Battle in Outer Space
                 
Director: Ishirô Honda
Year: 1959
Rating: 6.0
There has been a debate between the fans of Ishirô Honda and the Toho films whether this is a sequel to his film, the 1957 The Mysterians. Both are about aliens attacking earth and a couple of the characters have the same name - but played by different actors. The good news is that it really doesn't matter but it is the sort of thing Chat Rooms were made for. The star of this film aren't the people anyways but the beautiful special effects from Eiji Tsuburaya. They are gorgeous and fascinating with colors that will eat away at your imagination. The models of the spaceships, the space uniforms, the ray guns, the terrain of the moon and of course the destruction of cities are so very cool. Oh, thanks, there goes NYC as usual. When Tokyo is destroyed by lifting up buildings through a gravity weapon, people go floating up and one building is a theater with a Cinerama sign on it! Maybe that was Tsuburaya signaling what he thought of that mode of projection.



At one moment while on the moon, they look back and the earth is starring back at them like a desirable but untouchable woman. Another shot was a simple one - they look out of a tunnel on the moon and it is filled with stars. The special effects carry this film because a lot of it makes no sense with holes so large you could fly a spaceship through them. And Honda seems absolutely uninterested in developing characters that have any personality. They are nearly interchangeable. I think Honda had other themes he cared about more - that mankind could only come together if endangered by aliens. Today, I think that would be unlikely we are so divided by nation, race, religion and political philosophy. In many of his films consensus plays a large part with multiple meetings in which people and nations decide what to do. In his films naturally, Japan plays a leading role. After their defeat in WW2, they have been not only accepted back in the good graces of the world, but in fact are saving it. 



Certain calamitous events occur all over the world - a bridge that rises and the train crossing crashes, Venice gets wiped out by a giant wave, a space station with humans aboard going silent. They realize these are all being caused by aliens - from the planet of Natal they soon learn - who have set up a base on the moon from which they can attack. With a multi-nation force they man two spaceships to go to the moon to try and destroy the base and all the fighter ships. The humans have powerful ray guns and they go in search of the aliens - who we never see really.



Again, it all looks so wonderful - the landing of the ships, the two bus-like craft that get lowered down, the maneuvering through the rocky terrain with planet earth in the background, the domed base. I got caught up so much in the look of the film that it wasn't till later I asked myself a few basic questions - why didn't the aliens blow up the spaceships when they were sitting on the moon, if they could control the brain of one member of the crew, why didn't they just do that to all the crew, why were they such bad aims, why were they attacking earth. And why were the wife and daughter of one of the American generals in the command center. And more importantly, why wasn't Kumi Mizuno in the film. The two main characters are played by Ryô Ikebe as the hero and his girlfriend and crew member is played by Kyôko Anzai. This was produced in co-operation with Columbia which dubbed it and released it. I am not sure what I watched. It had the Columbia logo but it was in Japanese with subs.