Ido zero daisakusen

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!!!

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.

As was the norm in the 60's, Japanese filmmakers used old-time American actors to help market their films in the US and Europe. Such Hollywood classics such as Raymond Burr ("Godzilla"), Nick Adams and Robert Horton ("The Green Slime") made a second career by appearing in Japanese sci -fi.

Joseph Cotton ("Citizen Kane"), Cesar Romero (TV "Batman's" original Joker) and Richard Jaeckel ("The Dirty Dozen", "Spenser:For Hire", "The Green Slime"), were another three who appeared in this offbeat blend of sci-fi and fantasy.

Cotten has his hands full as a Captain Nemo-esque commander of the super sub Alpha (an odd coincidence, since he later played the famous submariner in MGM's "Captain Nemo and the Underwater City"), fighting against a mad scientist (Romero) with a penchant for splicing together mutant creatures to rule the world. Jaeckel plays the reporter tossed into this crazy conflict, which has little or no plot or character development, but is just your average no-brainer popcorn flick perfect for the fanboy in all of us.

A strange twist was the marketing of this film as a sequel to the live action version of the anime movie "Atragon", another super sub movie that bears absolutely no resemblance in design or plot to "Latitude Zero".

This is one of the finest of the non-Godzilla epics by Ishiro Honda and Toho. It definitely has all the elements that make for a great film great story, great action and an interesting twist at the end. What really stands out is the fact that Honda pretty much took a near impossible situation in working with several American actors who didn't speak Japanese and was able to do a decent job in directing them. However, the thing that really was interesting about this film was the fact that this film marks what probably is the first and only time that Akira Takarada and the late, great Akihiko Hirata are heard speaking English with their own voices after years of being dubbed. This film is definitely one of the finest to come from Toho.

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.