Yûsei ôji

Title:Prince of Space Category:Japanese Schlock sci-fi Schlock Rating: 9.5 Overall Production: 4.5 Actors: Japanese Date produced:1959

Its no secret little Japanese boys with 10X telescopes are the best astronomers and outer space watch dogs. When the haw, haw, haw, hawwwww evil plotter, The Phantom, with the chicken beak nose, bristly eyebrows and mustache, wiggling chin pouch and jock-less pants shows up in a weedy field outside Tokyo in his "rotating augur" space ship, our intrepid junior space watchers have no trouble beating the clueless "old fart" authorities to the spot.

Soon the Earth (Japan ) finds itself in danger of conquest by Krankor, that well-known evil planet from somewhere out there in space. After a few quick zings from the Phantom's rotating glass eye ray gun let's the crowd know he ain't fooling around, another mysterious fire and smoke emitting "reversed wheel barrow" space ship shows up.

Enter Krankor's nemesis, the self-proclaimed Prince of Space wearing mask and spiffy satin cape. The strangely charitable but invulnerable Prince laughs at the Phantom's relentless and totally ineffectual ray gun zingers and blithely flies through the release of caustic vapors on his way to thwarting the evil one's stupid plans to steal secret rocket fuel plans and conquer earth.

Breathe easy Earth. Gout-kneed inept henchmen, X-radars in 54 Chevy station wagons, flaky pie dough bumbling giants, thorium bombs; nothing stops the mild-mannered, secretly disguised Prince from saving the day.

Aimed strictly at the kiddie matinee crowd, this film features beak-nosed evil aliens who travel in a spaceship spaced like a trussed up turkey or chicken, while the hero never tires of endlessly proclaiming that the evil aliens' weapons cannot harm him (and indeed they don't, though that doesn't stop the bad guys from repeatedly attempting it again and again). The film also features one of the most pathetic giant monsters of any Japanese film, a hefty Japanese man in a sloppily put together mask, who guards the evil invaders' home planet. Instantly forgettable, but prime MST3K fodder.

Prince of space is a pretty crappy movie, but it isn't the so called "Starman" series. The Starman series, which has been released in two volumes from Something Weird video, features a tights-wearing japanese man running around laughing and beating people up as they fire guns, which they know can't kill him, for he's made of steel. Shintoho, a company that was an off shoot of the great Toho production company created these films which range from bad to so horrible that you want to spray mace in your eyes so you can't see the screen. Walter Manly, the man responsible for delivering these messes to America made it worse by cutting them down from serials and turning them into 75 minute films about salamanders and monsters, and emerald planets... I really couldn't follow the plot I was to busy throwing up... anyway, their are some really classic moments in the films, weird, American serial influenced fights against hordes of creatures or even space facists, and mutants dressed in costumes you'd think were made by the producer's mother for $15.00. There are four films made for American release (even though there were nine films from Japan, three of them were turned into "The Evil Brain From Outer Space" which, sadly, is one of the better ones. My favorite of them all is "Invaders from Space, which has some nifty acrobatics and isn't as boring as some of the others. Prince of Space does suck, but then again so does Starman... if you've got nerdy friends and you're either drunk and/or high and your looking for a giggle, check them out.

"Your weapons have no effect on me" but this movie does. Want to laugh until you fall over? This is the one that tops the charts for the worst Japanese film of all times. The story appears to be that 7, or maybe 8, chickens try to take over the earth, or Japan, or something and a shoe-shine boy, who is really the Prince of Space, points a butane grill lighter at them and jumps around with a sinus mask over his face. The Phantom of Krankor, the head chicken (or is that rooster?), forgot his underwear much to our dismay (or delight),has drooping football pads under his tights, and laughs demonically every five minutes. His flock keep shooting at the Prince with their stick weapons, ignoring his statement that the "weapons have no effect on me". Maybe they should have just hit him over the head. To add to the confusions, small Japanese boys run around giving orders, having access to restricted government property and speaking with a variety of American accents. Somewhere along the line, a giant Pillsbury Dough Boy appears, guarding the planet Krankor, and is easily dispatched by the Prince. So much for giant guardians. The wimpy scientists, meeting in a room the size of the Metropolitan Opera, run the gamut of emotions from cowardice to boredom, which is probably what you will do as you watch this film. It all works out, I guess and the world is safe from Krankor and his flock of invading Rhode Island Reds. I wonder if the Prince went back to his shoe shine job?

Forget the ratings! It's a bad movie, but it will have you laughing the whole way through. The story is lame, the acting non-existent (to their credit, the actors were working hard), and production values were low. Still, I watch it occasionally; it's a guilty pleasure.