War in Space (1977)

Come back Jun Fukuda! Everything is forgotten! Yeah, the man who managed to destroy the Godzilla-legacy has proven to be not-that-bad anymore! This was a Toho cash-in on Star Wars, made during two hectic months, and Fukuda was probably the only guy around the office the day someone decided to produce War in Space. Not a bad choice after all. Way more serious than flops like Godzilla vs. Megalon and Godzilla vs. Gigan, this proves to be a good little sci-fi adventure movie. 

As usual in Japan there is a threat from space. This time small (they look small anyway) UFO's flies down and blows all the mayor cities into dust and pieces. The goverment decided to start up a closed down project, Gohten, a ultra-cool earth/space ship that is more or less indestrucible. Of course the fill it with some handsome, cool heroes with perfect hair and more bromance than any new wannabe-indie movie from Hollywood. Surprisingly enough the enemy is a green-painted guy in a roman outfit and with a spaceship that resembles a roman slave-ship! He also have an evil chewbacca as a mascot and an army of guys that gladly dies for him. Not bad!

I could also mention that the heroes have a spaceship that is almost exactly a copy of the Eagle V in Spaceballs, but that's just not fair. It's a more well made and slick movie that I expected and has some nice thrills during ninty minutes. There some stuff that reminded me of Star Wars - the chase in the caves (the chase on the Death Star-surface), some stuff inside the ships, the evil Chewbacca... but there it ends. It's just a charming adventure that stands on it's own legs. The effects goes from really good to very visible strings and cheesy constumes, but fans of japanese sci-fi will have a blast. The miniature-effects is of course great, some stuff is stock footage from the (more or less) lost movie "Propecies of Nostradamus: Catastrophe 1999", but there's some new stuff that is great to.

Now I have to find my copy of Sayonara Jupiter and give it a try again!