1959, Japan. Starring Koreya Senda, Ryo Ikebe, Kyoko Anzai, Yoshio Tsuchiya, Leonard Stanford, Harold Conway, Hisaya Ito, Minoru Takada, Tatsuo Araki, Heinz Bolmer, Roma Carlson, Yukihiko Gondo, Kisao Hatamochi, Shinjiru Hirota, Mitsuo Isuda, Saburo Kadowaki, Yokikose Kamimura, Shigeo Kato, Jirya Kimagaya, Nadao Kirino, Fuyuki Murakami, Kozo Nomura, Rinsaku Ogata, Yutaka Oka, Tadashi Okabe, Malcolm Pearce, Elise Richter, Koichi Sato, Ikio Sawamura, Katsumi Tezuka, Yasuhisa Tsutsumi, Leonard Walsh, George Whitman, Ketsumi Yamada, Osman Yusef. Directed by Ishiro Honda.

In the latter half of the 1950s, it seemed like every alien race with a saucer was high-tailing it to Earth with dreams of conquest, colonization, and a little lovin'. In many ways, the Earth of the 1950s was to them what the Internet is to us today. A wild free-for-all with no rules, or at least with no really enforceable rules. The invaders of the 1950s came in many shapes and sizes. Some were blobs. Others were giant insects. A few were house plants. And a lot of them were very fond of wearing strange hats.

In the years before Toho Studios and director Ishiro Honda became known almost exclusively for Godzilla films, they specialized in destroying the Earth. Whether it was man's own folly or the fault of strange beings from another galaxy, it seemed as if guys like Honda and special effects pioneer Eiji Tsubaraya couldn't go one week without creating a scale model of apocalypse.

Honda, best known for creating Godzilla, was an impressive, happy-go-lucky man with a keen respect for the environment, for Earth, and for his fellow inhabitants of the place. His Shinto-influenced philosophy is certainly evident in his body of work. From the original Godzilla to more offbeat films like Attack of the Mushroom People, Honda is constantly examining both man's impact on the natural world and humanity's ability -- or inability -- to work with other members of their own race for the betterment of society. Although his films often play as cautionary tales, exploring the ramifications of human idiocy, he was generally hopeful about our ability to one day unite and get along. Honda also often portrayed technology as both the cause of our trouble and the potential solution. Godzilla was created by the atomic bomb, but the same science that created him devised a way to destroy him.

A theme Honda kept returning to throughout his career was that of humanity banding together in the face of a greater threat, of working not as nations or religions, but as a planet. Honda delved into it with such films as Gorath, The Mysterians, and the film we're eventually going to review in this article, Battle in Outer Space. Here we have a pretty typical sci-fi thriller that is elevated both by Honda's humanist direction and special effects wizard Eiji Tsubaraya's astounding work with miniatures.

The action begins with a fleet of UFOs attacking an Earth space station in the distant future year of 1965. The destruction of their cool orbiting platform pisses off the humans -- but it could be worse. They could have bombed that swank space port and cocktail lounge on the moon that was in X From Outer Space. Anyway, we quickly discover the alien base on the moon and assemble a team of astronauts to go kick a little ET ass. The only monkeywrench in the plan is that the aliens have this keen mind control device that can make good astronauts go bad and try to destroy the secret weapon that will smash the alien base.

Mind control or not, the end result is a cool laser beam shoot-out on the moon in which the humans teach these malevolent Martians to keep the hell out of our galaxy.

But that's only the halfway point. for the final portion of the movie, the scene shifts to Earth, where the aliens launch an all-out attack on our greatest cities. This is where Tsubaraya really shines. The aliens use a beam that can actually destroy, or at least reverse, gravity. Tsubaraya and his effects team pull off some absolutely stunning shots of entire cities being uprooted, torn to pieces, and hurtled up into the sky. I think it's one of the man's crowning achievements.

The people of the Earth must unite and select the best pilots in the world to fly our special rocket fighters into final combat with the persistent alien invaders. Lots of aerial and space dogfighting occurs, and many jagged laser beams are shot.

What we have here is an enjoyable, simple tale of evil space aliens and the goodly humans who fend off their aggressive advances. Toho goes hog wild with the 1960s space effects we all know and love -- things like the rockets that fly through space via a sparkler shoved up their tailpipe, leaving a trail of blue smoke wafting upward into the void of space. Though many people scoff at these effects nowadays, they fail to recognize the craftsmanship that went into them. And people who dismiss them as "cheap Japanese sci-fi films" are obviously tunnel-visioned in the ethnocentricity. Ever check out American films from the same time frame? Those effects were generally even worse.

The attention to detail is staggering. The initial shots of a destroyed space station feature all sorts of recognizable rubble, including a little dead spaceman floating amid the destruction. These days, movies blast you with a rapid fire barrage of computer animation that are light on such details, and generally very lame looking anyway. It's easy to compare this film to overblown crap like Independence Day since they are both about remorseless aliens attacking our planet. ID4 had a lame plot, no original ideas, and absolutely horrible, weak special effects.

Battle in Outer Space may not have state of the art digital animation, but the effects are very cool for the time, the story is exciting, and it's not nearly as overblown or utterly unstomachable. So if given a choice, I would rather watch blue plumes of smoke puffing around in space than watch Bill Pullman as America's cleanest most heroic president of all time deliver a patriotic speech.

At the center of Battle in Outer Space, as in many films of this nature, is a study of how the different tribes of mankind band together when faced with a greater foe. Americans of differing values band together against Muslims. Muslims band together against Americans. Communists band together against democracies. And Earth bands together against invaders from another planet. What's the point of all the boundaries anyway if they are so artificially etched?

Politics aside, this film is mostly about little spaceship models kicking each other's asses in the bleak darkness of the Milky Way. There is plenty of outer space daring-do and laser shooting. And of course, you have to sit through a couple scenes of guys in a board room trying to figure out what to do, but even those are tense and engaging.

This is vintage Toho science fiction, full of action, politics, and special effects. It's hard to find on video, but it actually makes the late-night rounds on cable. A few years ago, when I found out it was going to be on Cinemax, it became the only reason I got cable television. It was worth it!

Labels: Country: Japan, Director: Inoshiro Honda, Science Fiction, Year: 1959