Latitude zéro

Scientists are descending in bathyspere when an underwater volcano erupts. They are saved by a submarine commander on his futuristic sub the Alpha who takes them to a mystical and wonderful place named Latitude Zero, where the adventure is this action packed Japanese film begins.

Another memory from my childhood! I was about 7 or 8 years old when I saw this film and it really freaked me at this time! Recently, I watched "Ido zero daisakusen" again and it had great nostalgia-values!! Giant rats, bat-like creatures... this flick directed by Godzilla´s spiritual father Ishiro Honda has everything a great Japanese monster movie needs! Plus the great performances of Richard Jaeckel, who made some extraordinary alien-experiences in "The Green Slime" as well as Cesare Romero, unforgettable as sneering bad guy Joker in the 1960s Batman-series! The biggest surprise however was the appearance of Joseph Cotten, an actor that also starred in the Orson Welles-classic "Citizen Kane" or Carol Reed´s "The 3rd Man"... so he´s next to Russ Tamblyn or Raymond Burr a further US-actor who can add a Japanese Sci-fi movie to his filmography. "Atragon II" may be a little bit cheesy compared to nowaday´s standard (Which Asian monster flick from those days is not?!?), but all the multimillion Dollar CGI-F/X can´t deal with the great naive charm this film delivers! A cult classic!!!

Two very old men do battle do with each other with the use of fantastic hardware.

My favourite Japanese/American co-production ever made!

Those early scenes of Latitude Zero are very Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea-ish, in fact I almost felt like I discovered some long lost Irwin Allen production when recently viewing Latitude Zero for my first time!

The colourful lines given to Cotten and Romero are what stand out in my memory more than anything else. But the blinking light computer hardware and energetic musical score are stand outs. The land sets at the end are very impressive.

Please note, the later sections of the movie turn into this oddball horror show with a surgical operation like no other seen in the history of film. At one point I had to turn away from the screen.

The is a highly underrated movie and a nice mix of Japanese and American film making. For all fans of the 1966 Adam West Batman series as this is basically Romero doing The Joker without white make up.

This movie could have been a classic 60s sci fi if it wasn't for the ridiculous creature costumes. The miniatures of the submarines and the underwater city are really good, but the costumes for the creatures look they won them at a carnival fair. The movie is also really slow at points, like when they walk through the underwater land for five minutes! Other than that though the movie is decent, the acting is okay and the plot is interesting. I would say only watch this if you have no other Japanese sci fi movie to watch.

This truly is the father of modern day Power Rangers, Star Blazers and much,much more. Not only does this have great US actors, but has all the classical features we now see in everyday television and movies. Example: People dressed up in Bat creature costumes, Flying submarines, etc. In contrast to todays movies with would seem to be rather lame, but overall if you take the total context of what is being shown you'll love it. It is not every day that you see great actors interacting with special effects creatures and under the direction of a great Japanesse director. Remember this try as you might you can not see this movie today due to it's being shelved back in Japan. I have tried to obtain it, tried to get various TV stations to play it all to no avail.