Warning from Space was the first Japanese sci-fi/kaiju movie in color and also made
after Godzilla made a lot of money around the world. But Daiei Studios realized
a bit too late that what they needed was BIG monsters and designed the posters
to make the monsters look bigger (and also seemed to release promo material
featuring fake screenshots from the film picturing the aliens as giants!). It
actually got mostly negative reviews, but slowly became a small success all
over the world, but since then it's quite forgotten and badly distributed.
I
bought on DVD ages ago, released by the infamous public domain company Alpha
Video and since then it's been collecting dust on the shelf. Until today, when
I decided it was time to give it a spin. I wish I didn't wait so long, because
this is a neat little sci-fi movie, partly inspired by American sci-fi's from
the same time, but without losing its national identity.
There's UFO
sightings all over Tokyo
and weird starfish-style creatures is seen, and it's not imagination. Up there
somewhere a race of aliens really needs to contact us, but they look too weird
and we're just scared by their looks. One of the mutants into a woman and
through her the earthlings learn that a gigantic planet/sun/something is hurling
through space and it's gonna crash into the earth! What to do?! The planet is
getting closer and soon disasters strikes! Is it too late to save us all?!
It's never
too late. At least not in the magic of movies. Warning from Space is a damn
nice little sci-fi flick which perfectly in with the other more down-to-earth
productions like The H-Man and The Mysterians, and with that I mean movies
who's not focusing by huge rubber monsters fighting other creatures in
miniature cities. The story takes an interesting turn from being a normal alien
invasion story to something more positive and constructive, maybe a unique
hopefulness that sometimes can be lacking in alien invasion films from the time
(where a new danger often lurks around the corner). The nuclear weapons also is
used to something good instead of blasting each other to pieces or creating
monsters. I know, it's stuff like this that we love, but instead there's a
couple of nice disaster scenes towards the end - all using them same excellence
in building miniatures as usual.
The coolest
thing with Warning from Space is the design of the aliens, created by artist Tarō
Okamoto. If you do a google image search of his name you'll see some of his
statues and paintings and it's not surprising he got the job. It's the same
kind of surrealistic, high-flying psychedelica we see in this movie. A couple
of the statues could be monsters from Ultraman or Gamera! Another interesting
thing is that it's claimed, in John Baxter's 1997 biography over Stanley
Kubrick, that Warning from Space was one of several kaiju's that inspired
Kubrick to explore the world of science fiction.
I'm very
sure Warning from Space will get a better reputation the day it gets a
remastered new English-friendly release. It's worth watching even on the Alpha DVD, the quality
is passable and just crappy and not mega-crappy, but it's not a worthy disc for
such a fine little movie.
3 comments:
That sounds fun. I sort of like kaiju films, but the monster battles get to be too much for me. I definitely enjoy Japanese sci-fi. Looks like it is available on archive.org http://archive.org/search.php?query=warning%20from%20space
No monster battles in this one :)
"The story takes an interesting turn from being a normal alien invasion story to something more positive and constructive, maybe a unique hopefulness that sometimes can be lacking in alien invasion films from the time (where a new danger often lurks around the corner)."
Yeah, a few handful scifi from that time doesn´t contain xenophobia, fear and paranoia.
"The coolest thing with Warning from Space is the design of the aliens, created by artist Tarō Okamoto. If you do a google image search of his name you'll see some of his statues and paintings and it's not surprising he got the job. It's the same kind of surrealistic, high-flying psychedelica we see in this movie."
Trippy stuff, thanks ninja.
I wonder what would have happened if Dali ever got the chance to design a colour 3D scifi film in the 50´s...?
"in John Baxter's 1997 biography over Stanley Kubrick, that Warning from Space was one of several kaiju's that inspired Kubrick to explore the world of science fiction."
Not suprised by that ninja, Kubrick screened a lot of films, some were rather obscure.
Kubrick had a eclectic taste.
"I'm very sure Warning from Space will get a better reputation the day it gets a remastered new English-friendly release. It's worth watching even on the Alpha DVD, the quality is passable and just crappy and not mega-crappy, but it's not a worthy disc for such a fine little movie."
Somebody should do a boxset with japanese scifi.....judging from some of your reviews ninja, there is much to explore and discover here.
A production company should release this in a english friendly edition, they did it with japanese pinku eiga so why not scifi?
Good review and thanks ninja.
Megatron
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