Uchûjin Tôkyô ni arawaru

Lately I find I have a special place in my heart for the Japanese disaster movie of days gone by. They are so much fun, and their filmmakers throw everything but the kitchen sink in, both so that there's something to please everybody and because they're frankly just so chock-full of bizarre yet interesting ideas. It seems like it would have been a great time to make movies there! I enjoyed this a lot, though many aspects weren't understandable to me, like why as the meteor got ever closer to Earth it got so incredibly hot. I can understand, since the Moon influences tides through its gravitational pulls, why there could have been flooding, but the impact on temperature...I suppose it's simply one of those aspects of watching pre-manned space flight science-fiction films in which you have to approach simply with fun and acceptance, and turn off your disbelief, to simply enjoy the ride. I have no problem with that approach for these films.

Cool ideas I really liked were the way one of the aliens altered its appearance so that the warning would be listened to, so that both worlds could be saved, and the concept that when a world crisis occurs, different countries and cultures--and various planets, for that matter--can sit down and work things out together, that all is not lost for civilization and its discontents in 2016. It's thoughts like that that help me sleep at night.

This would make a great double bill with 'Melancholia'.

Forgive me please-not the first English. What Japan when threatened and if Starman is not available? Well Japan in the 1950s, was inhabited by the researcher Dr. professors, so it takes them to the grill to speculate what's going down.

Over some Starfish eyes on their bellies are planning to go and, in particular, the contact with the ground of the doctor. Why? Well, that's not revealed so far, but if they are going to speak directly to people than frightening about crap of them flying around in space or emerges from the water and blue glowing does not seem to be the best idea.

Our three heroes are all the doctor or scientist or something, including tobacco, sugar cane, the guy is working on a new formula to create energy and tobacco, sugarcane driving guy who works at the Observatory, and flogging, smoke, keeping the other guy, who did a few other things. You guys are like ' Wow, this is a spaceship, and then further then the then the next minute they are like 'obcy? Toshiba! '. They all had families and children and all that, but for God this three interchangeable average age of men we're talking about here, so don't ask me to go into the specifics.

When you are dancing/singing routine starring some of the famous lady, one of the alien gets her photo (nice photo archive, no less), and somehow assume that her character. What follows is a stranger to cheating in the game of tennis, walking through walls and the oncoming threat of terrible sounds of the planet.

Warning: the space is not the most action movie you will ever see, but it has a bunch of randomness and strange visuals, as well as the scene where some picnickers yelling at some foreigners that absolutely leads nowhere. The alien Starfish get ups are quite funny (also appear in the film Starman and can have some cultural significance of oil, which is passed my by), and the second part of the approach is the planet's movie feel more suspenseful. It is also necessary to introduce song and gets bonus points from me.

Aliens, from the planet Paila, and Earthlings work together to prevent the Earth from being destroyed by a runaway planet, Planet R, from another galaxy in this early Japanese Sci-Fi movie released in 1956 with the American title "Warning from Space".

The Pairans who's planet Paila is on the other side of the sun and undetected from the eyes of earth's astronomers sends a fleet of space ships to earth to get the people of that planet to join with them to prevent the rogue planet R from slamming into earth and destroying not only earth but the entire solar system including the planet Paila. The Pairans looking like star fish with an eyeball on their stomachs have one of them Ginko, Toyomi Karita, morphs into the popular Japanese singer Hikari Aozora, and make contact with the earthlings on the dangers they they as well as the Pairans are facing.

At first the leaders of earth don't, as usual, take Ginko's warnings seriously. But when the planet begins to get closer to earth they finally do and muster all the nuclear weapons that the earth's superpowers have together to shoot into space and blast the streaking planet off course. The attempt fails miserably and as Planet R gets closer to earth it causes death and destruction by unleashing giant tidal waves and great changes in the weather. All seems lost until Ginko tells the earthlings that only Prof. Kamura can save them with his formula for the destructive super-nuclear element Duriun. Which earlier in the movie Ginko took from Prof. Kamura and destroyed because it was too dangerous for anyone, much less those on earth, to have.

Ginko tells the people of earth that with getting the formula for Duriun from Prof. Kamura and together with the Pairans advanced technology to militarize and deliver it to the Planet R in order to knock it off it's course it will save the solar system but there's just one hitch, were is Prof. Kamura?

You have to forgive the cheap special effects since the movie was made almost fifty years ago before the invention of computer enhanced photography but the story and the acting in the movie "Warning from Space" is much better then you would have expected. It's also interesting to note that the movie was made in Japan the only country that was ever nuked and the story was about using nuclear weapons for survival instead of destruction.

I remember watching this film when I was a kid. Ironically, it was before I saw When Worlds Collide or The Day the Earth Stood Still (ironically, I still have yet to see the latter). This film is successful for two reasons. The first one is the fears of the Japanese about nuclear holocaust. Like so many science fiction films that the Japanese released during this era, it was pretty much inspired by the events that had happened the previous decade. Also, this film also spreads the message of world cooperation, especially when there is a threat of total extinction either by aliens or a runaway planetoid (see Gorath). This was a pretty interesting film and its too bad that it is not being shown on television anymore.

Ironically, there is no irony in this review or in the movie. I bought this movie as part of a collection and didn't realize it was Japanese. The story is almost total nonsense, I would imagine that has a lot to do with it being re-dubbed in English for western audiences. The plot is typical of many "beings from a far away planet must save humanity from itself" movies, but it is almost completely lacking exposition. The humans and aliens act in an almost cryptic way, I was never quite sure of why they were doing anything they did. Had it not been for my watching the extra features on the re-release of THX-1138 I would be completely lost. For those who haven't seen THX-1138 there is an interview with George Lucas where he is explaining the style of THX. He says the Japanese don't explain anything in their movies, they just do it. Some odd little cultural aspect often comes off as a complete mystery to people not acquainted with eastern culture. This movie is one of those odd things. Imagine this... a samurai and a geisha drink tea, but go through a long and complex ritual of setting all the clocks in the house before sitting down for tea. Why the hell did they do that!?! Just drink the shizbangin' tea for God's sake! My son likes the starfish shaped aliens.