Liberty model) was reused in "The Final War" (1961) and then again in "The Prophecies of Nostradamus" (1974). No one this side of Ed Wood ever loved stock footage so much as Toho Studios. Posted by: Gary Himes | September 23, 2015 9:25 PM Comments are now closed. |
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