The Mysterians
            
Director: Ishiro Honda
Year: 1957
Rating: 7.5
In Japanese

Ishirô Honda offers up a smorgasbord of ideas, style and special effects in this fabulous film. It is filled to the brim with ideas that he wanted to send the world and after his three Kaiju films, Honda took the leap into sci-fi, space and aliens. Over the next few years he was to bounce back and forth between monsters and sci-fi. He has said that this is his favorite film. I can see why he felt that way. Aliens, spaceships, giant robots, nifty designs, colorful alien costumes, a pumping soundtrack from Akira Ifukbe and inspired modeling from Eiji Tsuburaya make this a delight. But what was most important to Honda was the message that overrides all of this. Stop the madness. Stop building more and more powerful weapons that could already destroy the planet twenty-times over. One mistake, one accident, one crazy ruler or general could make earth uninhabitable. Back in 1957 that almost seemed inevitable. Humans would screw up eventually. I recall hiding under my desk at school. That we haven’t is really astonishing. Yet. Another message is the danger of science. Science for science sake without contemplating the potential repercussions. Because there is always two sides to every discovery, every advancement. Look at social media. It seemed like such a great idea – people communicating globally, trading ideas and knowledge. But it also let loose the hate, the crazies, the conspiracies, the disinformation that are pushing us into two separate camps.



His ideas filter through the film but it is also a dazzling display of style and special effects (for its time). The models of tanks, space ships, giant robots, air craft, a giant dome that comes out of the earth, the interiors of the dome, a village simply disappearing into the ground, another being swept away by a flood are great fun to watch. It begins at a festival in a small village and our four main characters are there from Tokyo. The astro-physicist Shiraishi (Akihiko Hirata), his friend Joji (Kenji Sahara), Hiroko (Momoko Kochi), the ex-girlfriend of Shiraishi and Shiraishi’s sister, Etsuko (Yumi Shirakawa). A large fire breaks out in the forest and Shiraishi runs towards it and disappears, thought to be dead. The following day the village disappears, and a giant robot called Mogera appears striding out of the forest.



And then the dome emerges out of the ground and the inhabitants within make a few demands of five scientists that they invite inside (the main one being played by Takashi Shimura). The requests are few after warning the scientists that they have nukes that make the H-Bomb look like a child’s toy. We need two miles of your land. Ok, why not. Oh, and to have sex and procreate with earth women. They explain that on their planet they had a nuclear war and now only a small percentage can have offspring. The inside of the dome is sleek with long winding hallways and the Mysterians all wear different colored cloaks and helmets to denote their ranks. We never really see what they look like. They show the scientists pictures of the five women they want to begin with – and Etsuko and Hiroko are among them! In fact, they are all Japanese. Racism! Nothing against Japanese women but this being 1957 I would have included Marilyn Monroe, Brigitte Bardot and Sophia Loren. Some diversity. And of course, if Japanese how could they not choose Kumi Mizuno. But maybe that is just me.



Instead of offering up their women, the Japanese attack with everything they can. Not a dent in the dome. The aliens cause a flood that wipes out the military and another village. Maybe five women would have been a better idea. The Americans and Soviets pitch in and come up with a cool weapon - working together! But it is a door left open and an entrance from a cave that they forgot about that may undo them. The small mistakes. Some maintenance Mysterian I expect. Shot in Tohoscope with vivid colors, it looks great. The battles of models against models is terrific and for its time it had to be awesome to see this on the big screen. There is just enough of a personal story to make you care a tiny bit when the Mysterians drop down from a spaceship and kidnap our two girls, but it never intrudes into the story. Perhaps too many meetings but that is a characteristic of all the Kaiju films and I think there is a cultural reason for that – consensus before acting. This was a big hit in Japan and later dubbed and brought to America. Simply put, this is visually very cool.